Our 2019 Poetry of Courage winner is Pam Baggett, who has just received a North Carolina Artist Fellowship Award from the North Carolina Arts Council. Pam is the author of Wild Horses (Main Street Rag, 2018), co-hosts the poetry series at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, and teaches free writing workshops at the Orange County Library in Hillsborough, NC.
Here are her thoughts on the perfect writing day:
I can think of several different versions of an ideal writing day. In the first, I wake up and go for a walk, and while I’m walking a nearly finished poem comes to me, which I jot down or speak into my recorder. Needless to say, poems that arrive in nearly finished form are gifts of the muse, and mine seems to oversleep a lot and to knock off early. So another version of an ideal writing day is one in which I get a good idea, a few lines that feel like keepers, a rough draft with just enough sweetness and sting to make me feel like working on it. Then, another ideal day is one in which revision is going well, or if it isn’t, I remember what William Stafford said about lowering your standards.
She shares this poem, which was first published in Kentucky Review:
PINESONG AWARDS 