Jaime Forsythe, "Yield" (Buckrider Books, 2026)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: New Books Network — Jaime Forsythe, "Yield" (Buckrider Books, 2026)

Host: Holly Gattery
Guest: Jaime Forsythe
Date: June 10, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode features poet Jaime Forsythe discussing her new book, Yield—a long poem deeply rooted in postpartum life, the porous boundaries of sea and self, and the dreamy, fraught space of early motherhood. Hosted by Holly Gattery, the conversation moves from Forsythe’s creative process and structural choices to the book’s layered imagery, the tension between autobiography and imagination, and the significance of place. Forsythe also reads a vivid excerpt from Yield and discusses her future creative projects.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins and Structure of "Yield"

• Starting in Postpartum: Forsythe describes how the poem began during her own postpartum period with her second child as a gathering of fragments and notes. The entire work developed in couplets, which felt intuitively manageable during demanding mothering tasks:

  "The whole poem is in couplets...that just became a unit of thought or of language that I could hold in my brain or in my notebook while my hands were full or while I was breastfeeding." (03:21)

• Why the Long Form?: She admits long poems initially intimidated her, given her background in short poems. The longer form evolved organically, as she lacked the energy for tidy closure but found herself able to knit couplets together over time.

  "If I had thought of it as a long poem from the beginning, that might have felt intimidating, but as I kind of realized that's where it might be going, then I kind of started doing some reading." (05:01)
  Inspiration cited: Alice Oswald’s Nobody.

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2. The Book Cover and Place

• Cover Art & Mood: Forsythe appreciated the collaborative process with her publisher, aiming for a dark, atmospheric design rather than something "too flowery."

  "I knew I didn't want something that was too flowery...I wanted something that felt a little darker...the painting was [editor] Paul Vermeersch’s suggestion.” (07:12)

• Evoking the Maritimes: Growing up and returning to Nova Scotia, especially time spent on the Minas Basin near the Bay of Fundy, deeply influenced the work’s sense of nostalgia, haunting, and geological time.

  "That place was very inspiring to me...it kind of holds some of those memories from when I was growing up and members of my family that were there before I was born..." (09:22)

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3. Reading from "Yield"

• Excerpt: Forsythe reads a three-page passage, illustrating Yield's fragmented yet lush style and intertwining of bodily sensation, the natural world, memory, and dream. (10:51–16:37)
• Host Reaction:

  “That was gorgeous. I feel like I could have listened for that forever. Like curled up on the floor with melanin.” (17:02)
  “You're one of my exceptions, Jamie. I will listen to you.” (17:08)

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4. Recurring Imagery: Mouth, Teeth, and Violence

• Body and Motherhood: Gattery notes the recurring images of mouths and teeth, wondering if it was intentional. Forsythe reflects that it likely arose unconsciously from the realities of breastfeeding and teething.

  “Both breastfeeding and teething were very prominent...But I'm not really interested in writing something that just literally describes that experience, but am interested in coming at it a bit sideways and working through it using mood and imagery.” (19:05)

• Subtle Threats of Violence: The hosts discuss the presence of subtle violence and intrusive thoughts common in early motherhood, as channeled through dreamlike and unsettling imagery:

  “There was that specific quality to what you were writing...that fear of, you know, grabbing a blade...those intrusive thoughts that are very common to new parents, of something happening to you or something violent happening to the baby.” (20:35)

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5. Autobiography vs. Imagination

• Curated Experience: Forsythe explains the work is close to her lived experience, but shaped, curated, and expanded by imagination and dream logic, rather than being a literal diary:

  "It's absolutely close to my life and my experience, but it’s also curated, and there’s also elements of it that come from imagination and also from dream..." (23:29)

• Host’s Perspective:

  “It's elements of autobiography, but without being literal, necessarily.” (25:36)

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6. Form and Cadence: Couplets, Expansion, and Contraction

• Structural Play: The poem’s structure mimics the contractions and expansions of labor, breath, and sea tides—mirrored in couplets of varying lengths and the arrangement of sections and white space:

  “Some of the lines are quite long, and then there are other sections where the lines are quite short...I felt like for something that spreads across the whole book, there has to be some variation…” (28:04)

