And now for something completely different... Poetry!

Next up on my guest list is Joanne Faries. Joanne is a great blogging friend, who has supported me since Cat and The Dreamer was a mere kitten, so when I noticed she was publishing three collections of poetry with a whisper, I thought I should shout about them for her!!

Amazon US and UK

Amazon US and UK

No memorization required!!!  No hidden meanings.

Amazon US and UK

Follow the links under each title to take you directly to the Amazon page of your choice.

Welcome to my blog, Joanne. I'll admit it straight away, I'm a little out of my depth when it comes to poetry... Tell me a bit about the collections you've just published? 

Thanks, Annalisa, for having me and I'm out of my depth on poetry too. It's the last thing I expected to write. However, I met Sheryl Nelms through Trinity Writers' Workshop.  Her poems were funny and I understood them. I could express myself with poetry, and actually my first publishing successes in on-line journals were poems. Now over five years later, I chose to compile my work and certain themes sorted out - nature/childhood nostalgia/emotion. I decided to keep my Wordsplash title and call these Poetry Puddle. I hope folks splash through the collections and come away thinking, "Huh, I like poetry. Who knew?"

Yes, your blog is called Word Splash and your collection of flash fiction is called Word Splash Flash. I read and loved your flash fiction, so I'm looking forward to reading these collections. Do you prefer writing prose or poetry?

Thanks. The words flow into prose or poetry depending on how the picture takes shape. Some tales need dialogue and become flash. Some teensy thought just needs word brush strokes to become a poem (and they can have a small plot or a character - read Brush Your Teeth in Hazy Memory. It conveys astonishment at my Nana's false teeth)

How do your ideas form themselves into finished poems? I've read thousands of fiction writers' methodologies, is poetry similar? 

I hear a phrase or drive in fog or sit on my patio in Texas having heat stroke - there are a few "hot" poems in Nature.  In Hazy Memory - I reflected on times at the beach or with my grandmother. I had a happy childhood, so these poems are joyful gauzy memories. In Tread Water - I tap some deeper emotions. I have one about communication. It evolved from watching folks dining out and not talking. Everyone was staring at a cellphone.

Have you ever started writing a poem and found it turned itself into a piece of flash fiction? 

Absolutely and vice versa. I'll write a flash and decide I like some phrasing or image, and turn it into a poem. It's funny - I have trouble writing full blown fiction. Maybe it's my business background, but I was great at writing terse memos. Now, the few novels I've attempted - I find them too talkie. I can't seem to expand. I remove extraneous verbiage, and use a thesaurus, etc to choose the absolute right word. I also like the letter "S" - I definitely use a lot of slithery, slippery, skedaddle words.  

Do you float around meadows staring at the clouds like Wordsworth? (Yes, my vision of poets is very romantic!)

In Texas, you float in the pool. Splish, splash.

What question are you dying to be asked that no one has ever asked you?

Which poem has been rejected the most, but you love it anyway? Answer - Hardy Garden and yes it is in the Nature book.

Final thoughts: 

I will say - don't be afraid of poetry. I hope my poems demonstrate that and just make folks happy or nod their heads in agreement at the moment I captured. I haven't studied meter or anything fancy and I don't pretend to think I'm Maya Angelou or Mary Oliver. I try to space the words on the page as needed and sometimes the whitespace adds dimension to the poem story. Sound is important - the words need to clunk, clink, kerplop - they add action and can heighten tension.

I used the word shlop in one of my stories  - I love words like that! Thanks for visiting my blog today, and good luck with your collections.

Joanne Faries