Salem Paige (they/them) is a transgender poet and designer based on Algonquin Anishinaabe territory (so-called Ottawa, Ontario). Their works revolve around the exploration of identity and discomfort through narrative universes where Nature and technology intertwine, and can be found in their collection of poetry, The Third Self (2023, Sunday Mornings at the River Press) and their chapbook to grow roots (2023, bottlecap press), as well as in Solarpunk literary magazine, Beyond Words magazine, STREETCAKE magazine, Ariel Chart Literary Journal, BiPan magazine, and many others. They have previously been nominated for Best of the Net, shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize, and longlisted for the ROOM Poetry Prize.
Salem Paige reads in Ottawa on Thursday, March 27 as part of VERSeFest 2025.
Jen Jakob: There is so much good to say about The Third Self relating to the creative process. Something I love about it is that it is a product of the creative process, breaking its own fourth wall in a sense. What’s more, you dedicated the collection to someone who said you would never be published, and you have more than surpassed that accomplishment. I suppose I want to start at the end by asking, how did you arrive at the end of The Third Self? At what point did you say, “okay, I’m satisfied with this project, time to publish”? When is a creative project “complete” to you?
Salem Paige: I've talked about this before with the third self and my approach to collections in general. I don't tend to have a collection idea and then write a bunch of poems for it; I tend to write poems throughout my life and then eventually find through lines with those existing poems and make a collection from that. So it was more that I realized I had all of these poems about writing and about being creative and about being stuck as a creative, and that I could bring them all together into a collection..
And then once I had brought together all the poems that I had, it was a matter of going through them and picking out what works; what fits with this idea that I have for what the collection could be. And then cutting out what doesn’t work with the “story” I was trying to tell. I did wind up writing a few to kind of fill some of the “narrative gaps” that were there. And once I felt that it was complete, that it flowed and was no jump from one poem to another, that they that they all connected to the last connected to the next, did I consider it finished. Not to say that the collection is narrative, but I think there is kind of a bit of a story to it of the excitement—the wanting and needing—then the drop down into the doubt, and the coming back to excitement that is so essential to being creative.
So, I think it was complete once it was telling the story that I wanted it to tell. All the way through. Does that make sense?
JJ: Absolutely. I think it's cool to hear that you were writing these poems before you had the finished product in mind. Where were these poems coming from? Were you writing them out of frustration or like, was it just like a notes-app-ranting?
SP: Definitely out of frustration. I, for some reason, am so averse to notes app poetry, because I just don't feel like it comes out of me the right way when it's on my phone. I either write by hand or type on a computer.
Yeah, these poems definitely came out of frustration. You know when you sit down and you're like, “I'm going to write; I want to write. I'm in the mood to write. I have my candle lit and my coffee,” and then you sit down and there's nothing. And I think [The Third Self] came out of feeling the call to write and not being able to. It was kind of the root of a lot of these poems, or, you know, some of them. And seeing other people who are writing and feeling, “oh, why am I not doing that?”
So, I think a lot of it came from— I don't want to say “bad emotions,” —but taking these emotions that could have been negative and writing something with them. Instead of letting them stop me from writing.
JJ: The book’s titular inspiration comes from Mary Oliver’s essay “Of Power and Time” and her concept of “the third self,” which you define in the foreword as “a vessel through which we can inhabit another level of consciousness, the state in which we create and are inspired and make the art that speaks.” You also mention that sometimes the concept of the third self, the “inner world,” is helpful to your creative process, and other times it’s a hindrance. What were some of the challenges you faced with your own third self when creating this collection? Did you get too deep into your own “inner world?” I can imagine the process was somewhat paradoxical, writing about writing and writers’ block.
SP: I think the biggest frustrations I have with the “third self” is that you can't control it. It's something that comes and goes. A lot of my poems outside of this collection come from letting it happen and not overthinking what I’m writing, not overthinking the art that I’m making and just letting it flow out of me, and then I clean it up later. Another struggle is that the desire to write and tapping into the act of writing are not always two things that you get at the same time. I, myself, am in that third self the most when I'm falling asleep or when my brain is in a liminal, transitional state.
JJ: Which is inconvenient
sometimes!
SP: Right? Because it's like, if I want to write a poem, I guess I need to go have a nap! It's definitely a strange process. But that's just kind of what works for me for getting in the zone, and then you've got to capitalize on that moment and do as much as you can in that period. Or not. Sometimes it's good to be in that inner world and not put it on the page and rather just think things through and play with ideas in your brain before they're fully fleshed out.
JJ: I can absolutely relate to the frustration of that inner world and “third self” being both a subconscious and conscious state at the same time. Like, you want it to be something that you're actively working with, but then sometimes it's almost serendipitous in the way that it just happens, and you have to, like you said, capitalize on that. And it makes me think of capitalistic productivity, not to go on a total tangent. But productivity in the world that we live in is so focused on schedules and meetings and making dedicated time, whereas sometimes the best inspiration comes from shower thoughts or thoughts that you have right before you go to bed right after you wake up. You always have to be ready to write.
