John Barton

“Who is the ideal reader? God only knows.”

“I have become intrigued with the combining of seemingly unrelated ideas or images, or the drawing upon the many, sometimes dissimilar, meanings a word might have.”

“I consider a poem to be a kind of experiment where a number of elements are brought together under test conditions to see how they will interact to create meaning or relevance.”

“I would not say I chose to write long poems on a conscious level. The long poem has been a relative constant.”

“Reading should be a repeat performance.”

“To me many short poems read and write like beginnings that simply whet my appetite; I want to get over that.”

“Some readers allow their prejudices to blind them. A good reader knows how to disregard inappropriate responses.”

“Poetry is but another form of inquiry into the nature of phenomena, using with its own unique procedures and tools.”

“The reader's challenge is to replicate the experiment by reading the poem and to draw their own conclusions.”

“The point of an experiment is not to arrive at a predetermined end point, to prove or disprove anything, but to deliver a poem that reveals much about the process taken.”

“Poets can't resist the dramatic pull of their lives and so inevitably write autobiographical verse.”

“We are comfortable with the fact that we cannot know personally what happened in the world before we were born, yet we are uncomfortable with the notion that we will stop engaging with time at some point in the future.”

“A literary journal is intended to connect writer with reader; the role of the editor is to mediate.”

“I sometimes like to tinker with poems that have failed, ones that I have sent aside. Even years afterward, I will revisit them if there is something about them that I cannot give up on.”

“I became intrigued with colour theory. The absurd pronouncements of the Colour Institute, a group that decides what colours are hot each year or season, amused me.”

“No poem is easily grasped; so why should any reader expect fast results?”

“In the past, poetry came in the form of spells and chants used to effect change.”

“I have been told by a member of the board of one of Canada's most prominent literary magazines that a submission of mine once caused a great deal of controversy.”

“I find it exhausting to administer a magazine without an office or paid staff.”

“An experienced reader uses the poem as an agent of inquiry. This makes poetry very exciting, unstable, and interactive.”