What:
I suppose I would characterize my poetry as lyric poetry. Some poems are quite narrative, and others are more experimental. My poems have a strong emotional center. Sound and image are important to me. How the poem looks on the page is also a major consideration, because for me, the form of the poem – its shape, the spaces between words and stanzas – is as important as elements like sound and image.
Why:
For me, poetry does something that no other form of writing—or art—can do. It’s able to hold more than one truth at once. It’s able to capture aspects of the human experience that can barely be spoken, yet poetry speaks these truths through words. It captures the words and thoughts that come to you subconsciously when you’re doing other things. It’s like dream, but it’s also tremendously grounded. It’s therapeutic for me to read, and also to write.
How:
My process is that I write a poem, and then I spend a lot of time with it before it’s ready to share or publish. Usually, if there’s a draft that isn’t working, I toss it fairly quickly. I can usually tell if a poem is fluid and meaningful. Sometimes it can take a long time for me to tell, though. Though some poems come fairly whole, most take a long time to revise. I have to put poems away for months sometimes before I know how to fix them. Some poems aren’t done for years. I had one poem in my new collection, The New Life, that was written over 20 years ago.
The New Life is a braided collection of poems that explores motherhood through the lens of a fractured childhood and intergenerational loss and trauma. “The capacious, tender poems of Wendy Wisner’s The New Life range from the peach fuzz on a new baby’s head and the leaky, weepy days of early motherhood to midlife, postpartum sex, and the legacy of intergenerational trauma. “It’s dangerous // to be a baby, a child / in this world,” Wisner reminds us–but these wise, well-crafted poems insist on the wonder and treasure of raising children, too.” —Nancy Reddy, author of Pocket Universe and co-editor of The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood
Bio:
Wendy Wisner is the author of three books of poems. Her third book, The New Life, was recently published by Cornerstone Press/University of Wisconsin Stevens-Point. Wendy’s essays and poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Spoon River Review, The Washington Post, Lilith Magazine, and elsewhere.
Links:
Website
The New Life: Poems on Amazon
The New Life: Poems on Barnes & Noble
Facebook
Instagram
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Linda K. Sienkiewicz is a writer, poet, and artist:
Multi-finalist award winning novel In the Context of Love
Picture book Gordy and the Ghost Crab
Latest poetry chapbook: Sleepwalker
Connect with Linda: LinkTree