February 2021

Poets & Patrons member Gail Goepfert is an ardent poet, photographer, and teacher. Currently, she’s an associate editor of RHINO Poetry and teaches classes online at National Louis University.

She authored a chapbook, A Mind on Pain, (Finishing Line Press 2015), a book, Tapping Roots (Aldrich Press 2018), a second book, Get Up Said the World, Červená Barva Press, 2020. Collaboratively, she worked with Patrice Boyer Claeys during the COVID months on Honey from the Sun, a book of her centos and Gail’s photographs, and a chapbook, This Hard Business of Living, coming out from Seven Kitchens Press in 2021. Glass Lyre Press will publish her latest book of poetry in 2021–Self-Portrait with Thorns. Recent poem publications appear in After Hours, The Examined Life Journal, Night Heron Barks, Inflectionist Review, and Rogue Agent. She’s had four nominations for a Pushcart Prize and this year was nominated for Best of the Net by Night Heron Barks. Her photographs appear online at the Chicago Botanic Garden, Olentangy Review, Storm Cellar, and 3Elements Review and on the cover of February 2015 Rattle. She lives, writes, and snaps photos in the Chicagoland area.

When did you begin writing poetry?

Probably my earliest connection with poetry was a “Poetry” project in eighth grade—Mr. Semones. We studied poets, dissected them, and responded to them. I still have the tattered remains of that project. I recall writing occasional poems over many years. The earliest was for my grandfather who was one of my favorite people ever and who died from black lung disease when I was just 22. I wrote poetry with my seventh-grade students. Then, in the last nine years of my teaching career, I had a chance to offer poetry writing to eighth graders in lieu of their study hall. We named the group Dreamcatchers (after I gently vetoed Pink Cadillacs). It was probably that encounter with poetry that spurred me to begin studying contemporary poetry when I retired from teaching and eventually begin my own writing. I loved the spunk and unforced writing of adolescents who often wrote without an editor on one shoulder. I found a local workshop, took poems for critique, and began to learn about publishing— my first poem was published in Avocet, 2010. Other poets I met were very generous with information, and what I learned about poetry I credit to so many people from so many groups and workshops I attended.

What triggered your interest in creating poems?

In one of the literature anthologies I used in teaching, there was a poem, “Mama is a Sunrise” by Evelyn Tooley Hunt who also wrote as Tao-Li. She was famous for writing the poem “Taught Me Purple,” the poem which inspired the novel The Color Purple by Alice Walker. I didn’t know that at the time, but I recall trying to sway my students that poetry was a marvel — poets had the ability to prize each word and to stitch them together with brevity and impact. I am not at all confident that I was successful, but it was the reading of that poem and others that left the door open for me when the time was right.

Who are your favorite poets?

The poets I return to are Jane Kenyon, Louise Gluck, Kay Ryan, Ross Gay, W. S. Merwin, Jane Hirshfield; poets I would like to read more include Lucille Clifton, Natasha Trethewey, Richard Wilbur, Maxine Kumin, and Seamus Heaney.

What inspires you? Other poets, painting? music?

So much. Mostly what I see inspires me. I am very visual—and I have a lifelong connection to photography. I also am open to experimentation. I’ve dabbled—ekphrastic poetry, prose poems, various forms like the triolet and the ghazal, epistolary poems. Form is probably the most challenging for me; I lean toward free verse. If I read a poem or a book of poems, I often use the style or the strategy of a specific poem as a launch to writing. I also almost always work with a word list derived from reading a volume of poetry; I record words that may drive a new poem in a completely unexpected direction. My most recent book publication, Get Up Said the World (2020) was inspired by my love of words. Each poem is paired with a word and its dictionary definition. One of my reviewers called that an invented form! The intention is that the word, the definition, the poem, and its title will somehow bring more to the reader.

Where have you published?

Most recently, I have been published in After Hours 20th anniversary edition, The Inflectionist Review, Rogue Agent, and The Night Heron Barks. Print journals that have published my work recently are little something press, a delightful handmade journal in its third issue, and The Examined Life Journal which is connected with the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine Writing and Humanities Program.

During these pandemic months, I worked on two collaborative projects with Patrice Boyer Claeys—one a chapbook of poems about the early months of the pandemic to be published by Seven Kitchens Press in June or July 2021 and a second a book comprised of Patrice’s cento poems and my photographs. It’s titled Honey from the Sun, and it’s a quirky book about fruit and its secrets published at blurb.com.

I’m looking forward to having a book about Frida Kahlo and my unexpected connections with her published in 2021 by Glass Lyre Press.

Are you in a feedback group that meets regularly? If so, How often?

Quite a few years ago, I joined a class led by Alice George. We studied poets and brought our own work for critique. It was invaluable. Now many of those same people meet weekly in person (pre-Covid) or biweekly (Covid on Zoom) to chat and talk about each other’s work. The wonderful women in the group, our camaraderie, and the feedback move me to continue writing. We named ourselves Plumb Line Poets—a plumb line finds the center.

We know every poem is different but--on average--how many revisions does one of your published poems require?

The answer here is exactly what you say. Every poem is different. I tend to keep versions of each poem saved with its current title and number. Each poem gets its own folder. Often the files for poems I’m working on are left open at the bottom of my desktop screen, and I may re-read them every day or so and change some small thing. Some poems never seem finished, and some few seem like a shimmering present, appearing on the paper fully fleshed out with the first draft.

Do you gear some of your work toward performance poetry rather than the written form? Why or why not?

For a multitude of reasons, I do not write or focus on performance poetry. I have high regard for those who excel in that arena.

How long might you struggle with a poem that doesn’t seem to want to come together?

I am both persistent and patient. Maybe the poem will take a different form in revision. As an example, I recently saw a triptych of Sandra Simonds published in American Poetry Review linked on Facebook. It occurred to me that a poem I was struggling with might work in that form. It did. For a while. Since then, I changed
it to sections.

Is there a special person in your life you’re inclined to share your work with? Explain.

My critique group, Plumb Line Poets, sees all my work first. I rely on their feedback. I have asked Barbara Skalinder and Patrice Claeys to read entire manuscripts multiple times which feels like a big ask. It’s invaluable. Ralph Hamilton had been very generous with his time and guidance.

Gail’s bio. & poem ⟶