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7. Looking Ahead: Current Projects

• Short Fiction: Forsythe is currently focusing on short fiction, enjoying the ability to “play and explore” in a new creative space. She notes that writing Yield required such immersion that she wasn’t able to write other poetry at the time:

  “I found when I was in the voice of this book, I wasn't really able to write other poetry. So it's been a while since I wrote just a standalone short poem, so I'm hoping those will come back at some point as well.” (30:23)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Process:

  "It almost felt like that sort of [knitting] process where I just kept adding, adding, adding, and all I had to do was kind of dip back into the voice at that time." (03:21)

• On Place:

  "It was like a feeling of nostalgia for time passing that you're living right now...a premature grief of something that hasn’t happened yet." (08:33, paraphrase by host)

• On Violence & Motherhood:

  "You think of nursing a baby as something that's so, you know, lovely...but I can also remember it hurts a lot at first...all of these multiple truths of the situation of postpartum were relayed..." (20:35)

• On Structure:

  "Even within a structure of couplets...it invites play and...not letting the structure suffocate you, there's room to have fun and to play." (29:22)

• On Poetry vs. Autobiography:

  "A poem doesn’t have to be autobiographical. A poem is something completely different." (25:45, host)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Episode Intro & Book Overview: 01:35
• Origin and Process of Writing Yield: 03:21
• Long-Form Poetry Discussion: 05:01
• Book Cover and Place: 07:12, 09:22
• Reading from Yield: 10:51–16:37
• Host Reaction to Reading: 17:02
• Imagery Discussion — Teeth, Mouth, Threat: 19:05
• Violence and Motherhood: 20:35
• Autobiography vs. Imagination: 23:29
• Structure, Rhythm, and Expansion/Contraction: 27:58, 28:04
• Current and Future Projects: 30:23

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Tone and Style

The interview is thoughtful, intimate, and gently humorous—marked by mutual understanding between two poet-mothers. Both host and guest blend analytical commentary with personal anecdotes, maintaining a voice that is literary yet accessible, attentive both to poetic craft and lived experience.

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This episode is invaluable for anyone interested in contemporary poetry, the nuances of writing about motherhood, and the balance between lived experience and imaginative transformation in literary work.

Transcript

[Jamie Forsyth]

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[Holly Gattery]

Hello everyone and welcome to nbn. I'm your host Holly Gattery, and I'm excited to be joined today by Jamie Forsyth to talk about her incredible long poem Yield, which was released by Walzack and Wynn. Yield is an unforgettable long poem that lingers in the postpartum void and exploring the porous boundary between land and sea and being lost and found. Yield is Jamie's third collection wherein a mother faces the postpartum void from a porous house by the ocean. As the veil between land and sea and being lost and found grows thinner, Repeated waves of couplets bring the reader unforgettable images. A pom pom that hardens into a sea urchin, an underwater dance club, a baby that roots for milk, while what's ancient history and memory floods in Jamie's. Forsyth's previous books are I Heard Something, which was published by Anvil Press Sympathy Loophole, which was released with Mansfield Press. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Arc, Event Grain, the Malahat Review, the Ampersand Review, and this Magazine, among others. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph and and currently lives close to where she grew up in Nova Scotia. Welcome to the Show Jamie, thank you.

[Jamie Forsyth]

Holly. Thanks so much for having me.

[Holly Gattery]

It is such a pleasure to be talking to you about this long poem, which is something familiar to me. It felt familiar and also foreign. As a mother of four myself, I remember those postpartum days well, and the dreamy quality of it, the economy of it felt so perfect. But my first question for you. I'm wondering if you could talk about where this book began in your mind.

[Jamie Forsyth]

Yeah, sure. I actually started writing it when I was kind of postpartum with my second child. So I did kind of start it in the midst of that time period, although it was very rough at that time. Mostly kind of fragments, notes. And what kind of got the couplets started was with the whole poem is in couplets. And that just became a unit of thought or of language that I could hold in my brain or in my notebook while my hands were full or while I was breastfeeding. And it almost felt. I have a lot of knitters in my family. I don't knit, but it almost felt like that sort of process where I just kept adding, adding, adding, and all I had to do was kind of dip back into the voice at that time. I found that easier, or that's where my head was anyway, versus writing shorter poems, which is mostly what I had done in the past. So that's kind of where it started.

