Strange and Wild

July 13, 2016December 1, 2017 / Laura Haugen

I read a craft tip recently from the poet Maggie Smith (author of The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, Tupelo Press 2015, among other works) that really resonated with me:

Sometimes the best thing I can do to improve a poem is to loosen my grip on it. It sounds a bit counterintuitive, but if you tie up every loose end, if you scrub all the strangeness and wildness out of it, you can revise the life right out of a poem if you’re not careful. You can put its light out.

(more of Maggie Smith’s wise words here on Diane Locward’s Poetry Newsletter)

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Spring Forward

April 6, 2016April 6, 2016 / Laura Haugen

This past winter in Washington, DC was a season of closures. Schools, businesses, government offices, and public transportation all shut down for several days amid a series of snowstorms. Even after the last pile of snow disappeared, the area’s ageing metro transit system has had to undergo repeated closures for trackwork repairs and assessments.

For me the season was a blessed time for going nowhere. Snowed in and stranded, I took to my own repairs and assessments. I wrote, I waited, I wrote more. Continue reading →

Two Fall Updates

November 6, 2015November 6, 2015 / Laura Haugen

We started with the little things: scraps of junk, things of no import or stuff we could do without. But soon we had to burn the things we needed, the things we loved. By the end, we let go of just about everything around us we held dear. We tossed it into the flames and watched it smolder.