Sandra Larson
Sandra Sidman Larson has seen her poetry published in numerous journals such as The Atlanta Review and magazines such as Studio Potter. Naomi Shihab Nye nominated her for a Pushcart Price as did the editors of the The Literary Bohemian. She has three chapbooks to her credit, Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens and Over a Threshold of Roots (Pudding House Press, Columbus Ohio) and Calendar Poems, a self-published chapbook. As a poet perched near the 45th northern parallel, she is drawn to writing about the landscape of home and her travels. In 2010 she was selected for the Foreword Program at The Loft Literary Center of Minneapolis a program to assist promising writers produce a manuscript. Sandra is the mother of three sons, two grandchildren and a relative to many beloved people. She spent her career in the social service sector, but now devotes herself to poetry and volunteer service.
What is your creative process?
Dog walking is often the start. Once I’m in a zone of drifting along, sentences, phrases pop into my head and I do one of two things: I write these down when I get a chance, or I sit down and begin to compose a poem. I always hand-write a poem to a point where it seems like a poem, and then I put it on the computer. The other way a poem begins is through an image presenting itself in the landscape, or a phrase I overhear. I’m never sure why these seem important, so I write them down. Maybe a poem appears, maybe it doesn’t. I hardly ever do what one is supposed to do—just sit down and start writing. Although I will say, I journal fitfully and sometimes later on I pick the beginnings of a poem out of a journal page like a vegetable out of a cup of soup.
What are you reading at the moment?
As to poetry, I’m beginning a summer journey with the reading of The Poetic Works of Tennyson: Cambridge Editions. I’m hoping some of his lyric prowess will rub off. I’m also halfway through The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning tale of the Great Migration of 6 million African Americans from South to North between 1915 and 1970. A history invisible to most of us, but a timely one for all Americans to read.
Your favorite books of all time would be…
I think I have to start with books I first read myself, so I’d say the Nancy Drew series. I traveled far in her blue roadster. Next would be the books my father read to me before I could read them myself such as The Last of the Mohicans, Treasure Island, The Prince and the Pauper. My favorite author in college was Dostoyevsky. I’ve reread him in later life and Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov rattle my world as much as ever.