poetry – Page 12 – Andrew Careaga

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.’

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.

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.

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.

On killing your darlings

AI-generated image of candy hearts, with "RIP" on top.

This being Valentine’s Day, maybe “On killing your sweethearts” would be a more appropriate title for this post. But since most writers are familiar with the phrase “kill your darlings,” let’s stick with that.

I was scrolling through Threads last night when I ran across a discussion about the phrase, thanks to a post by the novelist Michael Chabon.

“Kill your darlings” post by Michael Chabon on Threads.

Introducing ‘Litmags, etc.,’ an X list of literary journals

One of the best things to come out of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter (now X) is Lists, a tool to help denizens of that website organize, categorize and curate social media accounts by subject or interest.

Even though the platform has become less useful, less interesting, and more soul-sucking since Elon Musk bought it, you can still find nuggets of value as long as you use it wisely and stay away from the cesspool of the general feed. One way of walling yourself off from that toxicity is by creating lists of the accounts you most want to follow, or by following lists curated by trusted sources.