#AWM15: THE OSTRICH FINDS HER VOICE

For Lamplighter Magazine's 2015 Artist Writer Mashup this week, a few more questions I attempt to answer:

• Do you have a (nearly) finished piece of writing?

Yes, I think you might say that, although I just went in today and totally re-wrote and rearranged what I had last week––but I do think the poem has almost found itself. It's in 3 parts, and it's just as strange as it was last week, but also, I hope, more coherent in its strangeness. I think I've tapped into the inner-logic inherent in my relationship to the Lauren Clarke illustration assigned to me, and that massive ostrich that keeps staring and staring....

• Is it in the genre where you started? If not, what drove you to change?

Yes--I intended to write a poem all along, although last week I toyed with the idea of combining my blog posts into a personal essay of sorts instead. I've given up on that idea. THE POEM MUST SPEAK.

• What of the art inspired you most through this process?

As I've mentioned before, I have been inspired by my distinct and somewhat unexpected emotional reactions to the illustration upon first seeing it. It's this reaction the poem is trying to explore. The space-between, if you will.

• What else helped to inspire you?

Today, I read Robin Roberston's "versions" of Tomas Tranströmer's The Deleted World. Half way through reading it, I was so inspired by the uncanny imagery and the mystical quality of these poems that I completely re-wrote the ostrich poem, and then did a kind of poem "collision," where I incorporated some of the previous draft into the new version. This Roberston-Tranströmer collaboration-of-sorts is a must-read. Talk about space-between!