Everyday Myth: An Interview with Terese Mason Pierre
August 11, 2025
“I think we can find the mythological in the everyday; I also think it’s nice to escape to a different reality sometimes.”
Jaclyn Desforges interviews Terese Mason Pierre about her debut collection, Myth.
Terese Mason Pierre (she/her) is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in The Walrus, ROOM, Brick, Quill & Quire, Uncanny, and Fantasy Magazine, among others. Her work has been nominated for the bpNichol Chapbook Award, Best of the Net, the Aurora Award, and the Ignyte Award. She is one of ten winners of the Writers’ Trust Journey Prize, and was named a Writers’ Trust Rising Star. She is the author of Myth, a poetry collection, and the editor of As the Earth Dreams, an anthology of Black Canadian speculative fiction. Terese lives and works in Toronto, Canada.
From the publisher:
Myth, the much-anticipated debut collection from the multi-talented Terese Mason Pierre, weaves between worlds (‘real’ and ‘imaginary’) unearthing the unsettling: our jaded and joyful relationships to land, ancestry, trauma, self, and future. In three movements and two interludes, the poems in Myth move symphonically from tropical islands to barren cities, from lucid dreams to the mysteries of reality, from the sea to the cosmos. A dynamic mix of speculative poetry and ecstatic lyricism, the otherworldly and the sublime, Pierre’s poems never stray too long or too far from the spell of unspoiled nature: “The palm trees nod / at the ocean / the ocean does / what it always does / trusts the moon completely.”
Friends ‘with benefits’ tour the wonders of Grenada’s landscapes; extraterrestrials visit the Caribbean and the locals don’t seem phased; red birds “saunter airily like tourists,” La Diablesse lures helpless suitors to their dooms. This collection asks: How can myths manifest themselves in our daily lives? What do we actually mean when we say we love ourselves and others? And how do we pursue/create futures that honour our truths, histories and legacies?
Your collection weaves between worlds — islands, cities, dreamspace, reality. What inspired this movement between different realms in your poetry?
Whether I’m writing prose or poetry, much of my writing explores similar themes: the natural world and its landscapes, and inter- and intrapersonal relationship. This collection brings more of the former themes to the centre. Island imagery is prominent—sand, sun, ocean, mountains, stars; I think these are beautiful spaces so far away from my everyday life. In regards to urban settings, the work, in some ways, tries to reimagine or de-familiarize everyday sightings. I think we can find the mythological in the everyday; I also think it’s nice to escape to a different reality sometimes.
You’ve mentioned that your poems often appear fully formed after a gestation period—like “small pregnancies.” Could you describe this creative process and how it differs from your approach to writing prose?
Poems spend months in my head before I put pencil to paper. I try to see poetry wherever I go, which is becoming more difficult lately. I want to learn how I can better and more uniquely express ideas, emotions or themes in new ways, so I delay the poem’s translation. When I eventually write the poems down, I have said most, if not all, of what I want to say. With prose, I constantly generate ideas—I write both speculative and literary fiction—so it’s simply a matter of picking an idea and turning it into a story. I am very plot-focused when it comes to prose, and I am not immediately concerned with language; I have so much more space. A similarity, though, is that, in both forms, I want to know where I’m going before I start writing.
How did the experience of putting together a full-length collection differ from your experience writing chapbooks?
I didn’t consider Myth a project. I had been writing these poems for about 3-4 years, and realized I had enough poems for a collection. Because I already write about similar things, it wasn’t difficult to find common themes and a through-line for the book. The work was mainly in ordering the poems. This was also the case for my chapbooks—I was writing a lot back then. Some of the poems in my chapbooks are also in Myth. For my second full-length collection, I’m approaching it as a project, which means I am decidedly writing poems for the express purpose of placing it in this collection.
You have described your writing approach as prioritizing “feeling in content and thinking in form.” Could you elaborate on how this balance manifests in your work?
To me, this means that I write the poem first and play with form later, when I’ve said everything I wanted to say, when I have nothing more to ideate in a first draft. Working the form is part of the editing process for me, if it’s not part of the poem’s concept. I think I’m quite conventional with form, actually, but, for me, I still see these processes as different.
The collection has been described as “amphibious,” moving between elements like water, fire, land, and stars, and so many of your poems are centred around the natural world. Can you talk a little bit about your relationship to nature, and how it influences your work?
My relationship to nature is purely one of adoration. It’s something I respect—something powerful and ever-changing that doesn’t really need humanity. I also think nature is beautiful, and I use its beauty and its metaphor potential in my writing. I am forever writing about the mountains as shields, the ocean as a site of love and strife, the moon as a face, a smudged mirror. I’m not an outdoorsy person, nor was being in nature an activity instilled in me as a child. I just love it.
Your poem “Appeal to the Doppelgänger” uses a contrapuntal form. What attracted you to this particular structure, and what did it allow you to express that a more conventional form might not have?
The poem, “Appeal to the Doppelganger,” is, I think, the best example, in my work, of form and content coming together in an interesting way. Doppelgangers are also called “evil twins,” so I used the contrapuntal form to reflect the idea of two figures, separate and identical, speaking to and around each other. I think it worked really well. I think it’s also my only successful contrapuntal poem.
How has your experience as poetry editor at Augur influenced your own writing process and the themes you explore in Myth?
Working with Augur Magazine allowed me to read, work with, and learn from other amazing speculative poets. I had not been aware of speculative poetry, as a “field,” till around 2019, when I started working more seriously as a poetry editor in that space. SFF communities view and treat poetry differently than traditionally literary communities, so that was an interesting path to walk. In terms of process, working with Augur’s speculative poets has allowed me to ask deeper and more interesting questions about my writing. More practically, I am also more interested in form, and linking form to content.
Do you have a favourite poem in this collection?
I don’t have a favourite poem, but among the ones I really like are: “In Stock Images of the Future, Everything is White,” “Lesson,” “Brink,” “Fishing,” and the title poem, “Myth.”
Are there any prompts you would recommend to writers interested in exploring speculative poetry?
As a writer and an editor, I define speculative poetry in three different ways (or approach it from three different angles)—content, form, and concept. However, to anyone exploring speculative poetry for the first time, I would approach it through content, the same way we treat speculative fiction. Try writing a poem about something overtly speculative—time travel, a love potion, the apocalypse, body-switching, aliens, or a nonhuman persona. I have always found this fun.
Jaclyn Desforges is the queer and neurodivergent author of Danger Flower, winner of the 2022 Hamilton Literary Award for Poetry and one of CBC's picks for the best Canadian poetry of 2021. Selected for the New York Times-featured Lunar Codex Project, Danger Flower is now archived on the moon. Jaclyn is also the author of the picture book Why Are You So Quiet? and has received Canada Council for the Arts support for both her forthcoming short story collection, Weird Babies (The Porcupine's Quill, 2026), and her novel-in-progress, Eyelash Person. A Bread Loaf alumna and RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award winner, Jaclyn teaches creative writing at Wilfrid Laurier University. She lives in Hamilton, Ontario with her partner and daughter.