SOURCE: “Thomas Kinsella,” in The Poet Speaks: Interviews with Contemporary Poets, edited by Peter Orr, Barnes and Noble, 1966, pp. 105-9.

In the following interview, originally conducted 24 September 1962, Kinsella discusses his beginnings as a poet, his thematic concerns and literary influences, and the process of artistic creation.

[Orr]: Mr. Kinsella, can you recall what started you writing poetry? Was there any one thing?

[Kinsella]: No thing: one slight feeling of curiosity to see whether the thing could actually be done. The system of education under which I laboured for most of my adolescence never suggested to me that the writing of poetry was a human activity. Poetry was a literary product. We didn’t understand that human beings in the ordinary course of their lives produced this. It existed in textbooks and it was there to be explored. It struck me as being an interesting experiment to see if...