Poetry has never been my focus, or my forte. I took a class on it in college, but it was mostly for fun, and an elective in my writing minor. We read a lot of the classics, including poems from ancient Greece, and more modern pieces by the likes of Pablo Neruda and E.E. Cummings. I really enjoyed the class, but if I’m being honest many of my classmates were better poets. This is not meant to be a humble brag… people out there has some really clever ideas, and interesting twists of words.
Poetry is hard! And not only is it hard — it is a ‘market’ (I hate to use that word, but alas…) that is hard to break into. When was the last time you paid for a poem? When was the last time I paid for a poem? I have no idea. Maybe it was when I bought the textbooks for that college class. Even ‘not getting paid’ to publish you poems is tricky, as poems are fun to write, and lots of people write them and submit them to magazines.
So I was surprised as anyone when I sent off a few of my poems back in the fall or spring, and heard back that someone wanted to publish them! And not only that, they were going to feature me in their online magazine. It was fun reflecting on the answers for the interview, and on the poem, which I wrote about during my grad school years, during a period where I was stressed out, struggling with work, and lonely. Give it a read, or at least check out the silly photo I dug up, which they kindly used to turn me into a sort of spacecat myself.