Practice Makes Crazy, Sometimes

In an interview with Dennis Morton on The Poetry Show radio show (scroll to the date 8/14/11), poet Troy Jollimore, in addition to reading many of his singular poems, answered a question about his writing practice with the following comforting admission. Jollimore said that he didn't have a writing practice that worked effectively for a long period of time, that he would find a practice or routine that worked for awhile, and then it would stop working, and he would have to find another.

Furthermore, he reported that he himself had received solace from the visits of poets Jane Hirshfield and James Richardson to the campus where he taught (I think it's Chico State), whose responses to the question of writing practice were that they did not write every day. Even an  award-winning poet like Jollimore found that helpful for his anxieties.

I aspire to write daily and to have a  practice taken seriously not only by myself but by those around me, but these things don't happen always, with family and work and everything else going on. It's nice to be in such fine company, to know that others experience anxiety about practice and still prevail.

Enjoy the whole interview and especially Jollimore's generously-natured reading.