Nikki Reimer
Nikki Reimer lives on the traditional territories of the people of the Treaty 7 region in Southern Alberta. She writes poetry, essays and criticism, organizes in community, yells on the internet, and makes digital art. Her published books are DOWNVERSE and [sic]; My Heart is a Rose Manhattan is forthcoming from Talonbooks. Her creative and non-fiction work has appeared on stages, billboards, public art exhibits, pop-up bistro menus, and in various magazines, journals and anthologies. Reimer explores found and remixed methods for generating material, including n+1 and blackout methods. She writes primarily in free verse, and writes poetry on feminist issues, urban life, loss and grief, politics, and other heavy subjects, though her work is also at times darkly funny and absurd.
I read poetry in high school, and used to inscribe my favourite song lyrics in my exercise books, and one particularly punk pair of jeans. My very favourite poem from late adolescence is Frank O’Hara’s “Song (Is it Dirty),” which made it’s way into my first book of poetry as an epigraph. O'Hara's tone is both exulting and blunt, poetic, but anti-whimsical. "That's not a thought, that's soot." The city is dirty, and we love it.
I’ve been writing poetry since I was a child, and started thinking of myself as a poet when I was in high school.
A poet’s job is to challenge mainstream culture’s definition of the world, to explore the world as they see it, and to define new possible worlds.
“Trust Fund Witches” by Emma Healey. I love the assonance, alliteration, sensual glittery imagery. The scene Healey weaves is as gritty as O'Hara's odes to New York, but Healey reminds us about the capital that underpins bohemian luxury. These witches have "glittering auras," they're fashionably lo-fi, but with wealth that allows them to move through walls. Who belongs? Who owns? Who stays?