M. A. Griffiths was the Guest Poet at the Academy of American Poets website (Poets.org) in August/September 2008. The original URL was http://www.poets.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16688. Due to a technical oversight the original web page is no longer available on their site. The following is a saved copy of the interview.

I first heard the name "Maz" about a year and a half ago here on poets.org in a conversation about the greatest "Internet" poets around. Not surprisingly, I've heard her name many, many times since and I'm quite pleased to have the opportunity to introduce her as our Guest Poet. Despite her gracious humility, I'm confident that the samples she's provided for us justify her place as one of the up-and-coming poets of our time--and not just on the Internet.

Bio:
I was born and grew up in London, but now live in Dorset (Hardy's Wessex). I enjoy writing both free and formal verse, and participating in online poetry boards, where I post with the user-names of Maz or grasshopper, and generally make a nuisance of myself. I edit a small poetry e-zine called WORM archived here: www.poetryworm.comwhich has run to 40 issues so far. My work has appeared in Snakeskin, Crescent Moon Journal, The Eleventh Muse, Mind Mutations, and Mindfire Renewed, amongst others.

Poetics:

I feel I am here under false pretences, as I don't regard myself as a poet, merely as someone who tries to write poems, so my status is definitely: Still Learning Hard.

I did once write (rather pretentiously) that I hoped that with all my poems, whatever else I am trying to communicate, I will communicate some of my delight in language and the magic of words, and that is still true.

It's hard to define poetry precisely,though many have tried, but we certainly recognise it when we read it or hear it. I feel poetry is a special way of using language to create or re-create an experience. I can recall the first time I recognised a poem as poetry. As a child, I appreciated the musicality and mystery of many poems, but when I read 'Arabia', it hit me as a revelation that the 'Arabia' the poet was describing was also a metaphor for poetry itself, even though I didn't know what a metaphor was then.

The division between free and formal verse, as if one is better than the other, bewilders me. Both are poetry. The important distinction is between good poetry and the rest.

The main difference between free verse and formal verse is that when writing formal verse, you know what the form is in advance, but with free verse, each poem has to find its own form. The discipline of a strict form, like a sonnet, can often be extremely liberating for an author.

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Writing poetry.

There are many rules suggested for writing poetry, but the main one for me is this: Don't be boring.

Apart from this, don't be afraid to experiment, and break any other rule. If it works in your poem, use it.

Read lots of good poetry. Play with words. Engage your ear as well as your brain. Have fun.

However, don't be tempted to present a piece of poor prose with line-breaks as a poem. That doesn't work.
I know--I've tried it.

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On Critiquing:

Frankly, very few of us are good at self-critique,as we are too close to our own work. A good poetry workshop is a wonderful resource for an author, offering honest feedback from readers who have a genuine interest in poetry.

I have used quite a few online poetry workshops. The first one I used was one geared to 'soft' critique. Everything was praised and no harsh words
were ever shared. This did wonders for my ego, but I realised it was doing nothing for my writing. So I searched for the toughest workshop I could find, and I have never regretted that decision. If we want to improve our writing, I think we should be prepared to challenge ourselves and our work with tough critiquers.

When critiquing work, I try to read a poem as closely and sympathetically as possible, and to explain where the poem works for me, and where it doesn't.

It's important to be honest when you critique, I feel, and in return, to accept honest comments with good grace when being critiqued.Always take the craft of poetry seriously, but never take yourself too seriously.

By the way, if you comment honestly, you will often stick your neck out, and may sometimes make a fool of yourself. It's a theory of mine that if you don't make a fool of yourself occasionally when critiquing, you're just not doing it properly.

One important rule is never take critique too personally. If you have any poems that you feel so personally involved with that adverse comments
would upset you, then don't post those poems to a public workshop. When you do post poems, adopt a professional attitude about any criticism
you receive. Nothing anyone says about your work changes it in the slightest--only you can do that. So use the comments that you find helpful,
and as for the others, acknowledge with them with courtesy. After all, someone has taken the time and trouble to read and comment on your work.

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Poems:

...........Jerome and a Theory of Nails

Jerome is discussing his mediaeval site, where many nails
have been unearthed. Usually they rust away, he explains.
Just the sharp red sockets remain, ghosts of connection. Metal
was always precious. He bites into the tender waves

of a radicchio heart. Most societies revered metal. Malleable magic.
Makes me think about crosses. Say the crucifixion detail
was short of nails. They must have used great iron buggers.
They drove one through both feet. Chunk. Chunk.

