Frontier Poetry shares insights into the lives and hearts of today’s poets with their Poet In The Mirror series. This month, Shaina Phenix—author of To Be Named Something Else and former Frontier contributor—shares insight into lineages/inheritances, poetry as fellowship, and what it means to “write what you know.”
On Form
I noticed an abundance of work written using various forms throughout this collection. What is your relationship to form as a writer, and how do you see it in relationship with the content of this book?
I think similarly to a lot of writers, I originally turned my nose up at any idea of form in ignorance—it was restrictive, prescriptive, and in so many ways, felt reserved for white folks. And while I don’t love everything about the way poetry is taught or handled in academia, I will say that something cracked in my understanding of what was possible, what I could conjure, what I could resurrect using form. In grad school, I took craft classes with the likes of Lucinda Roy and Tina Chang. * Celebration interlude for the blessings that came of these interactions. *
Read the full article at Frontier Poetry.
To Be Named Something Else is winner of the 2023 Miller Williams Poetry Prize, selected by Patricia Smith.