Julia Forster: How I Wrote ‘Drawing, 1988’
“Perhaps that’s what this poem is about: the many-dimensional reality in which we live as adults as opposed to the constraints of a childhood in which we are operating on different brain wave lengths.”
“Perhaps that’s what this poem is about: the many-dimensional reality in which we live as adults as opposed to the constraints of a childhood in which we are operating on different brain wave lengths.”
“I am a traditionalist and work hard to keep the meaning very close to the original while also echoing the sounds and rhythms of the original.”
“‘Dirty Laundry’ deals with nostalgia, memory, and the passage of time, but if I were to sum it up in one word, I’d say – hiraeth, a word any Welsh expat knows well.”
“Even out there at the tip of the Llyn peninsula, with Bardsey Sound beneath me, the bleakness of our environmental predicament felt inescapable. I envied [Plath] not writing under that weight.”
Content warning: mention of suicide
“My hope for this poem is that it reminds dykes of our unity when so much of the world tries to undermine us. Campfires give us a way of celebrating the rare joy of being in a majority.”
“Perhaps the best one can hope to do when writing in the voice of an animal is urgently point to one’s own ignorance.”
Content warning: animal cruelty, war