Jennifer Perrine: “I fell in love with poetry by writing in persona. When I was a junior in high school, my English teacher assigned The Scarlet Letter and asked everyone in the class to write a response. She gave us several options, and among them was the chance to write a poem in the voice of a character from the book. I chose Pearl, Hester Prynne’s daughter, because she was so central to the story and yet hardly spoke in the novel. I discovered that persona poems were a way I could imagine—and help others to imagine—the perspectives of marginalized characters. In this series of poems, written as the status of immigrants is once again contested in public discourse, I was wrestling with how Lady Liberty, standing there on one of the literal margins of our country, might contribute to the current conversation.” (web)
