Poet Maria Giesbrecht on sustaining a creative writing life

Maria Giesbrecht is a Canadian poet whose work explores her Mexican and Mennonite roots. Her writing has appeared in The Literary Review of Canada, Grain, Contemporary Verse 2, San Pedro River Review, and elsewhere.

Poet Maria Giesbrecht

Maria is the winner of the 2025 Jack McCarthy Book Prize, a Best of Net nominee, and the founder of Gather, an international writing community that connects poets worldwide. Her debut collection of poetry is A Little Feral (Write Bloody Publishing, 2026). Born in Durango, Mexico, Maria lives in Toronto, Canada. From confessional roots to surrealist horizons. Maria explores how leaving her Menonite faith shaped her writing, poetry has helped her process grief, and the importance of sustaining a creative writing life.

OCW: What life experiences have shaped your writing style?

MG: Leaving my Mennonite faith has shaped not only my life but also my writing at its core. In many ways, I wrote myself out of that world. Poetry became the container in which I processed the grief of losing my community. When you leave something that has defined you since childhood, there’s both liberation and disorientation. Poetry held both. That period of my life led me toward confessional writing. I was reading a lot of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton at the time. I wanted to put the private on the page.

Now, after many years of therapy and distance from that rupture, my writing is shifting. I’m moving toward more surreal work. I feel a new permission to explore beyond autobiography. I don’t feel as compelled to mine my own life directly. Instead, I’m curious about strangeness, dream logic, metaphor that stretches. I don’t think I could have arrived here without that earlier confessional phase. The excavation of the self came first; imagination followed. One made room for the other.

OCW: Do you use social media to engage readers, writers, or publishers and, if so, which platforms?

MG: I’m mainly on Instagram, and I use Substack occasionally as well. I understand why many writers resist social media. It can flatten complex work, incentivize speed over depth, and become a comparison trap. But I’ve also experienced its genuine gifts. For me, the best part has been the community. Some of my closest writer friends began as Instagram connections. We’ve since met in person, read each other’s manuscripts, shared advice, and supported one another through the long, often lonely process of writing. That kind of organic literary friendship might not have happened without social media. I’m less certain how much publishers actively scout on social platforms, though I imagine some do. Mostly, I see social media as a tool. It can be harnessed for connection, accountability, and conversation, or it can sour quickly if it becomes about metrics and performance. I try to use it to share work I care about, to champion other writers, and to stay in dialogue with a broader literary world.

Sustaining a creative writing life through community and connection

OCW: What advice/guidance would you give to writers?

MG: You don’t have to do this thing alone. Attend book launches. Find or build a writing circle. Show up to open mics, even if you don’t read. The act of writing may happen in a room of one’s own, but a writing life is sustained in community.

There is something clarifying about being in a room full of people who care about sentences. It reminds you that the work matters beyond your own private doubts. Community bolsters the hard times. It sweetens the rejections. It gets you through the inevitable stretches of silence when no one is responding, when nothing feels publishable, when you begin to question whether you ever knew how to do this at all. Other writers normalize that cycle. They lend perspective. They remind you that writing careers are long.

OCW: Do you see generative AI as a threat or benefit to writers?

MG: Definitely not a benefit. Perhaps not a threat either. I might use the word “something-to-avoid-all-together.” There is a confidence that comes with exercising our imagination, our skills, our craft. It’s a muscle that tones when we use it. Like a leg in a cast, if we don’t use it, it atrophies. If we outsource the generative act, we risk dulling the very faculty we’re trying to cultivate. There are also broader ethical and environmental considerations that concern me. But even on a purely artistic level, I believe the value of creative writing lies in the singularity of human perception. The slow forming of a voice. The tension between limitation and invention. I don’t believe generative AI plays a meaningful role in that process.

Encouraging 'a delightful state of play'

OCW: Do you edit as you write, or write and edit later?

MG: I separate the two. First thing in the morning, I write, giving myself permission to start new poems, play on the page, and have fun. Often, it’s just freewriting, without any form. I prioritize this in the morning because I find my brain has its guard down before the world gets to me. As soon as the first email dings, or breakfast needs to be made, I’ve lost that elusive, delightful state of play. In the afternoons, I will revisit what I wrote in the morning and edit. Or I’ll go back to something from a previous day and work on it. I often end up cutting most of what I wrote in the morning. It can take five pages of rambling to uncover one line that feels alive. But that one line is worth it.