November 27, 2010Love Hurts, San Jose 1975Christine Hamm

“I have been a writer since kindergarten, when I wrote illustrated tales of shapeless purple monsters eating everyone and then crying. My themes haven’t changed much since then. I came to poetry after writing fiction for many years. I eventually came to dislike the awkwardness of ‘plots’ and how false they seemed. Poetry seems to claim a lot less than fiction, and question more and in a way, leave more space in the universe. I read once in a Zen magazine that poetry is about ‘the space around it’ the white page between line breaks, the gap between the poem and the bottom of the page and I think my writing tries to make peace with the space, use it in a way that gives the reader an opportunity to pause and make their own way, whatever that means.”