When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? My first real encounter with poetry was in the 8th grade when, one day, I was called upon to stand next to my desk and read out loud to the rest of the class Part Two of The...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? For the longest time, truth be told, I had no idea that I ever wanted to write poems: I had joined the MFA program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts as a fiction writer, and my...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I think my first encounter with poetry was in nursery rhymes and jump-rope chants. Through them I learned about rhythm and rhyme. Then in high school, I fell in love with the...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I started studying poetry because I felt I knew nothing about it. I have an extensive background in American literature, and I made sure that when I began teaching at the college...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I only remember loving the idea of poetry as a kid, the little daydreamer I was. I wrote a bunch of poems before the age of ten, a couple of which were published...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? My mother instilled my love of reading. She encouraged me to get my library card at a young age and to take out as many books as I wanted. Then I crashed my bike riding home from...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I had a writing teacher in middle school who really loved poetry, and urged me to keep writing outside of school after he found out I was going through some really dark...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? When I was growing up, I could get lost in books and this escapism was very comforting, but I didn’t write poetry until college. When I entered college majoring in music, I...
For those who don’t know, tell us about your history with Mass Poetry. What have you been up to since your time as our Executive Director? I started working with Mass Poetry in February 2013 as the temporary Coordinator of Outreach, Development, and Volunteers for the...
Available now from Presa Press When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover you wanted to write poems? The songs of Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Dion and the Belmonts were the first poems I paid attention to, though none of them would admit they were...
Available now at Amazon When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I fell in love with poetry as a high school senior in Ms. Benz’s English class. It was an immediate and sudden revelation. We were each assigned a poet to...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I began writing poems in a high school creative writing class. Back then I thought I wanted to write fiction, but as soon as I started writing poems, I was hooked. There...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I slunk into my first open mic when I was 18. Some guy read and everyone responded with “Mmm”s and claps and snaps. People started talking with each other about his poem! I...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? My journey into poetry began with my love of writing as a kid. After that first magical encounter, my writing was encouraged as an extracurricular activity, dropped during my...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I first encountered poetry, as many do, in children’s books: nursery rhymes and other illustrated poems and stories in verse. I loved the music and the wordplay, rhymes and puns...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems?I've always thought of myself as a visual artist, not a writer. About seven years ago I was overcome with feeling while watching old family movies. Crying, exhausted, I lay down;...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems?I recall nursery rhymes my mother would read and learning to recite Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” in elementary school. I think the encounter that was a...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I read dead poets and wrote a lot of blushingly bad poetry on a manual typewriter in high school, and then in college I lucked into a series of poetry classes with Chris...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I still have a childhood copy of Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses, but it was an English class in high school with Ms. Benz where I truly fell in love with...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I didn’t really know I was interested in poetry and in literature until partway through my time at Wellesley College. When I arrived, I truly didn’t have a sense that I had any...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems?My first exposure to poetry was the children’s book, HOP ON POP by Dr. Seuss. I fell in love with the bouncy rhythm of the text and asked my parents to read it over and over and...