WHAT?
“I’m a writer.” Those words didn’t come easy to me. Friends would ask what I did for a living and I’d hem and haw and never give a clear answer. I was embarrassed to say I was a writer because I truly didn’t believe it myself. I heard my mother’s nagging words clearly state that I was a simpleton with a limited vocabulary. I took it as a challenge and bought a dictionary.
My pursuit of stringing words together became a passion and a safe way to express my emotions. Unlike a journal, I’d crunch thoughts together to make a poem. I tried to squeeze life out of every word and wrote love poems to my mother and aunt. I learned to write myself into a better place.
WHY?
Early on, I had the ability to enter into a writer’s world like when “Alice in Wonderland” falls into the rabbit hole. Even if it was only minutes, my pencil created a better life for me. I was given the gift to write. Writing was my ticket to a loving place, which was so different from the angry, terror-filled days I spent at home. School was a safe place, too. My elementary school in Detroit had fabulous teachers who were truly interested in our creative and intellectual development. In my auditorium class, one of our assignments was to select a tape from the teacher’s collection and play it on the wire recorder in a study room. I picked “Death of a Salesman.” It was Arthur Miller who inspired me, while in fifth grade, to write my first play. My teacher asked me to produce, direct and act in the play. I cast my favorite chums and we had the best Thanksgiving dinner — the one I never had in my home. I was either delusional or creative or perhaps both.
HOW?
Typically, there’s been a trigger – memory, current event or someone else’s poem – that will prompt my creative writing. The Neutrogena commercial, for example, where Jennifer Garner says, “You think you take off all your makeup, but do you really?” can ignite a story or poem about keeping secrets or hiding bad deeds. Also, being a consummate eavesdropper, in a fashion that Truman Capote would envy, can give me plenty of material. I enjoy studying human behavior and giving context to the scene I create in my mind.
However, my personal experiences influence most of my work. Now that I’m retired, I spend more time pursuing my creative writing. I admit I probably daydream more than write. There are millions of poems in my head. The ones I commit to paper occur when the muse continues to pester me. At that point, I give in and listen to the music as my fingers type the words. The tapping sounds from my keyboard have a rhythm of its own, which helps me with the construct of a poem. The thought, rhythm and words all come together in the form of a poem, story or letter that, hopefully, resonates with the reader.
Denise Sedman is a Detroit-born poet now living in Westland, MI. Although she wishes she could have sold her poems for millions, her primary source of income was from thirty-five years in the advertising business. Publishing credits include Bottom Dog Press and The Wayne Literary Review. The anthology “Abandon Automobile,” by Wayne State University Press, includes her poem “Untitled.” Architect students at the University of Detroit Mercy selected this poem as the basis for a “Temporary Environments: Installation.” The “Poem House” project was featured in the University’s literary journal [sic] and illustrated the relationship between art and lived experience. Students gave the poem back to the City of Detroit by writing words on muslin with lighter fluid then setting flame to the fabric, releasing the words into the air. These sheets were strung like laundry around an abandoned house where the students gathered inside to recite specific lines of the poem in a round-robin fashion. Most recently, Denise has completed her poetry chapbook, “Unbreakable River.”
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