ARE POEMS 'INSPIRED' OR MAINLY THE WORK OF CRAFT?

I have a host/parasite relationship to my poems, fussing over inspiration until, oftentimes, it decomposes into ruins: host poems. From that non-process, new poems, unique, sprout from the loam, subsuming what 'nutrients' exist and become my better poems. They arrive, and within ten drafts I'm happy.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN POETRY AND PROSE?

Poetry is writing in 3D, prose is 2D; both present equal difficulty. As Rothko with colour, unlike Wyeth with barns or windowpanes, poetry needn't be fettered to narrative architecture (though ample great poetry is). Poetry can dial in to aeons of lexicon and syntax, warp idiom and access definitions with enormous breadth, great efficacy, and in minute economy. Conversations with Amanda Stewart have helped me with this.

WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES ARE IDEAL FOR WRITING POETRY?

I have a 9–5 job that has nothing to do with my or anybody else's writing – I commute four hours per day for it. I am a father, spouse, and mortgage holder. I am director of Cordite Publishing, editor of its journal, and publisher of its books. If I have had ideal circumstances, I've not had the time to remember them. Collections by Anne Kennedy, Lisa Gorton, and John Wilkinson have cornered me back into writing, thankfully.

WHICH POET WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO TALK TO – AND WHY?

Rewinding to the early 1980s and talking with Grandmaster Flash, a D&M with Lionel Fogarty, chilling with Kurt Schwitters, being the catgut in Chet Baker, and Norwegian poet Jan Erik Vold's orchestration of boozers: each would reprogram my Moog.

WHAT DO POETS NEED MOST: SOLITUDE OR A COTERIE?

I was reared, in part, on Wild Horse Island State Park within The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation, Montana, nearly three kilometres offshore (into Flathead Lake) and with only log walls, candles, and a hand water pump dividing my family from tomorrow and wilderness. That gave me pristine solitude, and it taught me how to not be afraid of myself. Without that, I don't think I'd have any inkling how to negotiate a coterie.

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM REVIEWS OF YOUR WORK?

By now, I've learned that it's a good idea to keep writing, but the more years I wade into mine, the more I feel like some wispy sheet of typing paper in an origami typhoon. I may wind up bestowed the titular blessing of 'world's oddest polygon', but likely not much else. Criticism is a mandatory smog, reviews are good and bad breeze.

IF PLATO ALLOWED YOU TO KEEP ONE POEM OR POETRY COLLECTION IN HIS REPUBLIC, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

Mobile by Michel Butor, published as an experimental novel, really a 200-page poem.

DO YOU HAVE A FAVOURITE LINE OF POETRY (OR COUPLET)?

'A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home. / I have wasted my life.' James Wright's immediate and rapacious second line double-backs upon the first flawlessly.

IS POETRY GENERALLY APPRECIATED BY THE READING PUBLIC?

I've found that, as the ill-begotten misconceptions that 'jazz' and 'sushi' – perceived scions of some inaccessible exoticism – occasionally elicit, so too does 'poetry' cause a wedge of the public to seize up and quit when mentioned. While poetry's not resolutely un-appreciated, there is a tendency for that public vision to telescope straight down into disdain or terror, bypassing an actual fondness for hip-hop, Pooh Bear, or teriyaki chicken maki rolls. Lyric, sound, and taste will always have mass and niche appeal, if filed under different titles.

KENT MACCARTER is a writer and editor living in Castlemaine. He is the author of three poetry collections – In the Hungry Middle of Here (Transit Lounge, 2009), Ribosome Spreadsheet (Picaro, 2011) and Sputnik's Cousin (Transit Lounge, 2014). He also edited of Joyful Strains: Making Australia Home (Affirm Press, 2013), a non-fiction collection of diasporic memoir. He is Managing Editor of Cordite Poetry Review.