Annmarie Lockhart
ANNMARIE LOCKHART interview by Clifford Brooks
Give us the roots of your unrelenting need to make writing the respite nothing else is able to rival? This is a great question!! It boils down to this: For every urge to write there is a need to hear. The dialogue between artist and audience is holy. And the give-and-take of creative collaboration is the most transformative experience I’ve witnessed. Once you’ve participated in that, how can you give it up? You know what I’m talking about because you’ve put these ideas into practice at the Southern Collective Experience, a living, breathing exercise in artistic support and collaboration. That is so very vital in this frail world. I, for one, want more of it. What set you on this passion I’ve noted in you for all the year’s I’ve known you? I think what happened to me was something that happens to a lot of people. One day I woke up writing again after not having written for decades. I haven’t stopped since. I can only explain the drought years as being similar to what happened to Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz: I had to follow a yellow brick road to discover that language was my home and it lived inside me. Does that make sense to anyone but me? Who writing in today’s world to you consider a genius? My absolute all-time favorite genius poet is Ireland’s Louis de Paor. That man writes magic. He is everything. He writes in Irish and English and listening to him reading his work is divine. I would also include Claudia Rankine and Tracy Smith in the genius category. I like to read their work in sequence because it often feels to me like listening to them in conversation. What question would you love to never hear again? “Mom, can you drive me … ?” lol You have a magazine and radio show. Please tell us a bit about both and how readers may reach you to inquire more about both? I founded vox poetica (voxpoetica.com, check it out!) in 2009 because I wanted to engage with everyday writers in everyday art. As you know, because you were there from early on, it took off. Within a year writers were approaching me about publishing their collections. I’d worked in publishing forever so they were speaking my language and it felt like a natural progression. Two years ago, I brought on Nathan Gunter as Managing Editor at vox poetica because it was more than one person could handle. He has been a godsend. He is organized where I am not, he is focused where I am not, he has fantastic ideas, and he’s as good a collaborator as any I could find. His integration was seamless and he’s left his mark in the best of ways. The essence and sensibility of vox poetica are as much Nathan Gunter as Annmarie Lockhart today and that brings me great joy. The radio show, vox poetica’s 15 Minutes of Poetry, is my attempt at helping artists and their audience connect. It’s one of the most fun things I’ve done in this industry. I remember one of the episodes where I interviewed you. It was
92 | the BLUE MOUNTAIN REVIEW Issue 9