Shaindel Beers : coda

Why is poetry important?

I think that anything that can save your life is important. For some people, that’s poetry. For some people it’s painting or another art form. For some people, it’s nature or working out. You have to find the thing, for you, that makes you want to keep on living, and cling to that.

Shaindel Beers : part five

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

The most recent poetry book I read was Erika Meitner’s Holy Moly Carry Me. It is brilliant, and you need to buy it now. I want to point out that poets should read everything. Read fiction, read memoir, read science, read nature… Most importantly, just get new ideas in your head. I’d also recommend Goodbye, Sweet Girl by Kelly Sundberg and Some Bright Morning, I’ll Fly Away by Alice Anderson. They’re both memoirs and so needed. Alice Anderson is a poet, and the language is beautiful. I know when I was reading her work, I kept tweeting lines that were so poetic, they took my breath away.

Shaindel Beers : part four

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

I think Anne Sexton really changed the way I think about writing because she wrote EVERYTHING no matter how raw. I once spent a summer reading her complete works, and it was all there. Every little bit of life that happened to her turned into poetry. I think Transformations made a huge impact on me because it showed me that you can use fairy tales (or other widely known works) to rewrite the personal. It’s a safe way of distancing the subjects that are too close to write well about directly.

Shaindel Beers : part three

Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?

I think I’m much more open-minded than I used to be. Working as a Poetry Editor for fifteen years, I’ve seen poems that are brilliant that I can’t explain or don’t understand, but there’s something there that gets you. When you’re a young, beginning poet, it’s easy to buy in to your own ego and not recognize the brilliance in the other or to believe a few professors and discount whatever they don’t like. Poetry is a big umbrella. We can all fit under it.

Shaindel Beers : part two

How do you know when a poem is finished?

I think it’s an instinctive feeling. You just feel when a poem is finished; you don’t necessarily know. Of course, sometimes you’re wrong. Someone else might point out a suggestion to you that you’ve never seen before; maybe you don’t need the last three lines or maybe you need more. Maybe the language isn’t working hard enough in one spot. I trust my gut a lot, and then I send it out. If it gets published, I was at least a little bit right in someone’s opinion.

Shaindel Beers : part one

Shaindel Beers is author of the poetry collections A Brief History of Time (Salt Publishing, 2009), The Children’s War and Other Poems (Salt, 2013), and Secure Your Own Mask (White Pine Press, 2018). Her poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She is currently an instructor of English at Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton, Oregon, in eastern Oregon’s high desert, and serves as poetry editor of Contrary.

What are you working on?

I’m going to give the most embarrassing answer that there is. I’m currently working on promoting my third book. Book promotion is an entirely different type of energy from writing, but when something strikes me to write about, I’ll definitely write. But a book is like a baby. When it first comes out, it’s a newborn, and you have to take care of it. You have to keep on top of sharing reviews, doing interviews, all of that stuff. You have to honor the writing you’ve already done by supporting it. So, I’m going to make this plea on behalf of all authors. When you read their work and it resonates with you, write a quick review on Goodreads and then copy and paste the same review to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, anywhere you can think of. These are the small actions you can do that support writers.