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Permission to be a poet

It’s something only you can give yourself: a space to create, sweet as ripe cherries. To find it, buy it with love for your creative self, wrap it in ethereal sheets of time, and then unwrap it as though you deserve every crinkle of the delicate paper and every silky ribbon of ink. You give yourself permission to NOT write a word. Not even think. To drift, a poet in poet time with the willingness…

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Finding the Incarnate in Poetry – an Interview

I’m delighted that IthacaLit, that fine litmag out of Ithaca, NY and piloted by poet Michele Lesko, has published Barbara Ellen Sorensen’s interview with me, as well as a couple of my new poems. Barbara’s interview focused on topics of importance to us both: imagination, creativity, and spirituality. Barbara, author of the recent collection Compositions of the Dead Playing Flutes, asked me questions that made me dig down into my sources. I especially liked thinking…

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In My Purse Today: Writing Conferences

In my purse today: writing conferences, virtual and onsite. While the Associated Writing Programs 2014 Conference rages on in Seattle (the verb is apt), I was on a panel discussion of a wonderful online writing workshop on Facebook. I never left my comfortable chair to go through a security line and drafty airports, but I had the pleasure of conversing with poets from around the country on the topic of the places they write from,…

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Things I learned from my readers

Purchase Gods of Water and Air In book reviews and personal responses to my poetry, readers have revealed to me more about how and why I write than I could have learned through introspection. They’ve also inspired me to write new work. That’s a poem prompt I’ve seen nowhere: “Write a poem based on one reader’s positive comment about your poetry; then revise it based on another reader’s critique.” Here are some things I learned…

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