I've been meaning to ask you (interviews)

I was such a goody-two-shoes.

I've been meaning to ask Terese Mason Pierre

May 06, 2025

What is your first memory of being creative (writing, art making, etc.)?

My earliest memories of creativity have always involved music. My father would often sing to me, as a child, and sometimes he’d make up lyrics to songs. We had a keyboard, even though no one in the family knew how to play it, but he’d still make up tunes on the keys. I would sing with him, as a toddler and three-year-old. My father would also create lullabies this way. He’d sing me to sleep with, “Eidelweiss,” with different, made-up lyrics—usually my name, and affirmations that he loved me.

What advice would you give to your younger self? Your younger self could be you at any age.

The advice I’d give to my early-adult self (aged 18-21) would be to be a little more adventurous, take more risks. I was such a goody-two-shoes. Despite this, I was already adept at lying to my strict parents. Why not keep it up? Why not push it a little farther? I wished I’d stayed out later, dated more, said yes to more opportunities.

What is the best or worst dream you ever had?

The worst dream I’ve had was about feeling trapped. I had this dream when I was about sixteen. It is the most vivid dream in my memory. At the time I had this dream, I lived in an apartment building with a separate laundry area for the tenants.

In this dream, the laundry was in the basement (not the case in real life). I went downstairs to do the laundry, by myself, and encountered a man with a large stack of magazines. He was sitting on the staircase, and I had to pass him to enter the laundry room. I assumed he was waiting for his laundry. I had never seen this man before, but that was normal with how many people had lived in my building. He was tall—judging by the length of his legs—and white, with a bowl cut. I put my clothes in the washing machine, and he asked if I wanted to read some magazines with him. I declined and left. When I returned to move my clothes from the washing machine to the dryer, the man, still sitting on the stairs, asked again if I’d like to read with him. I said no a second time.

Then he stood up and walked down the stairs toward me, maybe two steps. I stepped backward. He was blocking what I believed to be the only exit. We stared at each other, and I thought he was going to assault me. I thought he was going to kill me. He did not. He sat on a lower step, opened a magazine, and started reading. I ran past him, all the way to my apartment, into my bedroom, into my walk-in closet, and shut the door.

Later that night, I had forgotten to take the clothes out of the dryer. My mother was upset, and demanded I get the clothes, even though it was late, even though I promised to do it the next morning. I went back to the laundry room. It was dark, and the only light came from the tiny window by the ceiling, and the digital numbers on the laundry machines. I found my basket, which I’d left there, and started unloading the dryer. I heard a door open, then shut, and looked towards the stairs, but no one was there. I turned back to the dryer, and then suddenly man was there—having entered from a different door I did not see. He was not standing very close to me, and seemed just as shocked to see me. Still, I was overcome with fear. I collapsed onto the ground, shaking. The man looked at me for a few seconds, then went up the stairs.

I pulled myself out of this dream so violently, I sat up in bed—just like in the movies. I left my bedroom to where my mother slept on the couch, and lay beside her, shaking. I was so, so afraid. I had never been so afraid. I wrapped my arms around my mother and cried, waiting for dawn.

What is your favourite coincidence?

My favorite coincidence is taking two weeks off in the summer of 2023 for my birthday, at the suggestion of my supervisor, then later discovering that those same two weeks were the Banff Summer Residency. I applied, and was accepted. I got to spend my birthday in Banff, working on a novel, surrounded by the loveliest people.

What do you cherish most about this world?

What I cherish most about this world is how diverse it is. So many people are living so many different kinds of lives, all at the same time. There are no two stories that are the same. Living in a multicultural city—at a time when the concept of diversity is being threatened—I am invited, daily, to challenge my perspectives about what it means to be alive, to love, and to fight. I must take time to appreciate how complex the world is, and I am better for it.

If you could send your love to anyone, who would it be and why?

I would send my love to my younger brother. The older I get, the more I cherish my sibling. I don’t always tell him I love him, and as we live apart now, we don’t spend as much time together. He has entered his late twenties, and with that comes a very daunting life survey. He’s working very hard to build the life he wants, and I hope he knows that I’m always rooting for him to succeed. He has my shoulder, my ear, my heart, should he need it.

Buy Myth

Publisher’s Description

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?

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