Elizabeth J. Coleman : part one

Elizabeth J. Coleman is the editor of Here: Poems for the Planet (Copper Canyon Press, 2019). She is the author of two poetry collections, The Fifth Generation (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2016) and Proof (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2014), which was a finalist for the University of Wisconsin Press’s Brittingham and Pollak prizes, as well as two poetry chapbooks, and she translated Lee Slonimsky’s sonnet collection Pythagore, Amoureux into French (Folded Word Press, 2016). Her poems have appeared in many journals, including Colorado Review, Rattle, and Bellevue Literary Review, and in a number of anthologies. Elizabeth’s career for many years was as a public interest attorney. An environmental advocate, Elizabeth has also taught mindfulness for twenty years.  A 2012 graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, she can be visited on the web at www.elizabethjcoleman.com

What are you working on?

I’m working on three new writing projects, the first a feuilleton of photographs and poems about fall, 2020 in the Hudson Valley, with the photographer, Michael Palmer. 

I’ve also had a third full poetry collection in the works for several years and find myself replacing older poems that no longer feel quite strong or fresh enough with new ones I’m excited about. I’m struggling with this collection more than I did with the first two. The intertwining of the vastness and indifference of the universe with the minute, precious, and heart-breaking details of our small lives feels like my current subject, a variation, I suppose on two great subjects of poetry: life and death.

Finally, I’m collaborating with another poet on a chapbook of modern crowned sonnets, where we alternate lines in an email correspondence. Things are turning up on the page that neither of us would have imagined on our own.