Continuing our tribute to poets during National Poetry Month, today’s Friday Five is with Melissa Powers, a poet, novelist and non-fiction writer.
Melissa is an award-winning author whose work has appeared in Common Boundary, American Literary Realism, The Quest, Midwest Poetry Review, Writer’s Journal, and Cave Region Review. Her books include The Outsiders (2006), an instructional guide on the novel; Afterthoughts (2012), a collection of poems; and three works fiction, including two young adult science fiction novels, Spark and Surfacing (Amazon, 2012, 2014) . Her awards include the Springfield (Missouri) Writer’s Guild Grand Prize for Poetry (1998), the Johnson Memorial Grand Prize Award — League of Minnesota Poets (2003), the William Stafford Award — Washington Poets Association (2009), and the Writer’s Journal poetry contest (2011). She holds an M.A. from Missouri State University and was a college English instructor for more than 25 years at Drury University, Missouri University of Science and Technology, and East Central College. Currently, she is a student success specialist/writing tutor at East Central College, a freelance academic editor specializing in dissertations, theses, journal articles, and book projects, and a staff writer for The Phelps County Focus newspaper. Melissa’s recent poetry can be found on the Facebook group Melissa Ann Poetry.
1. How did you first become interested in writing?
I was always fascinated with language and the sounds of words, an interest that came about largely because of my mother reading to me when I was a young child. I started writing at a very young age, and my first publication was the result of an exercise that my sixth-grade teacher initiated. We were asked to submit items to the Scholastic Reader, a periodical that was distributed in the classroom probably like once a month. I submitted a pun about library books that went something like this:
All About Libraries by Ike. N. Read
Reading is Fun by Rita Book
I remember being recognized and getting my picture in the paper for my very first published work!
2. Who have been your greatest literary/writing influences and why?
I always pause when I get asked this question, because honestly, there are way too many to mention. I just remember by the time I was in my freshman year of college, I was fully immersed in a deep well of literary love. I was heavily influenced by the Romantic movement, both English and American (Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Thoreau, Whitman); American realism (Jack London and Stephen Crane); and then later, contemporary and modern American poetry such as e.e. cummings, Elizabeth Bishop, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, and William Carlos Williams.
The why is an even harder question. At times, I was influenced because someone I respected, admired, or loved was interested in a particular author or movement. Other times, I simply discovered the magic on my own. If I could pinpoint one specific thing that influenced me the most, it is probably the way contemporary American poetry feels real and tangible—I learned a lot about authentic sensory language from these poets and authors. Also, I can’t remember who said it, but there’s an idea I came across years ago that still holds true today. The best poems are those that don’t really end. They leave the reader with sort of an invitation to keep the discourse going, indefinitely. It’s sort of the opposite of closure; an ending with more possibilities than definitive conclusions. The contemporary and modern American poets were very good at this.
Additionally, I am very much influenced by music; it’s one of the primary ways I make sense of the world. Listening to a song with great arrangement and lyrics is akin to experiencing a poem.
3. You’ve been involved in starting public poetry groups. Tell us a bit about the groups you’ve started and what you see as the value of these groups?
So about 25 years ago, I was teaching a creative writing (poetry) class for Drury University in Lebanon, Missouri. As part of that class, and having several local poet friends, I initiated a poetry reading that took place at our local library, called The Nightingale Reading. Then, when I first moved to Rolla (Missouri) about three years later, I had an idea to start another poetry reading here. After putting my feelers out, I connected with Dr. Elizabeth Cummins, professor emerita of English at Missouri S&T. She read some of my work and helped me brainstorm about how to organize the event. She even came up with the name: PoetSpeak. Then, I teamed up with Arts Rolla to get the ball rolling. I am pleased to say that both Nightingale and PoetSpeak are going strong to this day, and I am so happy to have had that small mark on the poetry movement in our area.
Recently, I have participated in the monthly Poetry at the Pub, sponsored by Public House Rolla and organized by local poet and S&T physics professor Agnes Vojta. These open mic readings are a great way to get positive feedback on your work and to hear what others are doing. There are some truly exceptional poets in this area, and I always look forward to listening to their work.
4. Tell us a bit about your novel, Spark. Any plans for the second book in this series?
The novel Spark (written under the name Melissa Dereberry) took a long time to write, going through multiple plot changes and revisions over the course of several years. It is a young adult science fiction romance that involves time travel. I actually did write the sequel to that book, titled Surfacing, published in 2014. I wrote that one during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November of 2013. Spark is on the shelf at Rolla Public Library, as well as the library at St. Patrick School in Rolla.
5. What advice would you give to anyone wanting to start writing poetry for publication?
I actually started submitting to magazines and journals back in the mid-1990s and didn’t have much luck. I didn’t really gain much momentum until I started entering contests, which became an invaluable part of my development as an author. I was able to get a real sense of the quality of my work from these contests as well as earning a bit of cash for my effort. Submitting to magazines and journals can often be very difficult because they receive hundreds of submissions and most publications have a niche market, so if you’re not super familiar with what they publish, you are essentially wasting time (and back in the day, lots of postage). Plus, publications do not usually pay authors for poetry, or they pay in copies. Contests are very specific, usually, as to what they are looking for, and they often have nice monetary awards.
Andy writes! 