Do different locales make for different poems beyond subject matter?
GD: My American-based poems tend to have a looser, more open structure when appropriate–the looseness of the New York School or the Beats is evident, for instance, in the title poem of The Hellbox. The vastness, richness and variety of subcontinents like the U.S. and India cannot generally be contained within strict traditional forms. I’m also aware of the great traditional poems of Robert Frost and his New England–a smaller more homogeneous zone in the U.S. I do use traditional forms such as the sonnet, which in my work implies complicity in our lives. This form was brought into the English language by Edmund Spenser and Walter Raleigh, both of whom lived in Cork, great English poets who committed murderous acts in that land. A recent sonnet, ‘Loosestrife’, metaphorically represents the U.S. and the West–loosestrife was brought here from Europe. I’m extending that poetic landscape into America, over space, sea and time.
