What are your thoughts about reading your poetry in Cobourg at the POW! Festival?

That's a funny question. How long do you want me to go on? They change day by day. Shall I read that or this. "What's James on about when he wants to have me read children's poetry?" and then I get the idea that he wants me to do something else - like when he says "Eric need not volunteer, he has a lot to do."

I expect a busy weekend but I have no anxiety about that, so not to worry. If I'm slotted in somewhere else I think I will read "The Last Captain," even though the language is a bit more decorative than my present practice and I have a feeling that the sea has neither the charm nor the mythic resonance that it had as little as thirty years ago.

You are now the Poet Laureate Emeritus of the Town of Cobourg. Tell us how you feel about your 12 years service in the post. Also, what words do you have for Cobourg's new Laureate?

That's a question which perhaps is better not asked.

I'd rather keep the the peace.

It began well and then my relationship with the Council abruptly came to an end. I think it is a convenient fiction to say the council forgot about me. That is not so. I was dropped! It's not as shameful or even hurtful as it might seem, being dropped - you have to consider "the dropper." I think the reasons had nothing to do with my ability as a poet, which is a comfort.

I have heard that there was too much of myself in the presentations and I ought to answer that by saying to Cobourg's new Poet Laureate. "Have a care that you don't take the business too seriously. Don't try too hard. Don't appear to enjoy delivering poetry to the community at the Mayor's levee."

Of course "the dropping" was only from formal town events. I was able to continue writing poems about the town and did so with glee and, what was more important, I was able to have some influence on establishing an environment for poetry in the town. At that time my aims were entirely parochial. What could we do by ourselves and for ourselves; can poetry be written here by us and for us? It could, it was and some of it was very good.

A strong sub-theme of this year's festival is Poets Laureate, past and present, which exists in part to introduce the new Laureate to the public but also in part to allow you the opportunity to properly bid adieu to the role. What thoughts do you have about meeting and reading with these other Laureates during our POW! Festival?

I'm very pleased. They are poets, I'm an amateur. That is not necessarily a lower order, it's just different way of being.

At POW!, do you plan to read pieces from your book "The Man in the Hat"?

I'm not sure. If I read children's poems, there is one piece which will be taken from that collection but that is incidental. The rest will not be.

Do you plan to read new, unpublished work?

I have some of that and I can read it, if it fits the program. "The Last Captain" which is a sequential set of poems has not made an appearance in public for several years and it might be given a new airing.

How would you describe your poetry?

Poems about my own feelings are rare, though not entirely absent. I'm more at home dealing with a subject. I don't subscribe to the view that a poem is about a poem. I think it's about something else and cleverly put. No wasted words, on the one hand - not too dense, on the other - especially if it is a poem that is intended to be presented orally. I am not setting rules here, just describing what I think I do. I am more inclined to think of the sound of what I am writing than the looks of it. So, I'm generally conservative about grammatical structure. I have been described as an ironist and I'm quite comfortable with that. In fact, when I look at my most substantial piece of writing, "The Twelve Days of the Infanta," I see it is a pretense which can only be described as ironic. When I see it performed I find myself laughing at my own jokes. I think I should tell myself more of them.

When did you start writing poetry and what prompted it?

I was at sea during the war. Poetry about green fields was an escape and I read a lot of it. I wrote a few poems. Not surprisingly, given the circumstances, it was Georgian pastoral stuff. Thankfully it did not survive the fortunes of war. Later in life I found myself in the company of poets and something might have rubbed off.

How did you come to be appointed Poet Laureate? You held the post longer than almost all others in any locality in Canada. What do you think about that?

I had been reading with friends at coffee houses and it was suggested to Mayor Chalovitch that I might become a minor adornment in the town's 1998 Heritage Days celebrations. The Mayor consulted the coordinator of Community Services, who was also a poet and he agreed. I read a poem to the council to prove that I could do it and that was all there was to the business.

What inspires you to put pen to paper / fingers to keyboard?

At the moment it is the need to tidy up all the half-written pieces that are there. Then there is always the sense of audience - trying to say something that I think is worth saying - quaint or provocative, something new.The audience is some kind of spiritual match; intellectual would be too narrow here, it's different from that.

Can you describe (a little) your writing process in creating a new poem?

Waking up in the night with an idea. Thinking about it and finding in the morning that it is not as easily executed as it seemed at first. Then, in the cold light of day, to work over the idea. If I don't let it drop away, the idea will stay with me and new ideas and promptings come unsought. If I let myself be distracted, I will find it in the computer months later and think "Did I write that!" The original impulse is then cold and continuation can be just plodding.

The POW! Festival is built on the notion that poetry should not be relegated to an existence as "a niche art form" that the average person doesn't care about. How do you respond to that?

There are a lot of things the average person does not care about that are more important. I would like people to like poetry more than they do but there is the question of what sort are they to like. My kind, of course. I would be quite distressed if people started to get enthusiastic about the kind of poetry that I dislike. That would put me out on a limb and we all like the companionship of prejudice.