[Holly Gattery]

Would you say there is a challenge to the long form that you didn't expect? And this is coming from me, a poet who's often played with the idea of writing a long poem and then has immediately chickened out because, like you, I'm. I write very short poems. Like, if my poem is over a page, it means that, like, I'm sweating. When I wrote that, it. It really took a lot out of me to write. Long poems do not naturally come to me. So I'd love to hear your thoughts.

[Jamie Forsyth]

Yeah, sure. I mean, I. I think I felt, and still sometimes feel similar to the way you feel. And I love short poems. And I really admire the ability of poets to kind of create a whole object with a beginning and end in less than a page. So I do love that effect. I think when I was writing this, it was maybe I didn't have anything whole that was coming. So, as you know, in a shorter poem, it has to land somewhere. You kind of have to have that. Not conclusion exactly in a poem, but it has to land somewhere that's satisfying. And those endings weren't really coming to me. So it kind of evolved naturally in that way. If I had thought of it as a long poem from the beginning, that might have felt intimidating, but as I kind of realized that's where it might be going, then I kind of started doing some reading. I was really inspired by Alice Oswald's long poem Nobody just to kind of see, okay, here's some different. Here's some things people do. Here's some different shapes this can take. Yeah. So, like you say, there's definitely challenges, but I think it is actually what felt more natural to me at the time.

[Holly Gattery]

Thank you for that. Now, I never usually ask too many people about their book covers, and that's not because I don't care. It's for a couple of reasons. Somebody might be listening to this in their car or while they're walking or doing laundry, and they may not have the book in front of them. But I really want to talk about your book cover because it felt like such a beautiful reflection of how I felt reading the poems. Like, it really, really, like, was sinking up in my brain. And I'd really enjoy if you could tell us a little bit about the book cover and where that came from. And I asked because working with a small press, I know that they often give us a little bit more control over our book covers. Not total control. I've had some pretty weird ideas in my past, but some, you know, that rightfully were shot down, but some control. I really just enjoyed your cover a lot.

[Jamie Forsyth]

Oh, I'm so glad you had that experience, that it kind of reflected your experience of reading it. Yeah, the press. I did have some control in terms of the mood and the feeling I wanted it to evoke, but I didn't really know exactly how that would. That would unfold. So I was really glad to have the press helping out with that. And they did such a good job. I knew when I kind of sent them some ideas, I knew I didn't want something that was too flowery, I guess, is maybe one word I could use. I wanted something that felt a little darker, and I feel like they really delivered with that. The designers, Kilby, Smith, McGregor, and they did an amazing job with the title font, I think. And in terms of the painting. So there's just to kind of sketch it out for the listeners. There's kind of a classic detail from a classic sea painting on the COVID and it's kind of dark blues, turquoise, and there's a lot of fog and cloud. And my editor at Woolsack and Wynne, Paul Vermeersch, he's a writer and a poet, but also a visual artist. So I think he had a good. A good brain for kind of connecting the language with the visual. And the painting was his suggestion.

[Holly Gattery]

It also felt that it was such a beautiful reflection of the place where the poem is evoking. And I think, like, a lot of places by the sea might be able to evoke a similar vibe, a similar kind of haunting familiarity, but also feeling of. It's hard to explain. It was like a feeling of nostalgia for time passing that you're living right now. Like, it's the nostalgia for not too distant past, the presence, the. The. A premature grief of something that hasn't happened yet. Like, I felt all of this while I was reading your work. And my next question for you is about how place and where you lived as informed your work broadly. But this work specifically.

[Jamie Forsyth]

Yeah, sure. Yeah. So I grew up in Nova Scotia, and I lived away for a number of years while I attended university. But I returned here when I was in my 30s, and I've been here for a while now. So, of course, you know, I grew up by the ocean, going to the ocean. And in particular, I've spent a lot of time at a place on the Midas Basin where my mom grew up, which is right directly on the ocean and the Bay of Fundy, where some of those really big tides are happening. And I was actually staying there when I started writing this book. I was on maternity leave and was staying there for about a month in the summer. So certainly that place was very inspiring to me, and it kind of holds some of those memories from when I was growing up and members of my family that were there before I was born and right into adulthood. So it kind of holds that sense of time that you were talking a little bit about as well.

