What’s your creative process like?

I try, often unsuccessfully, to write daily. I generally start with a form and an image or phrase, but often edit my way out of strict formalism. I try to quiet my mind before writing. Again, often unsuccessfully.

How do you push through creative blocks?

I have a few generative exercises, for instance, using a sestina form or, more recently, a ketjak form that force me to write big blocks of text. This often leads to lines that will spark something and lead to a poem. Equally if not more important is to remind myself to clear my mind, as I can get spun up without realizing it. Hard to write poems without stillness.

Give us some background on the piece you contributed to this issue.

It started out as an exercise using “At Toomebridge” by Seamus Heaney as a prompt to remember a place that had an impact on me. Initially I tried to stick closer to his poem formally, but through edits it became an unrhymed sonnet of sorts. I remembered the campus of the University of Richmond where my family attended a Christian conference every year. I’ve since drifted from the faith, but am still processing that drift. That place lives in my mind, though I haven’t been there in decades. The on-campus lake by/under the student activities center was my favorite spot. I did mistake an olive for a grape in the cafeteria around the corner and I’ve never liked olives since!

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