I usually store up an idea for weeks, until the tingling moves from pleasure to pain—then release.  Other times, the poem is almost immediate.  I am usually activated by words, phrases, or an image.  Recently, the deaths of my friends, loved ones and celebrities have been triggering a series of obituary poems.

Thanks Shane.  You'd be surprised how many honey pots I don't get my fingers in to.  But yes, I am busy.  I want to get as much done as I can by the age of 40, so I can move on to prose for a decade.  I think poets are best young and old, not middle-aged.  I published a collection of poems this year, an anthology, and a pamphlet.  Next year (2005) I am guest-editing a special section of New American Writing, on contemporary Canadian poets.  Also for 2005, an anthology for DC Books.  And, in 2006, I am co-editing a collection of essays on English poetry in Quebec, with Dr. Jason Camlot, the fine poet.  My fourth collection of poems is currently being developed, and should be ready before 2007.

Did you always want to be a writer? Do you have hidden aspirations to want to do something else?

I always wanted to be a poet.  It helped that my mother, and my aunt Bev (who recently died) inspired me so much in that department, from a very early age (I was writing at age 3).  By high school I realized that poets could get away with most any sort of behaviour (in the eyes of posterity), and that appealed to me (perhaps too much).  I was a champion orator during my college years—I would like to have been a lawyer-turned-politician like handsome Mr. Edwards.  I wouldn't mind if my TV agent got me more scriptwriting work, either.  I've had scripts that interested the likes of Keifer Sutherland and Tarantino's production company, but surprisingly few of my scripts have been more than optioned.

The first time I came across your name was on the cover of the anthology "Poetry Nation" with Regie Cabico.  How did you two team up and how did you come into editing anthologies?

Regie and I met in Montreal in—Oh, about 1995 or so—when I was emcee of the first real slam/spoken word cabaret series in Canada, Vox Hunt.  We got along famously for several years.  He used to come up from NYC and stay in my eleven-room flat on "The Main" and we'd have wonderful chats about poetry for hours - he was there with me on my last night in Canada, in 1997, before I nervously boarded the plane to Budapest.  Regie is one of the most brilliant and funny men in the world.  We wanted to do a zeitgeist anthology that celebrated the best poetry in the States and Canada, regardless of whether it was "academic" or "slam".  We sort of coined this idea of a fusion of various poetries, which has yet to really catch on.  I think it will - not the name maybe but the underlying open-minded thrust—because 21st century poetry can no longer sustain the small-minded divide between the so-called innovative and accessible - good poems just don't respect borders.

Do you feel that spoken word poetry has become too commercialized?

Well, as a Marxist with Catholic leanings (Liberation Theology) I think most things these days are too commercialized, which is why the nthposition e-books (such as 100 poets against the war from nthposition.com) were copy-left.  However, in the context of selling entertainment product to the masses, I think spoken word has actually failed to live up to my expectations.  Wonderful divas of spoken poetry like Nicole Blackman are widely respected, but, in an alternate universe, could have been stars like Britney: only cooler.  As you can see, I struggle between being opposed to commodification, and buying lots of pop culture.

In the last anthology you edited, "Short Fuse," which is fantastic by the way, you say that 'fusion poetry' is verse that can be heard and read. That's interesting because the concerns I have heard from academic poets is whether spoken word poetry can exist as successfully on the page as it does on the stage.  Your thoughts?

See my replies above, too.  I am glad you liked Short Fuse.  I would have to say that I am less and less interested in the oral and more and more in the written.  That being said, the best poems—whether inscribed on paper, recorded as sound—or delivered live—are the best poems, in any media.

Do you believe there is a fine line between what is called "street poetry" versus academic poetry?

I think there is a thick line.  However, more and more the people writing mainstream poetry do so with an awareness of the once-marginalized stances and issues of the street poets.

What in your own opinion makes for good writing?

Good sex.  Good food.  Good wine.  Good friends.  Good books.  And a good night's sleep.

I know you gathered together 100 poets writing poems about the war. Do you feel that politics belongs in poetry? What are you trying to accomplish with such work? 

I want to break down the divide between the polis and poesis.  See Plato on this subject.  I don't believe all poetry should be political—but that some can and should be.  And all editing and publishing is ideologically-driven, and we should be aware of that.  The creation of "established" careers and reputations continues apace, often consolidated by a surprisingly limited number of factors and agents.  I think the world-wide community of more-alternative, often Internet-driven poets needs to get its act together, and create more of a coherent, intelligible and adversarial relationship to the received notions of prizes, publications, and positions—if only to present its own often fresher perspectives.

As writers, what do you think is our responsibility to society as artists?

Yes.  My new friend, Michael Donaghy, who died a few weeks ago - at 50, he was one of the world's finest formal verse writers—and combined that command of form with wit, punk energy and lifestyle, and true music.  Younger very fine London-based poets include Roddy Lumsden, whose work is hilarious, touching and often like pop songs: immediate but resonant.  There are too many to name them all...

What is different about writing a poem or a story versus writing a screenplay? In your experience, have they overlapped into one another?

They haven't overlapped yet.  I want them to, more.  The difference is, when you write a script (as I have done, say for HBO) they pay you lots of money.  Poems aren't usually like that.  Poems, being exempt from much of the market's forces (but not all, see above) can be more "authentic" expressions.  Scripts take longer to write.

Are there any writers out here that you think we should keep an eye on?