[Holly Gattery]

Thank you for that. And I think this is a really great time for us to. Well, for me to take a break and ask you to. To read to me or read to all of us from your. From your poem. Because I think for my following questions, giving our readers a little bit of a. A moose bouche, an entry into your work might be good for them to hold while we move forward.

[Jamie Forsyth]

Perfect. So I think I'll just read kind of a section. Although it's a long poem, the book does kind of come in sections, and it's about three pages just near the beginning, if that's all right. Drool down the window could be tied, lapping, I don't look. Melted ice, chunk of quartz Like a tooth on the nightstand you're feeding hourly. Nose bobbing over my sternum Hand Starfished to my neck, sunning itself on sloped rock with the relaxed suction of the voracious Undressed in a heat wave, I can't dislodge the dream where I pinched the pointed cap from a vial of dye expressed green from breast to river this house whistles after midnight Birthmarks spread in rough archipelago over thighs mottled flush frilled breath of algae arousing the dark in the basement a dryer's broken drum, our deflated skeletons gone stiff on the lime field pocked with fontanelles, soft spots after rain or where the bones of tectonic plates gently part no one here but us and still I flinch, passing the magnetic knife holder when I go down for water like I'd close my fingers around its blade by mistake A fleeting urge I hustle before you stir to my missing heat. Earlier in breakfast's hazy filter I read lichens live on the world's leavings and did you know about the whelk's purple poison silently tinting all this time August and the raspberry fountains redden, beg to be unplugged from their brush. Climbing an underwater staircase I was clumsy without the requisite tail gills and dorsal fin. I want to join the sponge, the mermaid's purse, the moon snail. The flowers of the bogs yield now to sea lettuce and invertebrates who continue to exist. Desire did flicker before flatlining a ticking horizon, but to enter the cavern in the first place was to say yes. Yes to tripping into a crater, yes to bats. I thought the stinging when the sun rose was typical and now forever the imprint fossilized ribcage entombed in rock. I arrive at the lip of a difficult sensation and push the same pressurized reflex that brought me you all Cries flow from the lakes that feed the rivers, one layer of origin nook where cells first hummed with the glow of bodily pleasure. Once in a pale cathedral I waited for the show to end and bulls sang touched by silica and chalk. Stained glass of a backlit comb jelly inanimate vocals skated on the precipice of shrill Sometimes a performance doesn't happen remains an inhale stuck in sound check I overrode my panic by breathing next to a sharps container, searched under fluorescent tubes that simmered with moths for ceremony I found the pair of screw back earrings in a leatherette drawer Cameos of an unpierced godmother nest in crystalline foam. Shepherded by light, sea turtles may travel half the world's circumference lichens live in places too barren to attract rivals don't inspire a passionate response. Once someone said, it's like you're not even there. Seaweed tosses a blanket over rock looks more infinite than it is. Bluffs diminish 10 cm or 15 each year, and what an elegant blueprint for leaving crumbling Exit every hair that scores the tile a thread closer to stop skin cells dusting the furniture on a body's way out. When cars pull over on this road, I wonder maybe tugged by the dogtooth violets or sunken house radio murmur drifting from its innards in a broadcast that wavers between human and whale. Jumbo teddy bear some abandoned prize pressed up against the cartilage of window blinds bent to V's. Bleached lawn ripples in the sun and eelgrass does its best to sway you back to the aquatic meadow of sleep. You thought this was your run club era. Turns out it was more of a thinking about Run club era. The good news? Someone's marathon training is about to start. Sell your workout gear on Depop. Just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. They get their race day fit and you get a payout for trying. Someone on Depop wants what you've got. Start selling now, Depop where taste recognizes taste. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. You know those friends who support your preference for podcasts over music on road trips. That's the energy State Farm brings to insurance. With over 19,000 local agents, they help you find the coverage that fits your needs so you can spend less time worrying about insurance and more time enjoying the ride. Download the State Farm app or go [e-mail] Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney. Let's go get ready for a new case.

