When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems?
My first encounter was listening to my father recite poetry on long car rides. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” was a favorite: All in a hot and copper sky/the bloody sun at noon. I can still hear the words in my father’s deep voice. While my older siblings groaned and begged for the radio, I was silently transfixed.
Writing screenplays was my gateway to poetry. It taught me how to compress language and pack meaning into the fewest possible words. But images and ideas kept bubbling up that demanded a new container, a new form beyond fiction. My nephew introduced me to a website where he was posting poems, and it was mad love for me from the get-go. Poems started pouring out. I had found the right container.
Do you have a writing routine? A favorite time or place to write?
I write most days, sometimes just on a grocery receipt but it still counts. Some of my best ideas burble up when I’m walking along West Beach in Beverly. I unhinge my mind and talk into the wind—sometimes a non-stop narration. It helps me work out rhythms and phrasing. I look nuts but the seagulls seem entertained.
Writing in the din of a cafe was always my go-to but I find that getting quiet serves my poems best. For me, writing poetry is a form of listening, a tuning in. I often write lying down, like Mark Twain did. It seems to open a channel, gives me access to a different kind of sight.
Where do your poems most often “come from”—an image, a sound, a phrase, an idea?
I’m always chewing on a phrase or a line in my head. I’ve done it since I was a kid and assumed that everybody else did, too. It could be prompted by a snippet of conversation or an intriguing detail from a news story. Often a phrase will come to me, bewitch me, and a poem will grow out of it—like “shadows set to burn.” That phrase was so evocative that it not only found its way into a poem but became an entire collection. Some poems pop out like an egg, fully formed, while others need more attention and coaxing.
Nature is also a jumping-off point for much of my poetry. I’m a bird lover and often hike around swamps and ponds to look for creatures. These encounters often spark poems.
Which writers (living or dead) have influenced you the most?
I began writing fiction (novels/screenplays) and some of my poetry has the feel of bite-sized stories. My biggies as a child were classic writers that helped shape my storytelling—Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas, HG Wells, H. Rider Haggard.
As an English major in college, Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson loomed large. Then came Mary Oliver, Sharon Olds, Ellen Bass, Tony Hoagland, Timothy Olzmann, and more. Billy Collins’ poem “The Lanyard” was a revelation to me when I first heard it. I respond to poetry that is accessible but stuffed with gorgeous imagery. I want to be moved or awakened–and humor goes a long way with me.
What excites you most about your new collection?
My new collection, “Shadows Set to Burn,” is in many ways an homage to the forces and people that shaped me and a breaking free of them. This duality was challenging—trying to achieve a balance between light and dark, and honoring my voice while reconciling an imperfect past. It’s an exploration of family, mothers, fathers, daughters, redemption, grief, and loss.
I’m fascinated by the sparks that fly at the edges of things–where light meets shadow, joy meets despair, love meets rage. I like to swim in the ambiguity and try to find a little handhold of truth or meaning. Or humor. And nature is often my way into these poems and a redeeming source of wonder. I was convinced that the release of this collection would cause unwelcome ripples in my family—and I was thrilled to be completely wrong. Only positive reactions have come from every quarter. I’m so grateful that it’s in the world now.
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Linda Flaherty Haltmaier is the award-winning author of four books of poetry and the Poet Laureate Emeritus of Andover, MA. Her new collection, Shadows Set to Burn, is the winner of the 2024 International Book Award for Narrative Poetry. Her first collection, Rolling up the Sky, claimed the Homebound Publications Poetry Prize and her follow-up, To the Left of the Sun, won the American Bookfest Award for Poetry. Additional accolades include winning the Robert Frost Poetry Prize, the JuxtaProse Poetry Prize, and the Palm Beach Poetry Festival Competition, as well as Finalist honors for the Princemere Poetry Prize, the New Millennium Award for Poetry, the Atlanta Review Poetry Competition, the Joy Bale Boone Poetry Prize, the Rash Award for Poetry, and the Tucson Festival of the Book Literary Award. Nominated for four Pushcart Prizes, Linda’s work has been featured widely in journals and anthologies including WSQ, Cultural Review, Voices of the Sacred Wild, and more. Her debut chapbook, Catch and Release, was published by Finishing Line Press. Linda leads poetry workshops, gives readings, and promotes poetry on the North Shore of Boston where she lives with her husband and daughter. www.lindahaltmaier.com
