Some Memories and Prose Poetry

I am still here.

It is a miracle. I have not had the time to submit writing for publishing as I did during graduate school and before my daughter was born.  Even in graduate school, I had to squeeze in the writing and editing time.

My writing tends to focus on doing the writing and editing.  I’ve worked on a second project since I stopped work on my eight year project, Sons of the Edisto. About four years ago, I started putting together poems. In the original script, they were called “Fractured Snowflakes.” I had some good feedback on the poems, and almost had one of the poems published.

I had some random rhymes in it, which doesn’t work with modern poetry. In fact, returning to poetry at all is a big deal for me because from the time I was sophomore in college until four years ago, I wrote mostly fiction. I didn’t feel my poetry was that good.

When I went to the South Carolina Governor’s School of the Arts for Writing, freshmen program, I established more of a reputation with my poetry than my fiction. I wrote my first prose poem at the time. I don’t remember what it was called. I’d probably call it a piece of crap now just like my first few novels.

I think, as writers, we come to understand our process better as we go through it. It’s okay if it’s not the greatest thing since sliced bread. I’m okay with just recording a poem I wrote from my collection or getting it down the first time.

I wrote a poem yesterday, and I won’t say the original title, but it is for a second collection of memoir-in-verse about my first year teaching. I’m planning on changing the title to “Caterer”

Whether writing poetry, fiction, or nonfiction, I think the process is one of constant change. It keeps it refreshing and fun. It’s not that every time you edit, you’re going to “kill your darlings.”  You may return to an original idea.

One essay I wrote was published twice. It was originally called “Grass from the Grave.” When it was published in paniK, the publisher kept that title. When it was published in Impact, the publisher changed its name “We Never Said Hello.” I was fine with that. I actually liked that title better.

In writing my memoir-in-verse, I Never Saw Jesus in the Mirror, it covers the time in my life when I had left journalism and was pregnant with my first child to graduate school. Some Memories, which I’m sharing a recording of, is my introduction poem to the collection that brings everything into view.

I’m working on two versions of it. The first version I started putting together two years ago after I dismantled Fractured Snowflakes, and I began to choose poems for Never Saw Jesus in the Mirror. The second version is taking the poems and making them into visual poems. I want to have both versions.

A Blue Ridge Tale is one of the only poems I kept from my original collection. I have edited it a couple of times. Who knows, I may get rid of it? But I realized for the collection to be successful then they needed to tell a story.

It is cathartic to write them, edit them, break them apart and turn them into visual poems, or read them.