Featured Writer: Callista Markotich
On creating space to write and writing advice.
Welcome to Women Writing, a biweekly interview series about creative practices. In this week’s feature, Callista shares how she maintains a writing routine. Do you have a writing routine? What does it look like for you? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.
About the author…
Callista Markotich, retired Superintendent of Education in Eastern Ontario, lives and writes gratefully on the shore of Lake Ontario, traditional territory of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee nation, in Kingston Ontario, with her husband Don of fifty-nine years, close to her two daughters and son and six of her seven grandchildren. Her poems appear in numerous Canadian reviews and quarterlies from Arc through Vallum, from Vancouver BC to Saint John’s NL and in several American and British journals. Her poetry has received first and second place awards and a placement in the League of Canadian Poets Poem in Your Pocket campaign. It has been short-listed and Honorably Mentioned in Canadian contests and nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the National Magazine Awards. She is a contributing editor for Arc Poetry. Callista’s first collection, Wrap in a Big White Towel was published in 2024 by Frontenac House.
On a writing routine …
I'm not unaware of the enormous advantage of being retired from another work life, and have huge admiration for young women who have so many more calls on their time than I, and still, they write! I go to my desk every morning unless we are taking a day trip or otherwise travelling. Morning is wonderful for me. if I have something exhilarating happening, like a draft, or a revision or submission, I often go back to it in the afternoon, ‘til maybe three o'clock. After that, I'm finished. If something occurs to me, even in the midnight hour or if I'm out walking, I enter it in Notes on my Phone—sometimes those snippets are surprising!
On writing spaces …
I am so fortunate to have my own place. It was an upstairs bedroom, but we hauled out the furniture and put in a wall of bookshelves and a really big desk. I love it here. Sometimes I work on a draft or revision in the car, or sitting in bed, but this room is the place where it happens for me. I feel like whatever’s brewing, it needs to get into my room to be rolled around and played with—that happens here; I keep my laptop here and that’s how I write. I do have some of my favourite artefacts there, and there’ll be a skylight installed this summer, because it is on the northwest corner of the house and I think the light will just be that over-the-top extra pleasure. As for music, I don’t really combine that with writing; I love music, really love it! But for me it is a separate activity.
On writing communities …
I belong to a weekly face-to face “group,” with one other poet—an unusually small group, but it suits us well. We have such a bond of trust that make it possible to go very deeply into our work, and we have time to discuss every aspect of each other’s work—even technical things, like line endings, form, poetic device, diction. We start every session with an exploration of another poet’s work. We each bring a piece to be read and “study.” We actually have a third member, but she is in the middle of a demanding part of her life/work and at this point, she is an honorary member, and makes a cameo from time to time. I also belong to an expansive Zoom group made up of people who have attended the same workshops over time. We have great meetings every second week in the evening. There’s always at least a critical mass, people come when they can. Everyone who brings something to read will eventually read, and we have lively, friendly helpful meetings.
“Whatever you're writing about, go deep. If it's a memory, go back there! What were you feeling? There must have been something to make you want to write the piece—go there honestly and see if that's the poem. Oh, and read so much poetry! Glut on it.”
On challenges …
Honestly, no. But I began this practice very late in life, our children were adults, half of our grandchildren were adults too, and I had been retired for many years when I began a life as a writer. It happened when my sister died—which became this transformative event, for me, I began to work on poetry after years of just toying with it as an vague idea.
On the best writing advice …
OMG, so many stand out! Here's one: a poet I admire told me that there should be in every poem something to "break the heart," some duende. And I extrapolate, if it is the rare poem which has nothing to do with the heart, then at least an arousal of emotion, somewhere in the piece, a feeling of surrender to something emotive—I suppose it could be humour—touching the heart.
On the worst writing advice …
Well, I don't think I've ever received really terrible advice, but there are differing views expressed about elements of poetry, so it could be acknowledged, really, how little is firmly carved in stone where poetry is concerned? There is so much various possibility in every step of the process and every pursuit of style and substance.
On advice from personal experiences …
Whatever you're writing about, go deep. if it's a memory, go back there! What were you feeling? There must have been something to make you want to write the piece—go there honestly and see if that's the poem. Oh, and read so much poetry! Glut on it.
On rekindling creativity …
I like to walk, and sometimes at the draft stage, I deliberately walk and think. if something comes to me, I put it in my notes. To begin a new piece, something has usually twigged me. Sometimes it is a phrase or a descriptive passage from a book I'm reading; once in a while it's something that someone has talked to me about, perhaps in a way I'd not thought about before. Recent example, a soul, required to leave the body when a person dies. I hadn't ever spent time thinking about that.
On a recent publication …
My most recent publication was an Honourably Mentioned poem in Pulp Literature's Kingfisher Poetry Contest, and now, I am submitting poems from a collection that I have submitted, and find submitting to be really the least fun part of the enterprise. I think drafting new poems is much more exciting.
Callista’s online spaces …
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Happy writing!
I am in the thick of young kids and activities and squeezing in time to write between it all, trying not to feel guilty. This “I began to work on poetry after years of just toying with it as a vague idea” gives me such hope.
It really resonated to hear how she started to work on poetry after the death of her sister. My brain doesn’t always want me to go deep but I will keep gently prodding …