SP: You can't tell your
creativity to be ready at 10 A.M on Saturday because it’s convenient.
JJ: So, you’ve also published chapbooks, including to grow roots (2023) and TAKE MY BLEEDING HEART (2022). How did The Third Self differ from those projects? Do you feel like one or the others is a better representation of yourself as a poet?
SP: It was different in that in a chapbook, you have so much less time to tell the story; each poem needs to serve multiple purposes in the storytelling. Whereas with The Third Self, because it was longer, each poem could be its own thing. And that's all it represented within the greater picture, right? I found I could get more detail with the general themes with a bigger collection. And on top of that, I was able to have multiple poems that discuss the same topic from different perspectives. You can deep dive with a collection like The Third Self. But as far as what represents my work best? I think The Third Self was such a strange part of my work because it didn’t build within the world that I write my typical poems in. And it didn’t create the non-reality-based moments which a lot of my work does. And The Third Self is so much more literal and so much more grounded in reality than a lot of my work. While I think a lot of the themes are relevant to my other work, I don't think it's necessarily as representative of myself and my body of work as my chapbooks, especially to grow roots.
to grow roots covers so many themes of nature and connection, and identity. Which, of course, The Third Self deals with identity. But, to grow roots approaches it a lot closer to the way the majority of my poems do. I think it gets more to the roots (no pun intended) of my identity – the collection explores where my identity comes from, and what it relies on. The Third Self is so much about my identity as a writer, but my identity is so much more than that – though while writing it, my identity definitely relied a lot on my writing. Maybe too much. I think I’m able to actually delve into my identity a lot more when I talk about my connection to the world around me, and the nature, and the people I am so fortunate to know. My other works do a lot of the same – exploring the connection of my identity to, and how it interacts with, external factors. Whereas The Third Self is a veering away from my typical approach, and addresses the experience of being a writer trying to achieve the feelings of belonging and connection that I think I'm always trying to achieve with most of my work outside of the collection.
JJ: Your poetry is very much about your bodily/spiritual/mental experiences. And I think you see that in The Third Self, but The Third Self also feels almost like a meditation rather than experiencing those things actively. I wonder, do you find that it was more comfortable to write about something that was slightly more removed from more personal experiences in your life? Obviously, writing is usually very personal, But, like, do you feel that you wear your heart on your sleeve a little bit more with your chapbooks and other poetry?
SP: I think so, yeah. The Third Self is definitely a little less personal, like you're watching it happen from the outside looking in.
JJ: A line that struck me was in your non-poem titled “THIS IS NOT A POEM; THIS IS A LIST OF MY GREED:” It reads, “THE COMFORT OF BEING KNOWN WITHOUT / THE BURN OF BEING DISLIKED” How does rejection play into your own creative process?
SP: Great question! Yeah, rejection is...something that I have more recently, in the past couple years, been trying to use as fuel rather than a roadblock. I think it's really easy to see rejection and think, “I must be doing bad and I need to stop.” For a while, I was really trying to oversaturate myself with rejection to get used to it. I was sending my workout so much that it became like a muscle memory of “click-click-click-send,” and then I would just get rejections all the time. And I think I get excited for it now, less so for my creative process and more for the community building element of rejection which sounds weird out of context, but being able to share with other people, “Look, I got rejected!” as a good thing. And then people respond, “Oh my God, awesome, let’s be happy that someone got back to us!” Every time I get a rejection now I’m excited. I mean, I share them on my Instagram stories; I do a “rejection of the day,” which isn’t every day. But, just being able to celebrate rejections has stopped them from holding me back.
I feel like I’ve always had a weird relationship with rejection because I got used to it, even when I was younger. I was rejected from the writing program at Canterbury [High School]. And I think that first rejection hit me so hard. And it did deter me from writing for a while, and when I came back around to it, I realized rejection isn’t a bad thing, it shouldn’t make you stop writing. It's just another speed bump. Just another part of the process.
JJ: Absolutely! I don't know if it motivates me per se, but it's definitely something that I've gotten more used to. I'm always inspired by seeing you post about rejections. I had a professor once tell me that he knew somebody who tried to work towards a yearly rejection goal. It was something like, they wanted to get rejected a hundred times in a year. The first time I heard that it just completely rewired the way I thought about rejections.
Because I think, as creatives and as writers, we often have this idea that we have to create our magnum opus, and everything has to be a masterpiece. I would love to know, how do you feel about the word “masterpiece?”
SP: I don’t like the word at all. When someone says something is a masterpiece, it’s subjective and arbitrary. I think, when we think of a “masterpiece,” we think about a great artist and their accomplishments. We say, Van Gogh and his masterpiece “Starry Night,” right? But there's no way Van Gogh saw Starry Night as his masterpiece, and it's all been arbitrarily decided by people who later gave it that title.
So, as someone who is making art, at this point, a few years out from writing the book, I think I've reached the point where I'm like, “screw a masterpiece.” I don't need a masterpiece. I'm just gonna keep writing, and if someone later thinks, “this is a masterpiece,” that’s great, but that's not for me to decide.
