Susan Shaw Sailer

Oyster River Pages: How has your writing changed over time?

Susan Shaw Sailor: Enrolling in an MFA program in poetry at age 65 (I had already earned a Ph. D. and had taught at a university prior to that) was the most important step I have taken in changing how I write poetry. When I was in my late teens, I first began writing poems frequently. I had checked out every volume in the poetry library in the university I attended and found myself naturally writing poems. I continued to do this through adulthood but when I retired from teaching, I found more time for writing poems. After attending a number of workshops, I decided I wanted to commit myself to a more rigorous relation to poetry. Hence the MFA program, which was excellent. For the first five years after completing the degree, my poems were primarily centered around my self and family; after that I broadened my concerns to include what was happening in my environment.

ORP: Name three artists or writers you'd like to be compared to. Why these?

SSS: Adrienne Rich, Muriel Rukeyser, and James Wright are three poets whose work I’d like my poems to be compared to. I so admire Rich’s poems exploring her life in ways that mirror women’s lack of power and, more importantly, show them realizing their power. Rukeyser explored deplorable social and working conditions in her poems, raising awareness of unjust conditions. Wright’s poems are characterized by intense emotion and rhythmic richness.

ORP: Do you approach writing time as work or play?

SSS: I try to set aside mornings for writing since that’s the time my mind works best. Writing for me is not work at all, though revising poems takes huge amounts of energy. I don’t think writing poems is play, either. I enjoy writing immensely, and when I’m writing well, I as a singular person ceases to exist. I’m flowing with an energy I somehow make contact with. For me, writing is as natural as breathing.

ORP: What’s next for you artistically?

SSS: It’s impossible to say what’s next for me as a poet. Certain subjects capture me when I become aware of them and then I must write about them. One of Walt Whitman’s poems contains a line which I’ll paraphrase: if I could not daily send sunlight out of me, it would destroy me. When a  subject captures me, I need to write about it or it would consume me.

ORP: How does this work connect to your personal experiences/identity?

SSS:  Much of what I write is based on something I have experienced either directly or, having heard, seen, or read about it, I must write about it. But in writing the poem, I may juxtapose images or modify descriptions to make a better poem.

Susan Shaw Sailer lives in Morgantown, West Virginia. She has published two books, THE GOD OF ROUNDABOUTS and SHIP OF LIGHT, as well as a chapbook, COAL. Her recent poems appear in such journals as MINERVA RISING and KAKALAK 18. Find her poetry here.