I spoke with featured poet, Hayden Saunier about her poetry writing process and inspirations. Here’s what she had to say.

LF: Do you remember writing your first poem?
HS: I don’t remember the writing of it, but I remember it well-- I was writing
about one of my favorite things. I had to ask how to spell the name of the tree
so my mother got curious and saved the poem—that’s the only reason I can
remember it. I was eight.

The Swing
Tied to the paulownia tree
Up in the air is me
I swing so high I almost fly
Over the green green grass.

​It's obvious that rhyme was not going to be my strong suit, but what effective
use of repetition!

LF: Who are some of your favorite poetic influences?
HS: WC Williams for images, Szymborska for point of view, Bishop for clarity,
Shakespeare for everything.

LF: Could you describe your creative process for writing poetry?
HS: When I’m lucky I start with a rhythm or phrase attached to an image or an
image that attaches to a phrase. The image and the sound in one piece.
Then I work from there. Or I write around something that I am trying to name
and see if I can catch it in a big delicate net. I then start to follow, line to line.

LF: At what point do you decide to stop revising your work?
HS: In an early draft, I try to stop when I feel resistance from the poem--
because I am probably trying to make it into something it doesn’t want to be.
Sometimes I have to wait a long time to go back to a draft. When a poem
feels finished—I do the same thing—I put it away so I can see it with new
eyes. If it still feels complete, or as complete as I can make it, then I let it go.
I am slowly learning patience with writing. Or more honestly, I am learning to
curb my desire for the poem to be complete and ready to go out into the
world, because that’s an ego project, as Brenda Hillman says. The ego project
doesn’t make good poems for me—and I have ruined poems by wanting them
too much and for the wrong reasons. Happily, I sometimes read a poem by
someone else and think, “They got it! They found that poem I wanted to write!”
And I am grateful that the poem found a voice.

LF: What are you working on now?
HS: Absolutely nothing. I am trying not to push to write. I’m journaling and
working on projects outside of writing, and simply observing, being in the
world, allowing the well to fill up.

​LF: Why is poetry important in the world?
HS: I believe it connects us on the deepest levels and it can shift the smallest
perceptions inside us that miraculously shift the largest things inside. We find
ourselves newly when we lose ourselves in that connection.
 
LF: What do you hope readers take away from your poems?
HS: A recognition of being alive in all its contradictions—how the world is
simple and complicated, tragic and hilarious and beautiful. And a sense that
we are involved in a long conversation over centuries about this experience.