A
nose-to-nose encounter with God would be blinding. Thankfully for now, God
is invisible. Yet this too perplexes even believers. Seemingly absent, God’s promised
presence becomes, at times, a black hole into which prayers are shouted, a field of
gravity so dense one wonders how love embodies the core. Have you been there?
Mostly, we shrug, assume He is concealed, and go back to life.
And perhaps that’s how it begins, no more than a chirp filtering through the noise of
life; a snatch of birdsong that makes you sit up, cock your head, and hasten to the
window. Perhaps, the warble was not only made for you, it was sung to you. A small
nudge from Him.
I tremble putting nudges into words. The presence of God reliably resists being pinned
down.
The pages of A Slender Warble explore universal humanness — challenges that break
us, that save us. Through them the reader may find God elucidating Himself, in ways
they could not guess. This collection of poems is about finding the presence of God in
spite of and because of the trappings that make us most human.
I’ve found the publishing process requires patience. The process is a lifestyle. Write
every day. Send poems to journals. Get rejection slips. More rejection slips. Rejections
come and go, sometimes for years. Yet, after a while you look again and find there is a
body of your work with some acceptances. You gather your poems to see if they speak
to each other — when they do a manuscript is formed. You send out the manuscript of
poems. Rejections come again but you find an undercurrent of belief that you will find
a publisher that is a good fit. You develop an objective outlook. Best of all you manage
to not take it all too personally.
The publisher and editor I’m currently working with do an excellent job of both
readying the poetry and preparing the poet as the best purveyor of the book.
What brought you to creative writing, memoir, poetry?
Art brought me to poetry and then poetry took on a life of its own.
Are you a part of a writing group or any collaborative projects?
I have a few trusted readers with whom I share my work while it is in process. I might
call them “resonators” for the way they seem to be able to resonate back to me the
song a poem creates. It is quite helpful to hear the music of a poem as another hears it.
While I do not have formal collaborative writing projects at the moment, for the
most part I find writing to be a collaborative process: I hear someone talking or I
am reading, and a phrase grabs me; those words trigger a thought and/or an image;
the voice of a narrative suddenly clears its voice, and I write it down. Eventually,
after many iterations, I do what every writer does — I read my notes to someone
for feedback. Thoughts hurry back and forth between us through the vast realm of
shared experience. And just like that, clouds take form, it smells like rain, and all the
participants take cover. There in the breath of people taking shelter from the same and
different storms, a poem comes to life.
What are you working on now?
I am working on a series of poems that relate to being without. Without, having things
either taken or lost, can roll you in the dirt and make you feel “less than.” Or it can
redeem you, render you speechless with wealth. It’s an interesting interplay.
May | June 2020
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