Tags
creative-writing, creativity, interview, MFA, poem, Poetry, Writing
L.I. Henley is the winner of the 2016 Pangaea Prize. She is the author of Starshine Road which won the 2017 Perugia Press Prize. She is also the author of two chapbooks, Desert with a Cabin View, and The Finding (Orange Monkey Publishing).
Go to our website for the entire interview.
Here is an excerpt:
I think I just realized that with poetry I had to be willing to explore my own distances, get out of a comfort zone that was only “comfortable” because I told myself it was. I had to be able to open the doors that I was once content to leave locked forever. I had to be devoted to the pursuit rather than to the “right ending.” The poet, upon opening one door and seeing there are infinite doors ahead, says, “Yes! This is exactly what I want to do with my time—open doors that lead to more doors.”
Karla Linn Merrifield, a nine-time Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in-Residence, has had ~600 poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has 12 books to her credit, the newest of which is Bunchberries, More Poems of Canada, a sequel to Godwit: Poems of Canada (FootHills), which received the Eiseman Award for Poetry. She is assistant editor and poetry book reviewer for The Centrifugal Eye, a member of the board of directors of Just Poets (Rochester, NY), and a member of the Florida State Poetry Society, and The Author’s Guild. She is currently at work on three manuscripts and seeking a home for The Comfort of Commas, a quirky chapbook that pays tribute to punctuation. Visit her woefully outdated blog, Vagabond Poet, at 
Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her work has been accepted by the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Enzagam and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.