Friday Five: Q&A with poet Agnes Vojta

Continuing this blog’s celebration of women authors throughout Women’s History Month, and furthering my desire to use this platform to highlight other authors, I’m delighted today to share this email interview with Agnes Vojta, a poet who happens to live in my neck of the woods here in Missouri and who also happens to teach physics at Missouri University of Science and Technology.

A native of Germany, Agnes is the author of three books of poetry — Porous Land, The Eden of Perhaps, and A Coracle for Dreams — all published by Spartan Press in 2019, 2020, and 2022, respectively. More recently, she and eight other poets from Missouri and Arkansas collaborated to create the anthology Wild Muse: Ozarks Nature Poetry, published in December 2022 by Cornerstone Press. Agnes also serves as an associate editor for Thimble Literary Magazine and hosts Poetry at the Pub, a local reading and open mic event. She and her husband, Thomas, a professor and chair of physics at Missouri S&T, are avid hikers and kayakers who share their passion for the outdoors and information about Ozarks trails and more at RollaHiking.info.

1. What inspired you to start writing poetry?

I started writing poetry as a child. My mother was an opera singer, and I grew up in a household filled with songs. I loved memorizing poetry, loved words and rhymes, and it just happened that I would start writing my own. I read all the time and wrote adventure stories, but by my teenage years, I wrote only poetry.

When I emigrated from Germany to the U.S., I found myself unable to write. I was fluent in English and could teach and do everything — I just could not write poetry. It was very frustrating. It took over 10 years, until English had become my emotional language, and I was able to write again.

2. Where do you find your inspiration? 

I love the outdoors and find much of my inspiration in nature. Many of my poems originate from hiking, kayaking, or working in my friend’s gardens.

I am part of a group of writers who come together on Zoom each week. We play what we call “the poetry game.” Every person suggests a few words, and we make a word list. Then we all go away and write for half an hour or so, inspired by the words on the list, and then we get back together and read out loud what we have written. Because the words come from all the different people, I end up with words I would never have thought to use in a poem and get ideas I might not have had otherwise. Some of my best poems have started as drafts in those sessions.

3. As a full-time faculty member, how do you balance your academic work with your work as a poet?

By being flexible. In the busiest weeks of the semester, I don’t get any writing done. I simply accept that. Many books and blogs with writing advice say that one must write daily; that has never worked for me. I have freed myself from that pressure by aiming to write regularly and often but allowing myself to adapt to the rhythm of the academic semester.

As a faculty member, I am fortunate to have some flexibility in my schedule. My class times are set in stone, but I can shift grading and prep work around. Being a morning person helps; I get a lot of work done before my 8 a.m. class. I make it a priority to try and build time in my schedule for my online writing group.

I do not teach during the summer and always plan to write a lot; however, I am not much more productive than during the academic year. Having a lot of open time is not always conducive to writing — sometimes the best poem comes from the stolen half-hour in a busy week.

4. Tell us about your latest writing project.

My last completed project was a collaboration with eight other poets from Missouri and Arkansas. We created a book of Ozark nature poetry, titled Wild Muse, which was published by Cornerpost Press. We got together as a group for several readings and had a lot of fun.

I am currently in the first stages of putting together a manuscript for a new poetry collection, my fourth. I have some prose pieces I am playing with that could become either prose poems or haibun. We’ll see.

5. What one piece of advice would you give to aspiring poets who are just getting started?

Have fun with the writing. Don’t write just to fit the style of a particular magazine — write the poems you want to be writing. You don’t need anybody’s permission to be a poet. You just need to love it, put in the time, read widely (that is important), and work on getting better.