[Holly Gattery]

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[Jamie Forsyth]

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[Holly Gattery]

That was gorgeous. I feel like I could have listened for that forever. Like curled up on the floor with melanin.

[Jamie Forsyth]

Thank you.

[Holly Gattery]

That was so lovely. I usually I say I have this, I have this reoccurring sentiment I express which is I often prefer to have like to read poetry. And when I'm at poetry readings I'm there to buy a book or support the poet. But nine times out of 10, I'm not really interested in hearing the poet read. You're. You're one of my exceptions, Jamie. I will listen to you.

[Jamie Forsyth]

Very kind. Holly.

[Holly Gattery]

Lead me through the gates of hell. So, yes. That was so gorgeous while you were reading. It was such a great lead into my next question, which is about the presence of teeth, lips and mouth in your poem. They're reoccurring, but not reoccurring, where I felt like I was being bludgeoned by these images. It was just something that close to the end, I was like, I'm feeling like I'm noticing this. Like not to, you know, belabor the metaphor of ways, but this gentle, waving, rolling, reoccurring metaphor when we're around the mouth or that you talked about teeth or you wrote of teeth. And then there's teeth in a later section referring to stairs, where it says the loose teeth of wooden stairs for high tides. And I was. And I think, you know, it took me probably my second re reading to be like, wow, there are a lot of mentions of teeth. And this is not. Or mouths or lips. And this is not an issue. It seems incredibly fitting when we're talking about postpartum, when we're talking about early motherhood, that that kind of gaping MA imagery should be everywhere. And I was wondering if you could talk about that reoccurring image, if it's one you even realize, because, full disclosure, somebody pointed out to me in my latest book that I described eyes 113 different ways and I had no idea that I'd even done it. I was like, really cool. Didn't know that.

[Jamie Forsyth]

And they counted. Wow. Wow.

[Holly Gattery]

Yeah. Yeah, I was impressed.

[Jamie Forsyth]

Yeah, that's a really interesting question and an astute observation. I wouldn't say I've actually thought I'm aware of that pattern, but I haven't thought too much about it. But you're right. And yeah, I guess it's pretty straightforward. Definitely. Just the fact that the headspace and the environment I was in when I started this and that, I kind of tried to dip back into it as I wrote more of it was definitely one where both breastfeeding and teething were very prominent. So it makes a lot of sense that mouths and teeth figure in for sure. And I think if you think of something like teething, I'm not very interested in writing something about, say, a non fiction piece about the experience of your baby teething, maybe. I'm sure I googled many things when I was going through it. My second had a really rough time with it. But I'm not really interested in writing something that just literally describes that experience, but am interested in coming at it a bit sideways and working through it using mood and imagery. So I think that's some of what's going on there as well. Yeah.

[Holly Gattery]

And your passage that you read also pointed to another thread I was fascinated about in your work, which is the threat of violence. And that may sound wild to people, but I. When you're talking about, you know, grabbing a knife when. When you wrote that image, I can remember my firstborn laying in his crib and me having persistent aggressive and terrifying images of waking up to check him on the bassinet beside me and finding him headless. You know, like just these. These like, flashing images of violence, really something happening to me that was terrible and dramatic and violent. And also just the fact that, you know, you think of nursing a baby as something that's so, you know, lovely. And for me it eventually was. But I can also remember it hurts a lot at first. I remember my kids spitting up blood and the blood was from me because they were hurting me. And it takes a while to get used to it and for that to stop. And how all of these multiple truths of the situation of postpartum were relayed and not in any, as you said, not in a. A non fiction sort of way. I didn't feel like, I'm sure a lot of this is your life, but I mean, I didn't feel like it was autobiographical. I thought it was speaking to a specific time and a broad experience, if that makes any sense.

[Jamie Forsyth]

It does, it does, absolutely.

