I started all of my writing studies after some introductory creative writing classes at Green River Community College by going through the University of Washington's Poetry Certificate program. Since I was working full time, I found poetry offered the ability to focus on a single item such as voice, momentary experience, emotion, interaction with someone at a key time, an object or animal, etc. The writing amounted to fifty lines or less and I could look carefully how to select better language and different point of view and what it offered to the poem.
Even though I went on to writing fiction, journalism articles and now creative nonfiction, the use of poetic techniques in writing help turn something flat into a higher form.
I have Ruth Schwartz as mentor this quarter and we'll be reading:
- Swamp Songs & Let it Be a Dark Roux by Sheryl St. Germain
- Feral City and Desire Zoo by Alison Luterman
- Ordering the Storm by Susan Grimm
- Sun Under Wood by Robert Hass
- Tell Me by Kim Addonizio
- Lights and Mysteries by Thomas Centollela