Tag Archives: Marilyn Klimcho

Interview & discussion

This TV interview was interesting to participate in, and I loved chatting with Marilyn Klimcho! She put me at ease, which is hard to do in front of cameras. I have watched the whole 20 minutes without hating myself or feeling too embarrassed. (Hooray?)

Is the show entertaining? Well…you have to be interested in poetry and poets, I suppose. Feel free to check it out. The link above should take you to the YouTube video.

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National Poetry Month does, it turns out, raise the public’s awareness of poetry at least a little. Recently, I was invited to be a guest at a weekly online discussion of poetry and spirituality. The participants had been reading and discussing my poem “Deity’s Diary” and asked me whether I’d be available to read the poem and then discuss it with the group members at one of their meetings. They even sent me recordings of previous meetings’ discussions. I find it fascinating to learn how readers interpret my poems, what they get out of the work; so of course I obliged.

The group members asked intriguing, intelligent questions–clearly, they are accustomed to talking about poetry. That was refreshing, and it kept me on my toes. I learned that my poem (which is in four parts, so maybe it is poems) is doing the work I hoped it would do, at least with this group of careful and reflective readers. “Deity’s Diary” is intentionally paradoxical and questions many of western culture’s received ideas about god. It’s also pretty presumptuous, since I chose to write it in the persona of a deity…but, like all poems, it is decidedly a work of the imagination. (No, I do not consider myself a god!)

The discussion ranged from philosophical, scientific, and theological concerns to the nuts and bolts of writing and revising a poem, where I get my ideas, what the major influences on my work have been, and lots of other topics. Seldom do we lesser-known writers get to hear back from readers, especially in such detail–so this event felt like a real treat to me.

One participant said that reading these poems was like walking through an unfamiliar forest, not on a straight path, with possibilities of obstacles and turns in the track and the surprise of wildflowers, mosses, or lovely birds along the way.

That made my day.

Cover reveal

Earlier this week, I went to a neighboring city–Reading–to record a TV segment for the local station, BCTV, that hosts a program about poetry! The host and interviewer is poet Marilyn Klimcho of Berks Bards (a non-profit poetry group in Berks Co, PA). It was truly pleasant to read a few of my poems in a professional setting (studio), but the best part of the day was just chatting with Marilyn about poems, poets, and poetry. We began our conversation half an hour before the cameras rolled and continued it afterward, so the 25 minutes that were recorded seemed just to be part of a longer, casual discussion.

I appreciated that. I’m part of a long-running critique group, but it’s seldom that I get the opportunity to pick someone’s brain and share ideas, influences, and general enthusiasm about the art of poetry the way I did in grad school. Probably could work on getting more such discussion into my life.

The “Poets Pause” segment will air in March and then reside on YouTube, so I will post that link at some point. It was kind of Marilyn to highlight The Red Queen Hypothesis and to give me a chance to mention my next collection, forthcoming from Kelsay Books later this year. Speaking of which, I do now have a photograph of its cover:

The photo is by Don Schroder, a friend who’s got a website full of lovely images from his numerous travels to the African continent as well as good shots of festivals of many kinds and floral beauties from arboretums and gardens. Go check it out!

The cernuous tulip seems appropriate to several themes I evoke in these poems–elegies and the sense of impending losses but also appreciation of beauty and brevity and life’s many colorations. Initially, I thought that I was using fewer of the animals, plants, weather and the “nature stuff” I tend to populate my poems with, because so many of the poems in Abundance/Diminishment are for or about humans. But…nope, just took another look through the manuscript in the final approval/editing process and realized that I cannot seem to leave the planet’s environment out of my work. I probably should have been a biologist, ecologist, or a science teacher instead of an instructor of English, but oh well.

Frankly, I love the simplicity of this cover, and I’m excited to have the book in print later this year…especially since it took me a decade to get The Red Queen Hypothesis into the world.