[Holly Gattery]

So I really, I enjoyed that because there was that specific quality to what you were writing, but I felt like, as specific as it was as that fear of, you know, grabbing a blade or, or having those intrusive thoughts that are very common to new parents, of something happening to you or something violent happening to the baby. It's something very specific, that example. But it's something that so many parents have had that I didn't realize was distressing. Yes. But not uncommon until I spoke to someone about it. And that was really important to me. So I did want to ask you about the nature of this long poem, which, again, I was not reading as autobiographical at all, though I understand it's likely informed. You mean, you've said it's informed by your experiences. But I'd love to hear you talk about balancing that because, you know, as someone who's written poetry myself and written nonfiction, you know, when people are pointing to my poems, they're like, oh, what happened to you that made you wrote this poem? I was like, well, it's not my. It's not my life. Like, a poem doesn't have to be autobiographical. A poem is something completely different. And I'd really appreciate if you would speak to this and you can feel free to say a Holly, this is entirely based off my life, so I'd be the one not to prove your point for you. But still, I'd like to leave it open to you to answer the question.

[Jamie Forsyth]

Yeah, no, yeah. So much interesting stuff in there in what you're saying. And. Yeah, I mean, it kind of goes

[Holly Gattery]

both ways, I guess.

[Jamie Forsyth]

On one hand, I kind of agree with that idea that, well, everything. I write short fiction too, which is probably even less autobiographical than my poetry in terms of. On the spectrum of being autobiographical. But I also kind of agree with that idea that everything could be viewed as autobiography in some ways just because it came from me and my imagination or my way of putting language to something. But I don't necessarily think of everything I write as coming necessarily literally from my own experience. Hopefully that makes some sense for this book. I would say it's pretty autobiographical, but it's also kind of, you know, it's not just an unfiltered kind of tumbling of my thoughts and experiences as they were happening. It's pretty highly, you know, snipped apart, rearranged, made to form some kind of expanding and contracting experiences to kind of give the long poem a bit of. A bit of energy. So I guess that's a way to say it is absolutely close to my life and my experience, but it's also curated, and there's also elements of it that come from imagination and also from dream. Dream is a pretty strong part of this book, too. And those are maybe dreams that started with me but aren't literal and aren't things that happened literally. Hopefully that makes some sense. But. But I do agree with you in the way that, yeah, it's not that you couldn't pick every detail and image and say it happened exactly like that.

[Holly Gattery]

Yeah, it's elements of autobiography, but without being literal, necessarily.

[Jamie Forsyth]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[Holly Gattery]

And I think it's also just like a private mission of mine to push back against the tendency for people to assume anything a woman writes is deeply rooted in her own life. You know. Right. You write a novel, it's autobiography. You write. You write a poem about a flower that, you know, murders every other flower in the flower bed, and it's Autobiography. And it's like, no, it's.

[Jamie Forsyth]

I'm gonna steal that flower idea.

[Holly Gattery]

I don't know. I was looking. I was. I was looking at my. My flowers by the pond today. I don't even know what the flowers are. That's how.

[Jamie Forsyth]

That's.

[Holly Gattery]

That's my green thumb. I'm like, I don't know what that is. I don't maybe picture this app. But, yeah, it's a nice. It's me pushing against that a little bit. And especially when it comes to writing about motherhood, it seems like something that's been done a lot, but I haven't ever found, like, it's been done in the way that you had. And I really loved what you said about expanding and contracting, because it was an observation I had that, you know, of course, there's this I. The expanding and contraction of, like, the birth process. But there's. Your poem literally does that. It expands and contracts. It's this long poem. But then there's this contraction of the couplet. But then you see spaces between which are, like rooms to fill your lungs with air, and then you dive back in. I'm mixing metaphors between labor contractions and swimming right now, but I feel like it's. It's not really. I feel like it's amniotic fluid. I feel like it's the same thing. Like, I'm talking about the same thing. It's a very layered metaphor. Look at me defending myself. But, yeah, I was wondering if you get it.

[Jamie Forsyth]

I get it.

[Holly Gattery]

Yeah. I was wondering if you could talk about the cadence end of it, because you have these couplets. But, I mean, I didn't. I realized it's very clearly in couplets, but I wasn't actually, I didn't even realize it was in couplets because I just felt. Couplets, to me, feel like such a restrained form. But this didn't feel like a restrained poem. It felt like it was just infused with oxygen. And I'd love to hear you talk about managing that, those expansions and contractions within the form that you've set out for yourself. Oh, yeah.

[Jamie Forsyth]

Thank you for that. I'm glad. I'm glad that that's how it feels.

[Holly Gattery]

Yeah.

