How did you first engage with poetry?
One of the few poetry books in my house growing up was a copy of An Introduction to Haiku by William Higginson that was my Mother’s. It was a small book with a very attractive cover of a woodcut print of ducks floating on hilly waves. I was taken by the specificity of the images and the connection to the surrounding environment in those three 5-7-5 lines, and the way the poems telescoped (or was it microscoped) seeming to unlock something cosmic. I tried imitating some of those haiku.
Then I got serious about poetry in my last year of high school. I was not a very good composition writer and so my worst class was always English. Because I was in the low-level English class I was introduced to creative writing while everyone else had to work on their AP tests. I liked that poetry had no rules and low expectations.
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