Niagara poet Eva Tihanyi talks to Emily Cann about about her ninth collection of poetry.

Emily Cann (EC): Circle Tour (Innana, 2023) is divided into three sections:  Outer Circle, Inner Circle and Centre. As we move through the collection, there is a sense that we are moving inward, deeper, perhaps closer to the individual self. How did this structure emerge for you? Were there any poems that surprised you as belonging more to the “outer” or “inner” worlds?

Eva Tihanyi (ET): Once I decided on the three-part structure, I found it relatively easy to put the poems in one section or the other. The more difficult part was the sequencing. I really wanted this book to be more than just a group of poems collected between two covers. I wanted to create flow, especially among the poems in each section. Of course, there’s an overlap for all of us between our inner and outer worlds. Our individual subjective selves react to what’s around us, not just in terms of the immediate environment but also the larger cultural and political climate.

EC: Many of the poems in this collection make strong use of brevity. I am thinking in particular of “Hope,” “Acknowledgement,” and “Poetry.” “Beauty in Isolation” seems to suggest there is artistry and beauty in compression itself. What is your process like for working with poems of this scale? How do you know when you’ve said enough?

ET: This is an interesting question. Although most of my poems in general are not as short as the four you mention above, I tend to write poems that don’t exceed a page. However, there are a number of exceptions to this (such as “Contemplations”), but my long poems are all in numbered sections. I think this structure makes it easier for readers to follow the “thread,” so to speak, of the poem as a whole.   Also, I love a powerful image or a compelling metaphor—that suddenness of meaning that hits you like an unexpected spotlight that comes on and illuminates something specific. I think of “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams or the famous Imagist poem by Ezra Pound, “In a Station of the Metro.” They’re short, but they stay with you. And then there’s Emily Dickinson…

EC: In the final poem of the collection, “Spiral,” you write that “what you find at the centre / is never what you expect.” Did you encounter any moments of discovery yourself as you probed towards the centre of this work? What is the role of discovery and the unexpected in your writing?

ET: Every poem is a discovery, and I mean this literally. A mini journey into the self. Sometimes a mining expedition. Circle Tour is my ninth collection of poetry—I’ve been writing poems since the age of fourteen—and every book has shown me things about myself I would probably not have seen had I not been a poet. As I added poems to Circle Tour, I realized that the passage of time—my own mortality—was very much woven into the fabric of the book. This wasn’t a conscious weaving; it just came to be. And this is one of the gifts that poetry has always given me: the element of surprise.

EC: What do you intend for readers to be left with after the final page?  

ET: A desire to go back and read the book again. I don’t say this flippantly. I hope that Circle Tour, because of its poem order and the relationship of its three sections, invites re-reading.

EC: Are any aspects of the book autobiographical? How do you consciously deal with your intimate material (i.e., experiences—emotional and physical) in a way that avoids the dangers of straight autobiography?  

ET: I’m one of those writers who believes that anything and everything I write has an autobiographical element even if it’s well hidden. I actually believe this is true of all writers whether they admit it or not. A lot of times the autobiographical infusion is subtle, the writer’s self and life experiences informing the work often in unconscious ways.   In the case of Circle Tour the autobiographical aspects are intentionally and blatantly obvious. I do live on a lake, I do have an adult son, my mother did die, etc. However, many of the things I address in the book—aging, finding solace in nature, seeking grace through art are just a few examples—are not foreign to most readers.   I use the pronouns “you” and “we” frequently to emphasize this universality.

EC: What memorable or formative experience around writing springs to mind?  

ET: I had a number of formative experiences as a writer, but I think the single most important one was the good fortune I had in having the high school English teacher I had. I’d just turned fourteen and was in Grade Ten, taking my first ever creative writing class. Jack Clark was the teacher. He recognized something in me early on and fanned the flame. I still have all the poems I wrote in his class with his comments on them. He’s long gone now, of course, but to this day I’d recognize his handwriting anywhere.  

EC: What was the most satisfying aspect of your recently completed work?

ET: Its unity. Its “full circle” quality. I like the way the last poem, “Spiral,” takes you back to the beginning of the book: “Hope” followed immediately by “The Eye Is the First Circle.”   I also like the way every poem fits into the whole.

EC:How is your writing practice informed by a sense of writing to or for others? Do you have an audience in mind when you write?

ET: I don’t have an audience in mind when I’m in the actual process of writing unless I consider my own self an “audience.” At the beginning, each poem is a personal experience. But as a book progresses and grows, I start to recognize how it might connect with others. And of course, I most definitely want to create this connection. If writing was totally for the self only, why would any of us ever publish anything? And this is the joy of all books: one mind reaching out to commune with another.   I came across a quote from Bob Dylan on Facebook this morning: “The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for anyone but inspire them?” This resonated with me.

EC: What emotions do you associate with writing? Or, differently put, how does writing impact your emotional state?

ET: What I feel most when I write—especially poetry—is joy. Absolutely, first and foremost. When I’m not writing, I’m not as happy. I think this has a lot to do with how essential writing has always been to my core self. I taught English in the Ontario community college system for my entire adult life (I retired in 2020), but although I really enjoyed teaching and the banks liked the “college professor” title on my credit applications, I never fully identified with the title. In my mind what always mattered most was the next poem. Writing is not only my way of viewing the world but of experiencing it.

EC: What elements/aspects of writing give you pleasure?  

ET: The magic of language, the nuances and sounds of words. The endless combinations and permutations. A writer’s ability to make meaning. The high of being in that wonderful “flow state” when time ceases to matter, and then that indescribably satisfying moment when the right image comes, the perfect line clicks into place.   I also continue to be in awe of the sheer force contained in books. As Margaret Atwood famously said in her poem “Spelling”: “A word after a word after a word is power.”

Circle Tour (Inanna, 2023) is Eva Tihanyi’s ninth poetry collection. Her previous book, The Largeness of Rescue (Inanna, 2016), garnered a Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. She has also published a short story collection, Truth and Other Fictions (Inanna, 2009). Tihanyi, who lives in the Port Dalhousie neighbourhood of St. Catharines, Ontario, retired in 2020  from teaching at Niagara College and now writes full time. For more information visit her web site: http://www.evatihanyi.com