2015 ARTIST WRITER MASHUP: post #2

Apr 4, 2015
2 min read

For our second post as part of Lamplighter Magazine's 2015 Artist Writer Mashup, we have been asked to share a bit about ourselves.

Who are you?

I am a Yankee poet currently living in New Orleans who had one too many fancy cocktails last night. My favorite time of year in New Orleans may just be early April, when the star jasmine (also called "confederate jasmine," but because I'm a Yankee this makes me nervous) blooms.

What is your experience with writing?

Writing, or "writing-related activities" (somewhat loosely defined), is something I do every day. Although our relationship is sometimes tense, I feel actively grateful for poetry and the freedom to write poetry. However, I have not yet begun writing my poem in response to Lauren Clarke's ostrich image….it's percolating though––don't worry, don't worry!

How did you find Lamplighter

Through the amazing Patrick Boyle, who I met while a student at Bennington Writing Seminars. I am incredibly impressed with this magazine and the work and heart he (and his comrades) put into it.

What do you expect to accomplish while participating in the project?

I love the collaborative nature of this project, and the fact that social media is the platform for this collaboration. I hope to fully engage with this element of the enterprise. I also look forward to stepping outside of my current poetry projects to write an entirely different poem, or at least a poem inspired by something different than I'm used to finding inspiration from (an image) and to seeing what makes this poem both unique and similar to the other poems I'm working on right now. It's possible I spend too much time with my face in books, and so I hope to look up at something else for a change, and write from that vantage point. I would like to approach the image both straight-on and obliquely: as in, to engage in detailed description of what I see in front of me, a la Elizabeth Bishop, and to also swerve away from the actual image to wherever my imagination takes me before arriving back where I began, a la I-can't-think-of-anyone-right-now….blame the fancy cocktails.