On this Power Q & A, we are tickled to be joined by poet and podcast host, Andrew French. Andrew is the host of the popular Page Fright poetry show, where they interview established and emerging authors about breaking through as writers and finding their literary style.
In this interview, we ask Andrew to share with us about why they started the podcast.
Welcome, Andrew!
Listen in to Page Fright.
Q: Would you tell us about your podcast and why you started it?
A: Page Fright is a poetry podcast with a simple concept: I talk to my favourite poets from across Canada about their latest collections and poetics more generally. Guests share poems from their recent publications, answer a question from my previous episode’s guest, and discuss the process of creating their collections and writing as a practice beyond their latest projects. The show has been running for nearly six years and has a catalogue of over a hundred episodes you can listen to wherever you get your podcasts.
I started the show out of a selfish desire to make some friends in the literary community. I moved back to Vancouver in 2018 after graduating from Huron University College in London, Ontario and didn’t have any writer pals (or community at all, really) out here. I attended a few readings alone and sheepishly chatted with authors afterwards as they signed my copy of their book, realizing they were surprisingly willing to answer my questions about their work. What started with a rented booth at the Vancouver Public Library, a brief chat with one of my many inspirations and fantastic poet Shazia Hafiz Ramji (thank you again and always, Shazia!) and some free audio software, has led to me gabbing my way across Canada video call by video call.
What keeps me returning to these conversations is the community that’s grown and continues to grow around the show. Podcasts are weird because you can’t see the audience, so it often feels as if you’re talking into a void. But the moments of interaction online or at the readings I’ve organized for the show make all those chats into the online abyss well worth the awkwardness. I was so scattered and nervous at the live reading/taping I held for the show’s 100th episode last fall because there it was: a room full of people who had heard everything I thought I was only admitting to the other voice in the Zoom room.
That community is such a powerful motivator as a poet, though; we’re not writing for money or even for readership at times! I write poems to try and create moments of connection between myself and the world around me, and anytime somebody else engages with that connection is truly the most beautiful bonus. I think people come on my show for that reason – I’m engaging with the connections they’ve created and relating to their perspective on some level.
On my end, Page Fright is the best project I’ve created, far beyond my own publications and writing. It’s certainly the most rewarding. It inspires me to keep working on my own poems, reading new collections, and engaging with the Canadian literary community. This isn’t the world’s biggest podcast, and I’m never going to be flooded with sponsorship deals for boxed mattresses and online therapy companies, but I am beyond grateful for the community that’s grown and continues to grow around it. It’s the reason I begin episodes with “Welcome back to Page Fright” instead of “Welcome” – whether it’s your first episode, your last, or somewhere in between, this space is and always has been yours to connect in as much as it is mine.
More about Andrew French:
Andrew French is a queer poet from North Vancouver, BC. Their third poetry chapbook, Buoyhood, is forthcoming from Alfred Gustav Press in July of 2025. Andrew’s writing has previously appeared in Event, PRISM International, long con, and a number of other literary journals across North America and the UK. In addition to their own writing, Andrew has chatted to their favourite poets as host of Page Fright: A Poetry Podcast since 2019.
More about Buoyhood:
In Buoyhood, Andrew French surfaces a queer identity that has been suppressed by a speaker swimming in masculinity. A brief selection of poetry spanning a range of forms, the collection explores what it means to be a man, to be family and, more simply, to be.