A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Anton Pooles

with Anton Pooles:

Q1: When did you start writing and first influences?

Anton:

I have always love fairy tales and fantasy, but I never planned on becoming a writer or more specifically a poet. I struggled with reading and writing as a child, and honestly still do, so I had
probably convinced myself I could never be a writer, but somehow, I fell into it. In my mid-twenties I re-discovered many of the Arthurian Romance poems that I had enjoyed reading when I was in
high school and I started writing poems in that style. Poems like “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” and “Lady of the Lake” by Sir Walter Scott we defiantly my entry point for poetry. The plan
was to add these poems into the fairy stories I was writing at the time, but it opposite occurred and the fairy stories found their way into the poems.

Q2: Who are your biggest influences today?

Anton:

I’m often find I am more heavily influenced through visual mediums like film and art than I am with writing. I struggled with reading a great deal when I was a child and still do honestly, but I have
always been in love with film. Most of my greatest influencers have been filmmaker like Fritz Lang and Andrei Tarkovsky. One of the most important would have to be Guillermo Del Toro. He has
become a kind of spiritual mentor of mine.

Q3: Where did you grow up and how did that influence your writing?

Anton: I was raised in Toronto, but I’m not sure it has ever influenced my writing a great deal. However, there are two places I always seem to come back to. The first is a cottage in Brighton, Ontario that
my parents had when I was a child. I spent a good chuck of my childhood there and so it has become the location for a lot of my poems. The second is the city I was born in, which was
Novosibirsk, Siberia. I left when I was a baby, I have never been back and I have no memory of it, but it gnaws at me as a good ghost should.

Q4: Have any travels away from home influence your writing?

Anton: I have always been fascinated by Vincent Van Gogh and I have always wanted to write something about him. I got the chance to go to the South of France a few years ago and I was able to visit and stay in certain places that he had been. That got me working on a series of poems about him. So, I guess the answer is, yes.

Q5: Any pivotal moment when you knew you wanted to be a writer?

Anton: I’m sure there was, but I can’t remember. Sorry.

Q6: Favorite activities to relax?

Anton: As I said before I LOVE film. Last year I watched over two hundred films. I know that may seem
like a lot, but I need the images they supply, they feed the mind.

Q7: Any recent or forthcoming projects that you’d like to promote?

Anton: I am Editor-in-Chief of Cypress: Literary Journal where we publish poetry and flash fiction/non-fiction. We are always open for submission and publish writers worldwide. We have also published
our first print anthology not to long ago called “The Red House: An Anthology of Genre and Speculative Poetry” which is still available.
https://cypresspress.ca/

Q8: What is a favorite line/stanza from a poem of yours or others?

Anton: “I keep the dead alive by walking on winter nights. My visible breath passes into their invisible lungs.” This is from a poem I’m working on called “Lamplight.”

Q9: Who has helped you most with writing?

Anton: I took a poetry class at the University of Toronto and my instructor was Catherine Graham. She taught me how to bring the fantastical into the modern era without losing any whimsy in the
process. This is, of course, something I greatly admire in her own writing as well. Her collection “Winterkill” had a profound impact on me.