This one’s not about writing. Not exactly anyway. But it is about me. And a lesson I learned a long time ago. I was sixteen and in Pre-Calc. My junior year of high school. Math was never my best subject and I hated it. It was like a strange language and I did whatever...
Some of my poems deal with my own traumatic experiences. I get the question often – how do I write about my trauma? Before I answer that question, let’s talk about what it’s like BEFORE a traumatic memory becomes a poem. Phase One: I start to feel anxious. Like...
This was first published as a guest column in the Prescott Journal on June 28, 2018 under the title, “I Still Have a Black Lives Matter Sign.” You might wonder why I’m including this on a writer/poet blog. A more political blog. Here’s why. My moral core – my belief...
Jacqueline Woodson and Marilyn Nelson wrote extraordinary memoirs, which are also verse novels. If you haven’t read them, you should. Right now. Brown Girl Dreaming won the 2014 National Book Award and is Jacqueline Woodson’s autobiography told in free verse. Covering...
One of the things verse novels do best is bring the reader into the mind of the character. That ability renders difficult subjects like rape and abuse intimate and painful to read. In Blood, Water, Paint Joy McCullough writes about an Italian Renaissance painter,...
