Lynne Schmidt : part five

Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?

Deeply. I started writing poetry in elementary school, delving in a bit more in middle school, and then keeping notebook after notebook. In some capacity, poetry was like a journal to me that I didn’t mind sharing with the world. In undergrad, I landed my first publication and then sort of took a break. I’ve been taking myself more seriously over the last two years and it seems to be paying off.

Through the timeline of about twenty years, I’ve tried to expose myself to as much poetry as possible. Poets I’ve never heard of, poets I have, poets who died years and years ago. It helps me to get a well rounded base of knowledge and respect for the art.

With that said, I think I’ve shifted away from the journal-based poetry, but remain in the contemporary confessional agenda. Many of my poems are based in my real life and they tell stories of trauma and healing. But now, I put a lot more time and effort into them to make them the best they can be. I wasn’t able to offer that when I was younger.

Lynne Schmidt : part four

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?

Starting, and the pressure of “good” poetry. There are some poems that aren’t meant to move mountains, and I have to remind myself that it’s okay to allow quieter, more gentle poems to exist. Outside of that, I have to be in the mood to write, so I TRY to write a poem a day, but sometimes it’ll be a poem a week, or a poem every two weeks. It’s hard to get into the mindset, or to properly hear my muse.

Lynne Schmidt : part three

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

Poetry gives a lot more freedom than fiction or nonfiction pieces. I like it because you spend a minute or three with a reader and you only have so many lines to connect with them and make them feel something. Novels and short stories have significantly longer. Poetry also allows for shorter commitments from the readers, which is why I think in our current distracted states of mind, poetry is picking up momentum.

Lynne Schmidt : part two

How do you know when a poem is finished?

I’m not really sure how to describe it but it’s a feeling I get. Kind of like the final puzzle piece clicking into place, or when you’ve rearranged your books and found the best arrangement. It’s the “aha!” moment that I know the poem is done. Some poems I write never get this moment so they stay in the “revised” file the rest of their lives. The ones that reach this moment go on submission.
 

Lynne Schmidt : part one

Lynne Schmidt is a mental health professional and an award winning poet and memoir author who also writes young adult fiction. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks, Gravity (Nightingale and Sparrow Press 2019), On Becoming a Role Model (Thirty West 2020) and Dead Dog Poems (Bottlecap Press, 2020). Her work has received the Maine Nonfiction Award, Editor's Choice Award, and was a 2018 and 2019 PNWA finalist for memoir and poetry respectively. Lynne is a five time 2019 Best of the Net Nominee, and an honorable mention for the Charles Bukowski Poetry Award. In 2012 she started the project, AbortionChat, which aims to lessen the stigma around abortion. When given the choice, Lynne prefers the company of her three dogs and one cat to humans.

What are you working on?

I’m always working on a lot of things at once. I have two full poetry manuscripts I’m constantly rearranging, a new chapbook that delves into Dante’s Divine Comedy a bit, signing up for or applying to be a featured poet at various gigs, and in general writing poems. I have a memoir that’s on submission as well – The Right to Live: A Memoir of Abortion. So I’m also spending some time editing that.