About “Triolet: At the Memory Care Facility”

1. What was your motivation for writing “Triolet: At the Memory Care Facility”?

My father was experiencing dementia, and the poem arose primarily from exploring what we could do to make his life as comfortable as possible. As the poem suggest[s], it was an emotionally taxing challenge, for us and him.

2. What challenges—if any—did you have writing your poem?

I did not want to appropriate my father’s experiences, since I was not the one going through them. Even so, I wanted to use the poem to work toward empathy.

3. What do you want people to walk away with after reading “Triolet: At the Memory Care Facility”?

I hope they are led to think about the challenges of those facing not only dementia, but moving from home and into spaces where their world is turned upside down. As the population ages, these moments are becoming more common.

5. Is there anything else you would like to talk about regarding “Triolet: At the Memory Care Facility” that hasn’t been asked?

The form, a triolet, helped me to explore the topic. Its repetitions and almost claustrophobic limits on line length, number of lines, and syllable count echo the emotions I was hoping to examine. My father, by the way, suffered from claustrophobia.

Reading

1. What are you currently reading?

I’m reading a lot of Romantic literature from the US nineteenth century, preparing for a course on that era.

2. Do you have a favourite book? If so, what is it?

Not really. My reading tends to be inspired by whatever moods I’m in at the time. I do often go back to the writers of the beat generation, though.

3. What is your favourite poet or author, if any?

Favorite poet: Allen Ginsberg.

Favorite author: James Joyce.

4. Do you gravitate towards reading genres outside the ones you write?

I do, oddly. I tend to read more prose than poetry. I also tend to teach more prose than poetry.

Writing

1. Why do you write?

I write to think hard about things – whatever seems to be calling to me: current events, emotions, nature, people. Poetry is space for reflection.

2. What do you love about being a poet?

I love that poetry encourages poets to think deeply about language. In some ways, surface content is less important than the language itself in poetry.

3. What time of the day do you write, and do you have a writing routine?

I don’t really have a routine, though I tend not to write in my office (I’m an English professor, but that space is for teaching not writing).

4. Where do you get your ideas from?

Anywhere.

5. How long does it take you to write your projects?

That depends on the piece. Sometimes a poem comes fairly quickly, but other times it can take years to reach what I sense is completion. Only last week, I had a poem from 30 years ago published that I had revised last year.

6. What advice would you give to other authors/writers/poets?

Write as an act of resistance. AI and its supporters don’t understand the threat to humanity they pose.

7. What project(s) are you currently working on?

I find a lot of my recent poems are more political than usual. Whether that becomes a “project,” we will see in the coming year.