Friday Five: Q&A with poet Agnes Vojta

‘You don’t need anybody’s permission to be a poet. You just need to love it.’

Agnes Vojta
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.

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Shifting gears

Making the switch from writing short fiction and flash fiction to creative nonfiction feels like switching gears for me. Or maybe it’s better described as switching vehicles entirely.

With fiction, I quickly get in the zone. I’m driving a Porsche or a Ferrari, zooming along the autobahn.

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Friday Five: February finds

Despite my good intentions, the writing and blogging have been inconsistent (read: nonexistent) lately.

As John Lennon wrote and sang, “Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans.”

But that doesn’t mean I’ve been slacking off. No, not at all, dear reader.

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We are not who

We are not who

they say we are.

We are not who

they think we are.

Who do they think

they are?

They who say

what they think

without

understanding.

Without

seeking.

Without

seeing.

Without looking

or asking

or questioning

themselves.

We are who

we are

whether we say

what we are.

Or whether they

say what they think

we are.

Whatever they think.

We are.

Continue reading “We are not who”