Lily Iona MacKenzie's Blog, page 29
May 18, 2020
Thanks to the writing gods!
Someone asked me the other day why I chose creative writing as a career. The truth is, I didn’t choose it. Writing chose me. If I wanted to continue living, I really didn’t have a choice. Okay, I know, this sounds esoteric, and it is! In most careers, we feel a calling: doctors, lawyers, athletes. […]
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May 11, 2020
Freedom from the Google glitz
I’ve realized that it isn’t just writers who are tempted to turn themselves into fodder for the Internet. Non-writers also are tempted to give up their lives and be submerged by the Google glitz. That’s where freedom comes in. Freedom means many things to different people. For some, it conveys release from constraints. For others, […]
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May 4, 2020
The Importance of Poetry Mentors
Recently someone asked me which poet or poets influenced me the most in writing poetry and why. It would be great if I could just name one of two, but it’s impossible. Many different poets have been important to me at each stage of my development in that medium. When I was an undergraduate and […]
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April 27, 2020
Do Writers Really Need a GPS?
I have a love/hate relationship with my car’s navigation system. On the one hand, I appreciate being able to input an address and magically have this robotic voice guide me to my destination, assuming it knows where to send me. But I also miss the hands-on experience of studying a map and finding my own […]
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April 20, 2020
Why do characters in novels we read become part of us?
I’ve recently finished reading Susan Choi’s A Person of Interest, and mathematics professor Lee, the main character, continues to live on in my imagination. It’s as if he actually inhabits the external world and was intimately interacting with me during the time I read the book. Lee is Asian American, though his origins aren’t a […]
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April 13, 2020
The Poetry in Dreams (Part 2)
In a recent post, “The Poetry in Dreams,” I promised to talk soon about how one “gets” a poem. Here is my attempt to deal with that topic. To understand either a dream or a poem, we need to develop a new faculty, a “third eye.” William Stafford has another way of saying this: “Poetry […]
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April 6, 2020
NO MORE KINGS
This collection of poems was written when my husband was diagnosed with bladder cancer (he’s currently in remission). The poem I’m sharing in today’s blog post , “The Future,” could apply equally well to what we’re experiencing in response to coronavirus. Take a look! The Future Letters appear when I hit the […]
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This collection of poems was written when my husband was ...
This collection of poems was written when my husband was diagnosed with bladder cancer (he’s currently in remission). The poem I’m sharing in today’s blog post , “The Future,” could apply equally well to what we’re experiencing in response to coronavirus. Take a look! The Future Letters appear when I hit the […]
The post appeared first on WELCOME TO MY BLOG, FELLOW WRITERS AND READERS!.
March 30, 2020
The Poetry in Dreams
I’ve been thinking a good deal about dreams and the role they play in our lives. I’ve also been thinking about how they relate to poetry. When I was teaching freshman expository writing classes, many students admitted having trouble reading poetry. I discussed this difficulty with them. “Why,” I asked, “in a class of twenty […]
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March 23, 2020
Dreaming in the age of Corona Virus
In a recent dream, I’m standing on the street outside the Crescent Confectionary in Calgary, the city where I grew up. The place is lit from within. A couple sits at a table next to the window, eating. I feel like the little match girl, on the outside, looking into this place where I once […]
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