Diana Rosen : part one

Diana Rosen, an essayist, flash writer, and poet, has work in West Trade Review, Tiferet Journal, Rattle, and As It Ought to be Magazine, among others in the U.S., the UK, India, Canada, and Australia. Her poetry has earned one Best of the Net and two Pushcart nominations and TheTinyPublisher.com released her first full-length poetry book, High Stakes & Expectations, in Spring, 2022. She lives in Los Angeles where her “backyard” is the largest urban green space in the country, the 4,000+acre Griffith Park. She is a content provider for all things tea, coffee, and spices and has published 13 nonfiction books. Please visit www.authory.com/dianarosen to read more of her work. 

How did you first engage with poetry?

Like many children, my first introductions came with hearing the delightful music of rhymed words in Mother Goose tales then Ludwig Bemelmans’ Madeline series (In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines. Lived twelve little girls in two straight lines. In two straight lines they broke their bread. And brushed their teeth and went to bed) read to me by my mother. High school literature classes introduced me not only to Byron/Shelley/Keats but, through a wondrous textbook I still have, poems translated from a slew of foreign languages which gave me an overview to various forms and poetry subjects.  Real life interfered for many years where I read no poetry until a job at the late, great Borders Books introduced me to co-workers who were poets who introduced me to the world of contemporary poets and poetry and the exhilarating idea of free verse. I’ve been reading and writing ever since.