Siân Griffiths : part one

Siân Griffiths lives in Ogden, Utah, where she directs the graduate program in English at Weber State University. Her work has appeared in Ninth Letter, The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Cincinnati Review, American Short Fiction (online), Indiana Review, and The Rumpus, among other publications. Her debut novel, Borrowed Horses (New Rivers Press), was a semi-finalist for the 2014 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Currently, she reads fiction as part of the editorial team at Barrelhouse. For more information, please visit sbgriffiths.com

Photo credit: Megan Griffiths

How did you first engage with poetry?

When I was a high school student, I thought of poetry as I had been taught to think of it: a form of self-expression. I wrote accordingly, producing dreadful, angsty, abstraction-filled cries from the heart. At the same time, I kept a notebook in which I would copy favorite poems and song lyrics, including anything from Robert Herrick to Sylvia Plath to Depeche Mode. I think I started to sense the gap between what they were doing and what I was doing. I began to realize that poems needed to be about more than the poet. As a reader, I started thinking about how poems made me care, which translated into my writing as I started reaching for ways for my words to do more work. I’m still reaching.