Diane Seuss on Creativity
Di Seuss is Writer in Residence in the Department of English at Kalamazoo College. New Issues Press published her first book, It Blows You Hollow, and her poems have been widely published in literary magazines, both in print and on the web, including most recently The Georgia Review, Blackbird, North American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Poemeleon and Brevity. Her work has been anthologized in Boomer Girls: Poems by Women from the Baby Boomer Generation, Are You Experienced? Baby Boom Poets at Midlife, and Sweeping Beauty: Contemporary Women Poets Do Housework, all edited by Pamela Gemin and published by the University of Iowa Press, as well as in New Poems from the Third Coast: Contemporary Michigan Poetry, edited by Michael Delp, Conrad Hilberry and Josie Kearns, from Wayne State University Press, and A Loving Testimony: Remembering Loved Ones Lost to AIDS, edited by Leslea Newman, from The Crossing Press.
Di teaches Introduction to Creative Writing, Intermediate Poetry and Advanced Poetry, as well as, at times, Reading Poetry and Contemporary Poetry. She also teaches an annual first year seminar. Its most recent incarnation was titled Duende: When the Obstacle is the Path. Her teaching philosophy is similar to her poetic process–drawing heavily on Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca’s theory of Duende–creating in the classroom, as well as on the page, opportunities for happy accident, mysterious connection, and the free play of associative mind. She is also a firm believer in the creative interplay between freedom and restraint. All of her courses teach traditional and untraditional poetic forms, from the sonnet to the blues. She hopes to foster a classroom in which students can be fully human and can participate in a creative community.
Di was honored in 2003 with the College’s esteemed Florence J. Lucasse Award for Excellence in Teaching. Her manuscript The River Purrs and Burns received the Juniper Prize and is forthcoming from the University of Massachusetts Press.
Links to online poetry:
http://www.creativenonfiction.org/brevity/brev29jan09/seuss_like.html
http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v6n1/poetry/seuss_d/index.htm
http://www.poemeleon.org/diane-seuss/
http://www.amazon.com/Blows-Hollow-Issues-Press-Poetry/dp/0932826652