How did you get started writing and who are some writers that have inspired you?
I started writing as a young child and wrote my first poem in the first grade using my spelling words.
I have always thought of myself as a poet, but I did not really start working at poetry until I was at Westminster College. I went back to college as a mature student in my late thirties when I studied with Katharine Coles. What I remember about meeting living poets was the generosity of spirit they extended to me. Katharine Coles accepted me as a fellow poet long before I deserved it and introduced me to other amazing poets: Peggy Shumaker, Shahid Ali, David Lee, Sherman Alexie and Adrienne Rich. In fact, when Adrienne Rich was invited to Westminster College to give a reading, Katie invited me, along with fellow poet Jennifer Tonge, to accompany the two of them to breakfast at Ruth’s Diner. That breakfast was one of the most amazing experiences I had from my undergraduate years. I started publishing as an undergrad, too, and then went on to grad school at the University of Utah.
You taught writing for many years at the University of Utah. What are the main differences between teaching others how to write, and then writing your own collection of poetry?
Teaching others to write, especially first-year students who are taking required writing classes, was a challenge. Most students did not want to be taking a writing class and part of my work was convincing them that writing was not as boring as they thought. The biggest difference between teaching and working on my own creative writing was just changing focus. As a teacher I was concerned with explaining concepts with enough detail so that students understood what was expected. One of the responsibilities as a poet was to let go of the reins and trust the process. While teaching I had a difficult time switching from my student’s writing to my own writing. I found myself being much more productive during the summer and during Fall and Spring break than during the school year.
Did you ever find yourself taking writing advice you have given your students? If so, what was it?
I taught at the U of U for twenty years and spent four of those years as the director of the University Writing Center. While there do not appear to be many places of crossover for academic writing and creative writing, they are remarkably similar. I began every semester with the essay by Anne Lamott “Shitty First Drafts.” Regardless of the kind of writing you are engaged in, it is necessary to get the internal editor out of the picture. Creative writers see writing as wild, free, and therefore “easier,” but it is really a matter of allowing ourselves to get that internal editor out of the way which we seem to allow ourselves when writing poetry and fiction. Academic writing appears to be more vigorous than creative writing, but that’s not entirely true. After removing the internal editor from the process, the key is to be prepared to write multiple drafts of everything. Most students want to write a final draft of their paper and spend as little time on the process as possible, but good writing comes from multiple attempts and once an idea is on the page it becomes a process of revision whether the work is creative or academic.
What advice would you give to younger you, to help you on your writing journey?
I wish I had been able to start writing seriously at a younger age, but since I did not, I did the best I could by reading poetry. I have a few guidelines I rely on for creative writing that I wish I had known earlier. The first is to bring to the page a “passionate stilled attention.” It is important to go into the creative process wanting to find out what you do not know. Attention takes time and a willingness to let go of the internal editor and as Stephen Dunn says, “walk out onto the ice.” He explains that the process of writing is to trust the ice to hold you.
I also rely on concrete language as much as possible. A great deal of “bad” poetry is bad because it lacks specificity. Abstractions, words such as hate, love, friendship, hope, and sadness just make a poem sound sloppy, but a poem that focuses on the specific details of those feelings through concrete language brings life to the work. The last guideline I live by is to write every day. During my years of teaching, I tried to do a little writing every day and was not always successful. Still, I kept that focus to rely on practice rather than inspiration. Now that I am retired, I write purposefully every day. The only rule is to follow the advice of Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, “it doesn’t have to be good, it only has to be true.”
Who will enjoy This Insatiable August?
This Insatiable August is for anyone who finds their life falling apart between the ideas of too much or too little. In writing these poems I found myself moving between the desire for authentic love, sex, partners I could not have, and a God that was all too silent and a religion that was failing my need for the sacred. The crumbling of Mormonism played a huge role in these poems. When I think of the word insatiable, I always think of August. Sometimes it is drought, sometimes it is flood, and these poems seemed to me to be about the idea of too much, the flood and the drought, the religion that had too little to offer me. I would hope that they ring true for readers looking for a place to explore the ways in which our lives are driven by insatiability.
