Raoul Fernandes
Biography
Raoul Fernandes (he/him) lives with his wife, two sons, and orange tabby on the traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations (Vancouver, BC). His first collection of poems, Transmitter and Receiver (Nightwood Editions, 2015) won the Dorothy Livesay Award and the Debut-litzer Award for Poetry in 2016. He is the Poetry Editor for EVENT Magazine and helps run the Dead Poets Reading Series. He works in public libraries in Vancouver.
Micro-interview
I did not read that much poetry in high school, even though I wrote a lot. As a teenager I was deeply affected by the lyrics in songs of bands I really liked: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, REM. I felt so much power in the words and wanted to write poems that had that kind of power.
I started writing as a teenager, mostly as a way to sort out my noisy feelings and thoughts. But I realized I was also making something beautiful, and knew very early that I wanted to do this for the rest of my life. I probably thought of myself as a poet, but I didn't feel comfortable introducing myself as one until a decade later.
I've always liked William Carlos Williams' idea of a poem being a "machine made of words." So a poet's job is to make these beautiful strange machines that can communicate what is impossible to communicate in any other form.
We Lived Happily during the War by Ilya Kaminksy. I love Ilya's work. Deaf Republic is one of my favourite books of recent memory.
