What, Why, How: Patricia Clark

What?

I write poetry. Well, I’ve also written a few short stories and published them. But poetry is my main genre.

Why?

I’m really compelled by two things with poetry: its emotional undercurrents and its musical qualities. Both keep me interested, and I just published my sixth book. There is always something new to do with sentences and with sensory details. Why do I keep writing? Poetry is my spiritual practice and it’s the way I make sense of what happens in the world and what happens to me. I can’t imagine not having my notebook to turn to. 

How?

I like to spend some time daily with my notebook. Outside our house I have a very small little studio (or hut) where I write. I write longhand — though the house Wi-Fi extends out there. There’s something about the tactile experience of a pen and notebook that appeals to me; later, I put a poem draft on the computer, print it out, and see what I think. I revise on that copy and edit, fix, etc. Some poems take days or weeks; others come out more easily than that.

I like to give self-assignments: try a form, count syllables, look at a piece of art and write something. Maybe choose 20 vocabulary words from various poets and then write a poem working them all in. 

There is a primal urge in our muscles, housed in ligaments, tendons, cells. For a wrapper around us: the shell of an egg, nest, hut. To sit reading by a fire in a house with sturdy walls: one remembers the pleasure.

I want to advocate for a dedicated space—for each of you, each of us, as writers—and if possible a writing space separate from your living space. As I write the sentence I lament that it took me years to know I needed such a space and then years to have the means to build one. Mine is small enough that a white pine hides it from view, and yet it’s ample. How much does a writer need?

Once I step into my writing hut, I breathe new air. I look out on a ravine behind our house, a creek, deciduous trees. All is forgotten: teaching schedule, chores, dinner menu, dentist appointment. I am riding the crest of a wave, alone. It’s thrilling. It’s where I need to be.

Bio:

Patricia Clark is the author of six volumes of poetry, most recently Self-Portrait with a Million Dollars (Terrapin Books 2020). Her previous book, The Canopy, won the Poetry Society of Virginia poetry book of the year away in 2018. Her work appears recently in Plume, Blackbird, Barrow Street, Lake Effect, and in Rewilding: Poems for the Environment. In the past her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Atlantic, Slate, Gettysburg Review, Seattle Review, The New Criterion, and elsewhere. Her roots are in the Pacific Northwest and she lives now in Michigan where she retired recently from thirty years teaching at Grand Valley State University.

About Self-Portrait with a Million Dollars:
Patricia Clark’s poems immerse the reader in the living world through
the quality of her attention and appreciation. There’s hard-won
intelligence here. We see it in people sharing a meal and being especially
kind to each other after a suicide: lots of please and thanks / as we
handed food around / basket of steaming bread / for buttering. Always,
there is a deep understanding of our interconnections, as in the lovely
and evocative final stanza of “Near the Tea House at Meijer Japanese
Garden,” now tracing a pale blue vein / under the skin like a leaf’s
midrib. We would do well to take Patricia Clark’s guidance: The charge:
note what is here, what departs.
—Ellen Bass, Indigo

Links:

 Patricia’s website
Patricia’s Amazon page
Twitter

Patricia will be reading on Sunday Dec 20 at 3 p.m. (EST) with Lit Youngstown — see YouTube for streaming info. lit youngstown – YouTube

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Thank you for visiting Linda’s blog.

Linda K. Sienkiewicz is a writer, poet, and artist.
Learn more about her award winning novel, In the Context of Love.
Learn more about her picture book, Gordy and the Ghost Crab.
Learn more about her poetry chapbook, Security