He grates sea-salt meticulously on a cloven tomato.
Say they only used one through both wrists? Hammered it
into the vertical beam above his head . Would that still work?
He'd still be raising himself to expand his ribcase, so

he could breathe. There would still be that strain on the biceps
and intercostals--quite excruciating. I'm sure it would work
as well as open arms. And it would save wood as well as nails.
Jerome, always a keen disciple of conservation.

There is a strange blend of Casaubon and de Sade
about you, I remark. He swallows a slither of Iberico ham
and mouths Thank you through crescent lips. For Eliot or Marquis
or meal, I cannot say. But he dances like a defrocked angel.



(Appeared in 'Stirring')

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Opening a Jar of Dead Sea Mud

The smell of mud and brine. I'm six, awash
with grey and beached by winter scenery,
pinched by the Peckham girl who calls me posh,
and boys who pull live crabs apart to see
me cry. And I am lost in that grim place
once more, coat buttoned up as tight as grief.
Sea scours my nostrils, strict winds sand my face,
the clouds pile steel on steel with no relief.

Sent there to convalesce--my turnkeys, Sisters
of Rome, stone-faced as Colosseum arches--
I served a month in Stalag Kent, nursed blisters
in beetle shoes on two-by-two mute marches.
I close the jar, but nose and throat retain
an after-tang, the salt of swallowed pain.


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The Consuming Angel

My angel is shaped from clouds, a purl
of dove-feathers, the maidenhead of snow
and sugar crystals, but at the core, an engine
turns and churns and steams to propel
his huge benevolence. White and winged
he trundles down the pavements and into shops,
secreting sides of salmon, brie, sheep's heads,
beneath his robes between blessings. A nun
genuflects in his shadow. He turns and smiles
and O the sun spins from the horizon,
gibbous glory blazes out upon the crowd,
the high street is transfigured. Shoppers weep
into their pockets as he passes by,
trailing tailstream prayers and sweetness
like the kiss of an old contagion.

(Appeared in 'Miller's Pond')

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Holes in the News

They put me in a hole and left me
there. You know the hole I mean.
You scour it out each day until
your armpits leak and blood smears
plum across your nose. When I try
to sleep, they megaphone me, pelt
me with pellets of news. You know
the news I mean.

And I know the other holes
where bodies lie, wrapped or bare,
over-wept or dry. They rot away,
but are replaced. Their faces merge
to one, its mouth becomes black sun.
You know the face I mean. Once

forests filled the holes with roots,
grave leaves rained down. Now
trees are felled for news.
On your knees, you worry at it,
dunk your arms to the elbow in suds,
scrub. You know the brush I mean.

There's a new hole scraped for you.
Wipe your forehead with your wrist.
Rest. What was whole is lost.
You know the rest. I mean once
the forests filled. Faces felled
like trees. Like rain.


(Appeared in 'S.C.R' )

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...................The Dancing Bride


When I was six, and dainty-footed, my parents sold me
to a pedlar, to pay for modern goods they craved:
a washing machine to counsel the neighbours,
two televisions to till the garden, and a computer
that pupped keys to all the doors in the world.
I turned and waved, but they slammed the gate.

The pedlar put me on his tray to dance. I spun
like maple seeds. I whirled into cream, into butter,
my breasts were soft pale curds. I melted
into a salty cracker and swallowed myself.
On the seventh day I rose with clouds in my eyes
and sandalwood nipples. I knew my place
on the mountain. I grew like a princess pine.

Resin sweetened at my core and I threaded calling birds
through my needles. The west wind carried me off and
made me his wife. Lightning sheeted our bridal bed
and thunder rocked it seven times seven that night.
He leaves his feather sandals with me, so I can fly.
When he's abroad, I hear the earth whispering
through the wounds men make. When he returns
I hear nothing but his words. Nothing save his words.

I gathered all the tears my mother never shed
and gave them to my husband. I poured them
into the cup of his hands. He rains them on the village
where I was born, and my small brothers and sisters run
into the yard, and tilt their heads, quick-eyed as robins.
Beware of wolves, I whisper to them, beware of wealth.
But my words are lost above the water's mill.

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