[Jamie Forsyth]

Like, some of the. Just in the very basic fact that some of the lines are quite long, and then there are other sections where the lines are quite short, like maybe one or two words per line. So that's kind of part of that effect. And then some of the poems also are more narrative, and some of them are more a Bit listing. So that also changes kind of the pace and rhythm as you go. And I felt like for something that spreads across the whole book, there has to be some variation, but you know, just for the sake of interest and to kind of keep the reader going whether or not they read it in one sitting or not. But that was part of that. And I think it felt natural to me, as well as the writer to have that variation. Like, kind of a little space to have a breath, some white space, some shorter lines before kind of going into some of those longer lines. And some of that. A lot of that was definitely refined during the editing process. I also. I moved things around, you know, in different spots. Sections that were near the end, maybe went near the beginning to kind of create the rhythm or the narrative feel that I wanted it to have.

[Holly Gattery]

I love that answer, and I love it because if I ever do try to write a longer poem, so, like, for me, that will be like four pages. Not consider myself a master, but still, it invites play. It. The sense of play and. And not feeling. While there is definitely a structure, but. But not letting the structure suffocate you, there's room to have fun and to play and to incorporate different approaches, even within a structure of couplets. And, I mean, like I said, I think that's. It speaks to your ability to do that. It was. Like I said, I was way into the book before. I'm like, these are couplets. Maybe. Maybe it's just a lack of observation on my part, but I really wasn't thinking about it going in. My final question for you is a question I ask all my guests, and you can feel free to say nothing. Holly, the answer to that question is nothing. But I'm wondering what you're working on now.

[Jamie Forsyth]

Oh, yeah, no, I can speak to that. And not to say that I've been super productive at this moment, but, yeah, I kind of mentioned earlier, I am working on short fiction, and I've been working on that for a couple of years. And they're individual short stories. Overarching themes are kind of yet to be determined, but I've been really enjoying that and also enjoying being in a space with a project where, just like you said, you can kind of play and explore, experiment a bit. So I'm not really sure where those are going, but I've shared them with kind of writer friends, and they may go nowhere, but that's kind of what I'm focused on right now. I found when I was in the voice of this book, I wasn't really able to write other poetry. So it's been a while since I wrote just a standalone short poem, so I'm hoping those will come back at some point as well.

[Holly Gattery]

Well, I always love prose written by poets. Or. Yeah, I think it has to be in that order for me. It can't be poetry written by prose writers. It has to be. I mean, although I don't want to seem like a canonical snob about the whole thing. I want more people to write poetry and read poetry in general, so I'm not be too fussed about the order there. But I, I invariably just love it because there's such a gorgeous distillation of language. Like, I've never seen a poet who writes prose commit what I consider to be the cardinal sin of giving me like a three page description of a hilltop. It's like. No, I, I don't, I don't need this much description of landscape.

[Jamie Forsyth]

You're not even the hill. Just the hilltop.

[Holly Gattery]

Just the hilltop. I mean, prose writers are capable of some incredibly sustained landscape description, but I would argue is unnecessary. Um, but I guess there's a, there's a type of person who enjoys that kind of thing. Unless you're Nan Shepard or PK Paige or PT Down. Sorry, I'm not particularly interested in it. They could, they, they have a pass for me because they can do it really well. But anyway, I really look forward to reading the short fiction. Not if it's out, but when it's out. No prep, no pressure.

[Jamie Forsyth]

Jamie.

[Holly Gattery]

Of course, just, you know, no, no pressure, but also pressure Publishing. Thank you so much for joining me today to talk about your phenomenal long poem Yield, which everyone you can get wherever books are bought and borrowed. It's published by Hamilton's award winning Press, Walzack and Wynn. And Jamie, again, thank you so much for speaking with me today.

[Jamie Forsyth]

Thank you, Holly. It was really nice to chat with you. Thank you for listening to this episode of the New Books Network. We are an academic podcast network with the mission of public education. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend and rate us on your preferred podcast platform. You can browse all of our episodes on our website, newbooksnetwork.com Connect with us on Instagram and BlueSky with the handle ew booksnetwork and subscribe to our weekly Substack newsletter at newbooksnetwork.substack.com to get episode recommendations straight to your inbox.