0

Marisa Petersen

 

Marisa Petersen is a retired teacher who taught Spanish in New Mexico, New York and Oregon, and English in Romania.

Tell us about your creative process. Are you an early bird or a night owl? Do you have a writing group?

I’m definitely a night owl. But I make notes at any hour, any place. When I’m working on a poem or story, the images, metaphors or phrasing I need often surface while I’m washing dishes—I stop, dry my hands, grab a pencil and piece of paper from a basket on the kitchen counter, and jot down the words or sensory details that have just popped into my mind.

My poetry explores common domestic experiences such as learning how to be a grandmother or canning tomato sauce. Sometimes local neighborhood characters wander into a poem, while another collection of work reflects life ten time zones away where Dacian and Roman ruins and medieval fairy-tale castles create backstory for one of the most sophisticated hi-tech societies in the world.

Insightful feedback from my writing group invariably pinpoints where and what I need to expand, tighten or toss to improve a poem before sharing it at a poetry reading or submitting it for publication.

What are you reading now?

What finally rose to the top of my reading stack? Jamie Zeppa’s memoir Beyond the Sky and the Earth – A Journey into Bhutan. And I’m re-reading Mirrors – Stories of Almost Everyone by Eduardo Galeano.

What are some of your favorite books?

Favorite books include The Hare With Amber Eyes (Edmund de Waal), Shakespeare in Kabul (Stephen Landrigan and Qais Akbar Omar), The Emperor of All Maladies (Siddhartha Mukherjee), Bel Canto (Ann Patchett), Stones for Ibarra (Harriet Doerr), Platero y Yo (Miguel de Unamuno), Out of Africa (Karen von Blixen), anything by Barbara Kingsolver and Beatrice Potter.