Art Chowder September | October 2017, Issue 11 | Page 29

P O E T K AT H E R I N E S M I T H
By Karen Mobley
Photo credit:
Don + Julia Photography
Poem first published in
Bellingham Review
combined with the power of language to
work on several levels at once.
I tell people I’m self-employed, which,
according the guy who helped me roll
over my 401k, is just a euphemism for
unemployed. I do a bit of freelance
writing, but mostly I’m a full-time poet.
I also recently started volunteering at
Spark Central.
What are the best ways for someone to engage with poetry?
Reading poetry on the page and hearing poetry read out loud can provide different
experiences. I recently had the opportunity to interview Robert Wrigley, and he said
that poetry readings played a big part in teaching him how to hear the music in lan-
guage. There’s a lot of truth to that. Poetry is a layered art form, and if you just look
at what the words mean and don’t pay attention to what the words sound like, the
feeling evoked by their sound, you’re only experiencing one layer.
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