Article about poet, Terri Kirby Erickson, author of Thread Count, and a poetry workshop she recently conducted.
Reading set poet on a path of writing, teaching
Teens attend seminar at the Lewisville library
By Stephanie Stallings
JOURNAL REPORTER
Terri Erickson reads from some of her favorite poets while talking with young people at the library about how they might go about writing poetry of their own.
(Journal Photo by Bruce Chapman)
For Terri Kirby Erickson, life intervened in the pursuit of her poetic dreams.
During her junior year of college, Erickson learned that she has Crohn’s disease, a debilitating disease of the colon that affects a person’s ability to function.
“I was a mother and married when I went back to school at Winston Salem State University,” she said.
Later, as a single mother, Erickson paid her way through school with state and federal loans and then worked as a medical editor for several medical journals. One day after she attended a reading by Rita Dove, Erickson realized that life was passing her by.
It was the time to start writing.
In a period of creative output, she wrote more than 200 poems in her first work, Thread Count.
She is working on a second book of poems that will be “more adventurous” than her first one, she said.
Last fall, she taught a continuing- education seminar at Salem College on poetry.
She emphasized mindfulness, observation and how to capture moments of everyday experiences in poetry.
Erickson led the Teen Poetry Workshop April 17 at the Lewisville library. She participated in the library’s On the Same Poem initiative.
“There’s all kinds of poetry, as you will find,” she told the teenagers. “I prefer very real and accessible poetry. People can understand it and feel something about it.”
Erickson led a discussion for one of Peter Hoagland’s poems. She said that teaching poetry can be challenging.
“You don’t want to critique it so they don’t want to do it again,” Erickson said.
She gave teenagers a tip sheet of advice for aspiring poets.
“Poetry is communication,” she said. “Young poets get in a rut writing diary type of things. Keep your audience in mind.”
Poets should be mindful of things, she said.
“Pay attention to people, things around you - use your powers of observation,” she said. “Be in the moment and pay attention to your life.”
Erickson told the teenagers to carry a notebook. That is important in capturing fragments of their experiences. The students then should use that information in their poems.
She encouraged the students to listen to what is going on around them.
“Little snatches of conversation can be fun to put in poems,” Erickson said.
Erickson then talked about studying poetry.
“Some people are afraid to read anything if they’re going to write poetry,” she said. “This is a mistake. Even the great masters learned by copying other people. Go hear other poets read their own work. It gives a new dimension to it.”
She then read from her personal collection of books, starting with a poem from Mary Oliver’s book, Dreamwork.
“Mary Oliver is poet who writes about nature. I think it’s just beautiful the way she portrays what it might be like to be an animal,” Erickson said.
Erickson recommended another book of Oliver’s, A Poetry Handbook, as a look at poetry’s technical aspects. Oliver revised some of her poems more than 50 times.
“Metaphors (and) similes. You need to have this tool kit, to be able to speak intelligently about your craft,” Erickson said.
She then pulled out a book by Ted Kooser, the poet laureate of the United States from 2004 to 2006.
“His poetry is clear, accessible. Anybody can understand his poetry,” Erickson said.
Kooser also has a technical book about being a poet, titled The Poetry Home Repair Manual.
“Reading his book feels like a friend giving you advice,” Erickson said.
She also gave advice about poetry’s technical aspects.
“Pay attention to rhythm. Read it out loud,” she said. “Develop an ear for your lines, your sentences. People are buying into the magic of your poem - you never want there to be a stumbling block that will take people out of that magic.”
Erickson then asked some students to read their poems. “It was very touching … they were too shy to read their own poems, so they sort of slid them over to me so I could read them to the group,” Erickson said later. “And really, they were quite good.”
A Collection of Voices from Around the World is more than just a poetry compilation. It is a partnership of poets from around the globe brought together by an internet poetry forum. That forum, poetrypages.com, has been the home of many a fine poet s
“The woman or man who is a poet, or fiction writer, or playwright, or all of these, is engaged constantly in a jazz ballet of vocabularies, passions, genders, histories, perspectives, death, love, and life. The music of revelation announces itself to
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