Matthew Tierney interviewed in Maisonneuve

Matthew Tierney (The Hayflick Limit) spoke with Linda Besner of Maisonneuve about the theory of relativity, Paul Muldoon and being marooned in your own head.

'Linda Besner: Which is moving faster, the reader or the poem? A poem in its printed form is static—it's just sitting there on the page—but the ideas in it are highly kinetic. The reader is sitting there reading, but his or her mind is racing in all directions chasing after the poem's meaning. Which has higher velocity?

Matthew Tierney: Whoah, tough one. I think to answer the question, though, you have to pin the poem down. Maybe part of the appeal of poetry is that it's unpindownable. Its very attractiveness is in its failure to do what it sets out to do, which is to stop time. I always think, when I'm writing something—and it kind of pisses me off—how long I spend writing a poem and how quickly people read it. I mean, you can spend years writing a poem. And it takes about a minute for someone to read. So it feels way out of whack, the amount of reading time people give to something. But maybe I shouldn't put equals signs between those two types of time, reading time and writing time. I do feel like in a poem that's working really well, it's like all parts of it are more alert and aware of each other than you are. It's a challenge to read poems in that way, to pay that kind of attention, not just zip through.'

Read the whole interview here.