When I’m searching for something to blog about and I’m feeling uninspired, I’m like a doctor with a hammer trying to get a reflex. When I finally land on an idea that has some kick to it, I know I’ve hit the right one. ~ Colleen When I first started writing I didn’t know that […]
No spit balls were thrown. No one giggled or whispered. The students actually listened and seemed interested in hearing my writer’s story. It was a small Literary Art Project class at the new Blue Mountain High School, where the students (currently six girls) are re-launching Artemis, a Roanoke literary arts journal that was founded in […]
I save old pieces of poems the way a junkyard owner saves old cars for parts. It makes sense that poets recycle, since poetry is a form of conservation, a shorthand of language. Writers use everything around them. They draw from what they know, and conserve their words to make their writing more efficient. We […]
I have a fantasy poetry shift. It lasts at least an hour every day. I imagine that I have to stop, take pen and notebook in hand, and see if I can make something out of nothing. I do it lying on the couch, like a therapy session, because, for me, writing poetry is a […]
“Maybe 1,000’s, but definitely not millions,” I told the young Blue Mountain School students when they asked me how many poems I had written, maybe a million? “How long does it take to write a long poem, when did you start writing and have you ever been published?” were some of the thoughtful questions these […]
I don’t know how I missed reading To Kill and Mockingbird in high school or why I never saw more than clips of the Academy Award winning movie, but I recently watched the PBS documentary on the Pulitzer Prize winning book and the life of its author, Harper Lee, and was enthralled. It wasn’t just […]
In the same way a baby puts everything in his mouth to see what is like, I put words on paper. The difference between a poet and a Buddhist is that a poet doesn’t mind suffering. As a poet I think of myself as a nightshift stenographer hired by the muse to take down the […]
Language is a kind of math. One letter added or taken away can dramatically change an equation. Writing is a like a scientific experiment with millions of theories to test, millions of combinations to figure with millions of results. A finished poem is like a tested theory, a solved problem, one with a common denominator […]
I got punked on Saturday by a Primland Resort photographer while attending Primland’s Golden Eagle Tree House ribbon cutting. My definition of “punked” is when I go to cover an event and take photographs and end up being photographed by someone else covering the event. This picture of me geocaching, a kind of treasure hunting […]
I’m waiting for the muse with a capital M. Not the one that sends me to the garden to pick beans for canning. Or the one makes me jump on the trampoline at night and watch the moon. But the one that has me scrambling for a pen and scribbling on whatever scrap of paper […]
Today I’ve been thinking about writer’s menopause. Do I have just so many stories in me like I had so many eggs? Does writing so much about other people’s lives keep me from fully living my own? I think all this writing could be an exercise to guard against Alzheimer’s and other kinds of memory […]
~ Poetry is the language of our time. It is a verbal excavation, digging us into and under that which is in inarticulate, that which cannot be said but can be felt, that which cannot be stated but can be conjured. Poetry is a form of revolution. It rearranges our thinking, our perception out dialogue. […]
As jarring as it can be for the subject of one of my profile stories to see their life printed out on a billboard, it’s just as jarring for me to see my name attached to it. Writing stories about other people’s lives is a privilege but can also be a daunting undertaking that comes […]
“I have up and joined the Peace Corps,” begins the latest issue of Floyd County Moonshine. In his editor’s preface Aaron Moore explains how joining the Peace Corp seemed like a nice thing to do. He goes on to say, “Today I started quite possibly the first Hacky-sack English Speaking club in China. In due […]
Last week I spoke to Amanda Biviano’s senior English Composition class about being a local writer. It was a college freshman class and the students were learning to do interviews and write profile stories (the main type of writing that I currently do). They were also interested in blogs and had been reading mine in […]
I write like I play Scrabble: A feature story is only as good as the interview that precedes it, like a game is only as good as the letters you draw. But you have to make the best of what you have whether you’re playing Scrabble or writing a story. I write like I play […]
Writing is elemental. Once you have tasted its essential life, you cannot turn from it without some deep denial and depression. It would be like turning down water. Water is in your blood. You can’t go without it. ~ Natalie Goldberg When a dark thought or a growing insecurity wakes me in the middle […]
New Year’s Day 2010: I like a simple life, when a lunch made from scratch and a walk to the mailbox are the highlights of the day. When I’m free to drop what I’m doing to photograph swirling shapes of steam coming off a freshly poured cup of tea illuminated by afternoon sun. I like […]
