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by Nance Van Winckel Man Shaving a Woman's Legs Having to Decide Amongst Ourselves Give it Up Little Blue Heron I Watched Her Go Keep the Engine Running What My Father Would Say  Order Nance Van Winckel's latest book from Amazon! Writer's Guidelines Caffeine Destiny Staff |
Featured Poet: Nance Van Winckel Nance Van Winckel is the author of three collections of poems: Bad Girl With Hawk (U. of Illinois, 1988), The Dirt (Miami U. Press, 1994), and After a Spell (Miami U. Press, 1998). New poems appear in APR, Ohio Review, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and Paris Review. She has also published two collections of short stories: Limited Lifetime Warranty and Quake, both with U. of Missouri Press. A third book of fiction will be out in March with Persea Books. She's the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literary Fellowship in poetry and a 1998 Washington State Artists Trust Literary Award in fiction. She is a professor in the graduate creative writing program at Eastern Washington University. Nance also teaches a mentoring course for poets. It includes feedback on poems as well as suggested readings. Much of the mentoring work is done on-line. Interested poets can contact her at nancev@ior.com In a recent conversation, we asked Nance some questions about her work and her influences. Her answers follow: CAFFEINE DESTINY: Why do you write? NANCE VAN WINCKEL: Partly because it seems like my job. It's 7 a.m.: I'm supposed to be at my desk. Something feels amiss if I'm not. And partly because what is lifted out and drops down to the page surprises me. It has come from me, but then again, it hasn't, not entirely. It's come through me. I'm a conduit. I take that part of the job seriously. I try to keep in shape. Sitting there at my desk. Straightening the pens. Closing my eyes if I feel something begin to bubble up. What I didn't know I knew. I think it's important to find that out. And then to see-- to think about it and think about it and discern if it might be important to anyone else. If so, perhaps after it's properly arranged and ordered, after its music is tuned up and tuned in, it might be a poem. CD: Does poetry have a purpose? NANCE: A good poem, I think, serves as a bridge between one's most private inner life and something outside oneself: another inner life, the natural world, the mysteries of society, culture, politics. The poem forges connections, allows what we don't quite understand to somehow be more clearly realized, even if still not quite understood. And . . . empathy. This is an important purpose for all the arts, I believe. Poetry, and fiction too, help us to enter, imaginatively, other lives-- lives sometimes very different from our own. We stand inside another consciousness and feel our way around in another world. I think this helps us live our everyday lives, tuning in to the plight of others, broadening our awareness of differences and diversities. CD: Who are some of your favorite writers? NANCE: Oh, many, many. I go in bouts of an internse passion for this author, then someone another. Over the years some of those people have included: Wallace Stevens, John Berryman, Sylvia Plath, Tomas Transtromer, Rainer Rilke, Elizabeth Bishop. Lately I've been keen on poems by Yannis Ritsos, Jack Gilbert, Linda Gregg, Li-Young Lee, Dorothy Barresi, Norman Dubie, Tess Gallagher, and Malena Morling. CD: What do you like most about living in the Northwest? NANCE: Buying superb salmon at $2.99 a lb. at the grocery. The smell of pine and cedar when I walk. The views of my mountains when I walk. All the drama of the seasons. Laid-back, kind people. (Maybe they're everywhere, but they're definitely here.) Hot springs and cold glacial lakes. Wildflowers. Hummingbird Hawk Moths. Marmots. The Spokane River in May. May. |