Jim Johnstone

1978

Photo credit

Erica Smith

Biography

Jim Johnstone is a Toronto-based poet, editor, and critic. He is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently Infinity Network (Véhicule Press, 2022) and The King of Terrors (Coach House Books, 2023). His poetry has appeared internationally in magazines like POETRY, The New York Review of Books, Poetry London, PN Review, The Kenyon Review, and Poetry Northwest, and he has won several awards including the the National Magazine Award Gold Medal in Poetry, the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize, the Bliss Carman Award, the Robin Blaser Award, and a CBC Literary Award. Johnstone has written multiple critical texts, notably Write, Print, Fold, and Staple: On Poetry and Micropress in Canada (Gaspereau Press, 2023), and Bait & Switch: Essays, Reviews, Interviews and Views on Canadian Poetry (Porcupine's Quill, 2024). Currently, he curates the Anstruther Books imprint at Palimpsest Press, where he published The Next Wave: An Anthology of 21st Canadian Poetry in 2018.

Micro-interview

Did you read poetry when you were in high school? Is there a particular poem that you loved when you were a teenager?

Yes! I discovered my mother's copy of A.J.M. Smith's Modern Canadian Verse when I was in junior high, and that's where I read many of my first poems. By the time I was in high school I was writing poems and song lyrics, but still considered myself, for the most part, a dedicated reader/listener.

Two poems from that time period that sparked my imagination are Margaret Atwood's "This Is a Photograph of Me" and Earle Birney's "Slug in Woods." They're still favourites.

When did you first start writing poetry? And then when did you start thinking of yourself as a poet?

I started writing poetry when I was 14. I didn't think of myself as a poet at the time, and I'm not sure I do now (despite saying so in my biography)—for me, poetry is more of a practice than an identity. If anything, I'd say that I am an apprentice, and that I'm constantly learning what language has to offer. I love poetry, but I'm as humbled by it now, at 47, as I've ever been.

What do you think a poet’s “job” is?

A poet's job is to play. To discover. To find new forms of joy.

If you have a poem in our anthology what inspired you to write it?

I wrote "Heaven" after brain surgery to remove a tennis-ball-sized tumour from my left frontal lobe in 2023. I'm grateful to Dr. Sunit Das and the staff at St. Michael's Hospital for their care, the aftermath of which informs the poem.

Much of "Heaven" is true—I can pass through a metal detector in the airport without setting off an alarm (despite the fact that metal was fused with my skull to patch the hole that was formed during my craniotomy), and I believe that joy can be found anywhere.

If you had to choose one poem to memorize from our anthology, which one would it be?

I have a terrible memory, so anyone who can recite poetry without reading it off a page has my respect.

Marianne Moore's "The Fish" is a fine poem. I read it often, so I'd have a head start if I wanted to memorize it!