Do you have any early memories of being attracted to writing or poetry?
When I was very young growing up in Fremont, New Hampshire, my Dad was always an avid reader, he loved poetry, philosophy, history, psychology, and he had a fantastic book collection. Where I was growing up, it was a new subdivision which had not yet been completed, so there were no other families with young children living near me. That meant I had no-one my age to play with, my sister and brother had not yet been born. I became a reader, naturally, and I read everything I could get my hands on.
With poetry, I became interested and intrigued by poetry specifically when I saw my father’s version of Sylvia Plath’s “The Colossus”. I don’t think I understood it, I’m not sure I understand it now, but I read that book many times and I wanted to know more about this style of writing.
My dad had a lot of Anne Sexton. I love Anne Sexton. I have grown a deep affection for her work. She always seems so secondary to Plath, and they always come up together as that grouping of confessional poets, but I think she has a lot to offer.
I think what reading poetry gave me was a sense that I wanted to use language, I wanted to use words in interesting ways. So definitely that encounter with Sylvia Plath shifted my thoughts.
Did you get support at school or at home?
I didn’t really start writing creatively until I was a freshman in High school. I think the teenage years can be a natural period where you gravitate towards writing because you are experiencing so many conflicting emotions.
When I first started writing, I was very interested in collage, and I would write based on the collages I was creating, but I rarely showed anyone anything I wrote. I was quite shy about my writing. I was very open as a reader but quite subdued as a writer.
My parents knew I was a reader and every weekend they would find me reading. They knew I was a bookworm, and they were always supportive of my reading, but they didn’t know anything about my writing.
How does poetry become such an important part of your work?
In college, I was originally a pre-vet, pre-med, major. Everything I did up to that point, was geared towards becoming a veterinarian. I had an internship at an animal hospital. Everyone who knew me was expecting me to become a vet.
Now, I had a double major and English was the other part of that degree. I loved to read so much that it seemed obvious to do that. As one of my elective courses, I studied with a poet called Charles Simic and after I attended his poetry workshops; that was pretty much it.
I remember telling my parents in a parking lot of Pizza Hut, that I was dropping my pre-Vet major and my mother was terrified about what I would be able to do with an English degree. I think she shed a few tears at that time.
And that starts the ball rolling regarding poetry and becoming a poet?
Yes. Definitely during my undergraduate studies at the University of New Hampshire, after I took that poetry workshop with Charles Simic, and that was the first time I ever had feedback about my writing from other writers. It wasn’t always easy to receive feedback from other writers, and I did find it difficult to hear what people thought, but it inspired me to keep writing. I think in the end I did like being critiqued.
After that, I started to search out graduate programmes which concentrated on creative writing. I ended up doing a Fine Arts degree at The New School in New York City and so I moved from New Hampshire to New York City to study poetry.
If you would like to find out more about the work of Melinda Wilson – see the links below