Creative Corner: Erica Anderson-Senter

FEATURE | Creative Corner Creative orner

Name: Erica Anderson-Senter Hometown: Farmland, Indiana Current town: Fort Wayne, Indiana

What is the inspiration for this piece?

I am in a season of figuring out who I actually am. The late 30s are spectacular for this kind of discovery! This piece delves into what that looks like through the lens of verse.

What is your preferred style of writing?

Poetry! Though I love Creative Non-Fiction, too!

How long have you been writing?

Seriously since 2010. However, I’ve been a writer since I could hold a pencil.

What advice do you have for other writers just starting out?

READ. Do both a lot. Make time for it. Eat and breathe image. Notice how words feel on your tongue. Fall in love and fist fight, equally, with what you write. AND REVISE.

Where can we find your work?

I have a full-length collection, “Midwestern Poet’s Incomplete Guide to Symbolism,” published by EastOver Press (2021). I have other pieces published by Dialogist, “Anti-Heroin Chic, ONE ART,” among other journals. a

WEIRD LITTLE JOYFUL POEM

It is spring in the center of my body— daffodils curtsy their yellow outside of my skin from my stomach— everything’s in bloom out my mouth: redbuds and tulips shock. I smile—petals; I speak—pollen; I lay down and every where moss and dew and fastidious spiders busying their legs creating. It’s October outside my body and my blood, my brain, my bones are all insane with warmth. If I turn this poem upside down, shake it a bit, we see last October. Last October was hell. Everything dulled with the death of it. Every morning my tiny feet took tiny steps; the quietness of a tucked-in sadness. Each morning in the mirror —jesus christ—who was that petit survivante? Blonde hair, red eyes, and every living thing wilting.

But here, now, right now as I write bumble bees shake their legs in the middle of me and weeds are wild around my feet and goslings’ down holds the tangled sunrise and I am alive!

Me! Who would’ve thought that in this spring of me the dawn crashes joyful? The water sings with mayflies and again I’ll say: everything is dusty with delight, reader. And the lightbulbs in my blood are buzzing.