Home About Us Media Kit Subscriptions Links Forum
APPEARED IN


View All Articles

Download PDF

FAMOUS INTERVIEWS

Directories:

SCHOLARSHIPS & GRANTS

HELP WANTED

Tutors

Workshops

Events

Sections:

Books

Camps & Sports

Careers

Children’s Corner

Collected Features

Colleges

Cover Stories

Distance Learning

Editorials

Famous Interviews

Homeschooling

Medical Update

Metro Beat

Movies & Theater

Museums

Music, Art & Dance

Special Education

Spotlight On Schools

Teachers of the Month

Technology

Archives:

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

1995-2000


APRIL 2005

Fleda Brown, Delaware

Studied Poetry: I took only one course as an undergraduate: Imaginative Writing, including all genres. I got a Ph.D. in literature and took no more poetry workshops, none at the graduate level. I read on my own.

Writing: I wrote poems off and on through all of my school years. I won an undergraduate award for my poems, but I didn’t take myself seriously until the time I was writing my dissertation. I think I began to understand discipline and to apply the same focus and hard work to my poems. I began to get them accepted by good journals.

Inspiration: Family, water (our cottage on a lake in Michigan), nature, politics, etc.. I could go on, because I really don’t think inspiration is the issue. These are only subjects. Inspiration is what happens when I get mired in the middle of a poem and suddenly the subject breaks open and surprises me by where it takes me.

Favorite Poets: No one particular writer. I read everyone and the ones who are my favorite are often the ones who have something to teach me at the moment. They are the ones I’m drawn to—I see where I am and where I want to go, and I look to the poets who’ve done work kind of like that, and read them.

Challenges: Despair. Feeling like a lousy poet, or feeling like the last good poem I wrote is the only one I’ll ever write again, and not being sure even that one was any good.

Advice: Read many good poets. Read some bad poets. See what the difference is. Write a lot and learn to revise ruthlessly. Study with a poet who has something to teach you. Know when to listen and know when it’s time to slog it out on your own.#

 

COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE

Name:

Email:
Show email
City:
State:

 


 

 

Education Update, Inc.
All material is copyrighted and may not be printed without express consent of the publisher. © 2009.