Francine Conley interviews Connie Voisine

Alum Francine Conley (poetry, ’14) interviewed faculty member Connie Voisine about her new book Calle Florista, location in poetry, and other topics for Shadowgraph Quarterly:

Conley: Can you talk about your coming into poetry, and how your own relationship to more than one spoken language has (if at all) played a role in how you handle English.

Voisine: No doubt there were a couple of main factors–the first is the way that reading affected me. My earliest memories of reading chapter books involve lounging on the green couch in the darkish living room all day Saturday. My mother begged me to go outside with my sisters who were probably playing in the barn with the pigs, or in the summer fields of clover, or riding bike down our steep driveway. I could read for hours (sedentary nature? escapist leanings?). My eyes flowed over the pages quickly and capably. I lived better with words–Laura Ingalls Wilder made me think about food, travel, aloneness with nature, and fear in my own life. My world became articulate and more vivid because of those books.

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