We had the pleasure to ask 2024 Prairie Grindstone Prize recipient, Sylvia Legris, about her year so far after receiving the prize.

1. Since receiving the Prairie Grindstone Prize, how have you been spending your days? Do you care to share what you are working on?

Honestly, I spent way more time than is healthy obsessively following the US election campaign. Now, since the election, I’m trying not to succumb to complete despair. I’m working on the same poetry collection I’ve been working on for well over a year, titled Sleep Gate. This summer I abandoned many poems, 16-months’ worth, concluding that they were transitional pieces (i.e., ones trying to move from one collection to another) and not working to my satisfaction. I started again, incorporating bits and pieces from the abandoned poems, and I think I finally hit the tone I was aiming for. That said, my confidence goes up and down by the hour. My brilliant stanza at noon is a piece of shit by suppertime!

2. Will your readers be surprised with any departures from your previous work?

I always feel like it’s presumptuous to imagine I do have readers. On the rare occasion when I encounter someone (outside a literary event, that is) who has read my work or who has heard that I’m a poet, I’m always astounded. I don’t write with a reader in mind—other than myself. My goal has always been, and continues to be, to keep moving forward, to challenge myself in the work, to depart, I hope, from what I’ve done previously. When I write something that surprises me (“That came from me? Where did that come from?”) … well, that’s the goal. The most exciting artists in any discipline are those whose work keeps evolving, who aren’t afraid to let their work take them in different directions. Departures, I think, are the whole point.

3. What is one of the most rewarding aspects of being a poet, for you personally?

Not having a boss—ha! The writing is the one place where I feel like I have some semblance of control. I can do what I want, I can write as many bad poems, make as much of a mess, as is necessary to get to the poem that works, and nobody gets to see or evaluate or critique those dud-poems except me. In the end, the only assessment of my work that matters is my own.

4. Is there a piece of your work that you feel especially connected to, or one that you feel represents your voice most authentically?

I don’t really know what is meant by one’s “authentic voice.” I just write the way I write. I know in my gut—and ear—when something I write is working, and I try my best to pay attention to that. There are places in each of my books where I think I’ve figured out something new, but I don’t know if I’d be able to articulate what exactly that something new is. Usually these are small “breakthrough” moments for me, moments that indicate that I’m on the right track in a project, or that I’ve jumped over my own ever-heightening bar. Moments where the language and music seem to coalesce in exactly the way they were meant to. In Garden Physic, for example, the ten-part poem “The Garden Body: A Florilegium” was one of these breakthroughs; this sequence felt like the core of the book and after it, everything else fell into place. With The Principle of Rapid Peering, this small breakthrough came once I figured out the shape of “The Walk,” the long poem in the second section.

5. What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? Or what are you exploring?

I wonder whether any of the truly important questions have answers. I think in my writing I’m still trying to figure out what the questions are.

6. Is there anything else you wish to share about your writing or your writing life after being recognized for your work through this prize?

There’s a bit of a mythology or romantic notion around writers’ lives, i.e., that their lives are exciting. Like many writers, if my life is even remotely interesting, it is more so on the page than off.