This past weekend I was most fortunate to have been interviewed, via Zoom, by four Chilean university students of English and creative writing. They are taking Hernán Pereira’s course at Arturo Prat University, Iquique, Chile. In 2014, Hernán collaborated with Dr. Karen Jogan of Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania on a poetry and place project that resulted in the book So Far..So Close/Portada y Contraportada: Contemporary Writers of Tarapacá & Pennsylvania. Pamela Daza took the photos for the book; I posted a bit about it here. Thanks to social media, which I don’t often thank, I’ve kept in touch with Hernán, who is full of interesting ideas for teaching young people to enjoy poetry and to learn English.

Now, I’m retired, and I was pleased to hear from Hernán that he’s assigned his students books by English-speaking poets to read and research, and then interview, said writers (with whom he is acquainted). Would I be willing to be interviewed? Why, of course!

The result of most interviews is that I learn a great deal about my work by having other people ask me questions about it. I usually learn a bit about the interviewer(s) in the process. In this case, I was happy that the students had come up with some good and unexpected questions that really made me pause and ponder. I was also impressed with what excellent English skills they have, and how polite and earnest they are. One of the questions was what makes me motivated to write a poem. Not inspired (the usual question), but motivated–a slightly different verb and a telling one.

I answered along the lines of how seeing an image, experiencing an event, learning new information (ie observation), or reading a text with which I might disagree or wonder about leads me to a line of questioning/reflection, and that whole process motivates me to write. I have to say my answer was, in real time, rather vague, and that I was speaking with people for whom English is a second language. But a student named Maximillio said, “So, would you say then your motivation is responsive?” Wow, yes! Which clarifies a lot for me. I’m not a forward-momentum sort of writer who bulls into powerful expression, much as I admire such writers and sometimes wish I were more like them. I’m the ponderer, the one who imagines being an other and tries to figure out that perspective, the somewhat distant observer who nevertheless wants to bring the feelings and experiences home to whoever my reader may be.

That was a splendid experience for me. So nice to speak with people under 25 years old again. I miss that. Meanwhile, reading a 1998 edition of Lorca’s Poet in New York (in translation of course, though I am getting slightly better at reading the Spanish). And drafting new work in my head while watering the garden.