H.E. Fisher : part one

H.E. Fisher’s poetry, prose poems, and essays appear or are forthcoming in Whale Road Review, Novus, The Rumpus, Pithead Chapel, Longleaf Review, Miracle Monocle, Anti-Heroin Chic, Indianapolis Review, and Canary, among other publications. She has twice been nominated for Best of the Net. H.E. is the editor of (Re) An Ideas Journal. Her first collection, STERILE FIELD, a hybrid, (Free Lines Press) and poetry chapbook, JANE ALMOST ALWAYS SMILES (Moonstone Press), are forthcoming in 2022. 

How did you first engage with poetry?

I grew up in a house with lots of books. I remember poems being read to me as a small child. One of my brothers, who is ten years older than me, wrote poetry. It seemed like poetry was always around. I wrote poems in high school and then at Purchase College as an undergrad, which is when I first read Emily Dickenson, the Romantics, Shakespeare’s sonnets. The summer before my senior year in college, I found a book on my family’s bookshelf called The Zig Zag Walk by a beat poet named John Logan. One of the poems in the book is called “Lines for Michael in the Picture”. This was really the first time I read a (fairly) contemporary poem. And it blew my mind. It’s a long poem, but the language was accessible and relatable. I loved the music of the poem. Whatever that thing is that poetry does, really got its claws into me. Though it wasn’t until I began pursuing my MFA at City College of New York and took a class on prosody with the program’s director and poet, Michelle Valladares, that I began concentrating more on writing poetry. There’s a 35 year gap between reading John Logan and being in Michelle’s class.