On The Sundress Blog's Lyric Essentials, I talk about poet Tory Dent and read one of her poems, "The Part of Me That's O".
"I have tended towards over-the-top
and negative in a lot of my poetry, largely because that’s how my brain
works—but since I also tend to enjoy reading that sort of content, it has
probably influenced my own creativity over time.
To
me, Tory Dent is an example of a poet who says what she needs to say, for her
own personal, inward-focused reasons, but also broadens her personal reasons
into a large scale.
With me, most of my poems are inward-focused, and part of me likes that; but
another part of me might like to be able to broaden them out a bit more,
without dulling them down. I don’t want my poems to be overly obvious, but I
also don’t want them to be so abstract or so stuck inside my own brain that
they only make sense to me.
When it comes to poetry by Dent and others I admire, I love it when uniquely
original work that emerged from another writer’s brain is able to strongly
resonate with my brain, too.
There are many people for whom poetry does not resonate much at all, but for
me, it’s a primary form of expression, both reading-wise and writing-wise, even
if a lot of people don’t relate to it."