JJ: Maybe “masterpieces” mean more to the people who are assigning that value rather than the person who actually made them. Perhaps it’s more about giving value to the people who are perceiving it rather than the glory of having made it.
Your poems vary in length and style throughout the collection, some only consisting of two lines. With your background in publishing poetry on Instagram, I assume you’re familiar with the controversial rise of “Instapoetry,” most notably by poets like Rupi Kaur and Atticus. What is your opinion on the value of micro poems? How do they play into your own creative process?
SP: I think there is value in micro poetry. It makes poetry a lot more accessible. A lot of people might be really intimidated by long-form, “formal” poetry and by long, flowery, classic poetry.They might think, “I couldn't do poetry.” But then they read a poem that's five lines on Instagram, and it really resonates with them, and suddenly they’re interested in poetry.
I didn't really dive all the way into poetry until I read Rupi Kaur. That kind of poetry helped me personally realize I could write poetry and there was a space for doing poetry on a smaller scale to try things out. And while I believe you can't get as deep into an idea or a concept with micro poetry or Instapoetry, I think of it as a valuable starting point, or as an entry point into poetry. I think it's really valuable especially when everything right now is so fast and everything is bite size, and our brains are like goldfish brains and we can barely sit through a 15 second Tik Tok,
I also feel there's value in saying as much as you can with as few words as possible. Because there are very short poems out there that, while they might not dive deep into a topic, they completely reshape how the reader thinks about something, or they can change someone’s perspective. We need to acknowledge that people love it for a reason. Instapoetry is popular and marketable because people connect with it easily. But, it's one tool among many that we can use to tell our stories.
JJ: I think micro poems are more about resonating than they are about picking apart or exploring “high literary value.”
Let’s talk about imposter syndrome, which is one of the main section topics of your collection. One of the poems that resonated with me the most was “i feel like I should have done something by now.” It reminded me, as a young writer, that the creative process is not only something that can happen in the short-term, but it also can take place over a lifetime. Do you feel like there is a pressure on young people to create as quickly as possible now more than ever? Do you think that pressure contributes to blockages in creativity and inspiration?
SS: Yes! Absolutely yes. I think part of the root of this issue, from my perspective, is technology. We have so much access to see what everyone is doing at every moment, and so we see people who are writing a million things or who are achieving great success at a young age. And even though that's such a tiny percentage of the people achieving that success, we, as young people, resonate the most with other young people. So, we see a young person doing it and we think, “that should be me too.” But I think we're missing the bigger picture, because there are so many other people out there who are publishing their first book much later in life, or who are achieving the things we hope to achieve later than the timeline of what we're witnessing [on social media].
There's definitely a pressure that we are putting on ourselves, seeing all these young people succeeding and comparing ourselves to them. Anything that makes you feel like you're not doing enough can absolutely block creativity. At the same time it can be a great tool for pushing yourself; it's easy to give up on yourself with anything, especially when we see every minute of everyone else’s lives. It's easy to compare ourselves—I think our brains are wired to look at it that way—but we could be celebrating it. We could celebrate other people’s success and be inspired by it, in the same way that we can celebrate rejections because we are being active in the creative process.
JJ: I think comparing yourself can also contribute to burnout by constantly putting the expectation on yourself that you need to be as successful as the thousands of people that you're constantly perceiving online.
SS: Part of it, too, is recognizing that someone else’s success and my success will not look the same. The success of someone else is often based on the things they happen to stumble into. You know, right place, right time, right person, right circumstance. Recognizing that someone else's luck on top of their ability is not a lack of your own ability.
JJ: It has been two years since the debut of this collection. Do you feel as though you’ve changed as a writer since writing The Third Self? Has your creative process changed? What is your current relationship with your “third self?” What have you learned since publishing this book?
SS: I published The Third Self in the middle of a period of so much creation for me, where I was writing constantly. I started slowing down after the book came out, and then I really haven't been writing all that much over the past year.
Recently, I’ve distanced myself a little from writing. The Third Self had so much to do with my identity being so entrenched in being a writer, and I reached a point where I realized that my identity had to be more than that. I need to learn to be more than just my writing. My writing lately has been more focused on an effort to marry writing with my other interests and other parts of my life. Most recently, I’ve been doing a lot of reading and learning about space – my father worked for the Air Force on satellites and monitoring space debris, so it’s always been something in my orbit (pun intended), but I’m only now putting in the time to understand the concepts and the exciting hypotheticals about what could be out there in the universe. I’ve been taking notes when things really strike my interest, and once I have the notes, it’s hard not to turn them into a poem. In this case, I guess the writing is how I process the information.
I also believe that writing is so much more than the individual experience. We, as writers, are here to interact with each other and to learn and grow and build things and be a community. A lot of the writing I'm doing right now is focusing more on connecting.
JJ: It's almost like you're taking all of what you meditated on in The Third Self and are now applying it and just existing through your writing, and sharing your existence with others in the way you know how. Thank you so much for sharing part of your process with us!
