Name some writers who have affected you and how they have affected you.
Sara Lindsey Rath is a Wisconsin poet whose collection, Dancing with a Cowboy launched my own poetic muse – which I didn’t know was within arm’s reach at the time. Her conversational tone, the narratives she wove, and the images she painted triggered my own inspiration. That was six years and 987 poems ago. Other poets who have influenced me are Hunt Hawkins, Cornelius Eady and Lisel Mueller.
Do you read more poetry or fiction?
Poetry.
When did you first realize that you wanted to write creatively?
I was eight years old. My parents had a manual Olivetti typewriter. My love of writing stories grew from a love of pushing buttons.
How do your experiences in life impact your writing?
Writing is a release, a method of processing my experiences, and an escape hatch. If I feel strongly about something, I’ll need to write about it. Although I write often from other peoples’ experiences and not my own, there is always some aspect of the poem that is autobiographical. As a kid, at the end of the day I would write about what happened that day in story form. Each day was a chapter. I did this for roughly three years.
What was the last book you finished? Did you like it?
Sue DeKelver’s collection, Walnut from Waterloo. I’m fond of narrative poems that harken back to childhood episodes, and many of the poems in this collection do just that. Sue’s poetry has a sense of humor even when she’s writing about the darker side of life, which I can appreciate.
How often and where do you write?
I write every day, and I write everywhere. At stoplights, bus stops, in the grocery check-out line, on escalators. I write best when I’m supposed to be doing something else; that’s when the fire flies. If someone sent me to a cabin in the woods for a week, I’d have the biggest case of writer’s block you ever saw. I need chaos and commotion to write.
Do you have any big writing projects planned for the future?
I’m the poetry editor for a statewide organization’s quarterly newsletter, and I’d like to see those pages of poetry become the best they can be in the months to come. I’m also involved with an upcoming anthology, but details about that are still under wraps. Other than those two things, I’m looking forward to more reading and writing.
Her work was included in Midnight Mind Number Three.
