Today we wrap up highlighting our “local” poets (faculty and alumni). We sent a short set of questions to each, and are posting their responses. Here’s what Chloe’ Leisure had to say.
Why do you write poetry and not some other genre?
There was brief detour into writing fiction, but the strange alchemy of paring down pages of sentences, images, dreams, and encounters into a handful of lines was hard to leave. And because I’ve never been able to quit the comparative way of seeing the world (there’s an owl in the woodgrain, the heron in flight is an arrow through the spring sky’s heart), there’s a feeling of belonging there.
What are you working on now?
Currently: a full-length book of poems about twilight and the in-between, the auspices of birds, canids and caves. Very currently: a poem about a sauna ladle, a Milwaukee soup kitchen restroom in 1989, and the Big Dipper.
What poem, poet, or poetry collection is your favorite?
Claudia Rankine (esp. Don’t Let Me Be Lonely), Charles Simic (esp. his early poetry), and any poem that a child or adult writes that they’re nervous to share but end up sharing anyway.
Chloe’ Leisure was born and raised in Marquette, Michigan. She teaches community and elementary enrichment creative writing classes in Fort Collins, Colorado. She is the author of the chapbook, The End of the World Again (2015), and her poetry has appeared in publications including Fort Collins Courier, Matter, PANK, Paterson Literary Review, A Poetic Inventory of Rocky Mountain National Park, and Permafrost. She received her MFA in Creative Writing: Poetry from CSU and was the 2014 Fort Collins Poet Laureate.