Cara Waterfall asked Robin Beth Schaer:

I adore your poem Middle Flight and wondered at what point you started to feel ready to write poetry about your child. I have three children under five and it's only recently that I have begun to express what it means to be a mother in a less sentimental and cliched way. Do you have any advice for tapping into the subject of motherhood? (I realize this is a rather broad question!). Many thanks.

Robin Beth Schaer Thanks so much for your kind words about my poem and this great question about writing about motherhood. I felt ready to write about motherhood when I felt ready to face what scared me about being a parent. Sentimental and cliched writing is often the result of relating only the good parts, the rosy bits, the surface. And that type of writing is often false (even if the lie we are telling is to ourselves). If we are honest with ourselves, nothing is perfect, right? Motherhood is amazing and beautiful and transcendent, but it is also devastating and painful and isolating. So, I think it's necessary to face all of it -- the whole complicated and messy picture -- when writing, whether it's about motherhood or love or politics. In that brutal honesty, I hope we not only avoid sentimentality, but also demonstrate how truly beautiful the world is even amid the difficulties and darkness.

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