Thinking About Poetry— Vittorio Spandrio

Interview with a Poet

Thank you Vittorio for your honest and forthright responses. It’s always interesting to hear from poets — whether they are veteran experienced poets, or new fledgling poets learning the field. Keep working.

For you, poetry is…

Poetry is an acquired set of tools which allow the author to deliberately extract their personal experience from the cerebral cortex; stretch it, shrink it, embellish it or break it and implant it directly into the brain of their reader. If the procedure goes ahead correctly, the major side-effect is empathy. Once you’ve got them there, wearing your brain as a hat, you get them to walk around a little while, look up at the buildings or the trees, smell the air or bite the apple, and feel the uneven ground beneath your feet tripping you up as you try to go about your day.

When you write poetry, what is the source of your motivation?

I guess I’m addicted to the rush of emotions that come while writing poetry and in those first few minutes after the poem is complete. When I’m writing something which has heavy subject matter, it’s uncomfortable, I sweat, I fidget a lot, my heart rate goes through the roof but I can’t take my attention off it for more than a minute. There’s the feeling that what I’m doing is taboo and I…