Faith Shearin

My poems begin in little notebooks, in my car. I keep lists of ideas and images and I scribble whenever I can, usually for at least an hour after I drop my daughter off at school. I file books and music I enjoy in my back seat; it's a mess but it works well for me: a kind of traveling office.

The desire to write is a desire to be in dialogue with the books I carry even into my bathtub and bed. I think of reading as listening and writing as speaking; when I read something powerful or exciting, I find myself wishing I could respond.

I'm working on a new manuscript, which usually takes me three to five years. I have been living in a cabin on top of a mountain in West Virginia and my impossible driveway is a central obsession. I have a small, low-slung dog and a daughter who speaks Latin and loves atoms and spiders. There is a creature in my ceiling that makes wonderful scratching sounds. My husband wants to buy some chickens. I am writing poems in my car, before I swim.

-Faith Shearin interview