Elisabeth Horan : part six

How does a poem begin?

At 3:00 am with a line. Wakes me up, repeats itself… “there is Wellbutrin in my Brain”... forces me to get up and give it a life. Does not rest until it is finished. The reason I usually have eye twitches and anxiety. :)

Elisabeth Horan : part five

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

Dickinson grounds me. When I read her I realize anything is possible. She is so quiet, but loud, pastoral and lusting. My favorite feminist shut-in beauty. I wish I had known her.

Plath. Well, she is Plath. That kind of intensity, but written in such precision, awes me…

Frost. Meter, rhyme, cadence, sublime tension and subtlety. Master of words. Stopping by Woods. Knowing how to write formal poetry in a modern voice is serious business. I am in training.

Adrienne Rich, Rita Dove, James Diaz, Kaveh Akbar, Gwendolyn Brooks, Anne Sexton, Yusef Komunyaka, Amiri Baraka, Langston Hughes, Li-Young Lee, Robert Hayden, e.e. Cummings, Ada Limon, Lorca, Borges, so many others… I know I am forgetting. There are so many exciting things happening in the poetry community right now, everytime I read a new lit journal I learn and I am inspired.

Elisabeth Horan : part four

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?

Getting it right. I want to love editing my work but I don’t. I am impatient and impulsive and like to “get it right the first time”. That is naive and silly way to assume to be. Good poets know how to edits their work - to “cut the darlings…”  Editing takes maturing, patience and calm. I tend to purport myself in the opposite of those traits.

Elisabeth Horan : part three

What do you feel poetry can accomplish that other forms can’t?

With poetry I can find the words for the grinding cogs which are jerky and rusting in my mind… but also the slipstream of the beauty I see in the world. In no other form can I easily mesh the insane with beauty; evil with love, and flowers with death.

Elisabeth Horan : part two

How do you know when a poem is finished?

When I have no idea what else to do with it. You can only wring your hands for so long over word choice and order.

Elisabeth Horan : part one

Elisabeth Horan is an imperfect creature from Vermont advocating for animals, children and those suffering alone and in pain - especially those ostracized by disability and mental illness. Her collaborative nature and feminism chapbook On This Path We Travel, is published at Moonchild Magazine. Her column Arsenic Hour is live at TERSE. Journal.

What are you working on?

I just finished a chapbook called “Just to the Right of the Stove”. It is a collaboration between myself and Sylvia Plath’s ghost. I feel a kinship with her as I survived severe postpartum depression and she did not. I wish I could have reached out to her when she was isolated and sad. It is my most ambitious creation to date. I hope it gets published, I am very proud of it.