What does it mean to write poems? How do poets come to poetry and live inside the art? What influences a poet and how do those influences evolve? What should new poets be thinking about at the beginning of their writing lives? And how does a poet sit down, again and again, to make a poem and tackle new discoveries?
The Poet-in-Residence Interviews is an opportunity for each poet who comes to campus for Oregon State University’s Visiting Writers Series to discuss these questions with David Biespiel, OSU’s Poet-in-Residence. This archive is ideal for undergraduate, graduate, MFA, and prospective MFA students to glean insight into becoming a poet and writing new poems.
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Tomas Q. Morin is a poet of the imaginary swoon who describes poetry as one of the essential joys of human life. He’s a poet who writes, not to find meaning, but to find experience. Tomás Q. Morín is the author of Patient Zero and A Larger Country, winner of the APR/Honickman Prize. He translated Pablo Neruda’s The Heights of Macchu Picchu and with Mari L’Esperance, he coedited Coming Close: Forty Essays on Philip Levine. Tomás read in the Visiting Writers Series on January 31, 2019. Two days before, we met in my studio in downtown Portland to discuss his first experiences with poetry, his influences, and his writing methods.
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