“Sometimes she feels like a third gender- preferring primary colors to pastels, the radio to singing. At least she's all mermaid: never gets tired of swimming, hates the thought of socks. -from "The Straight Forward Mermaid” — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
In my own writing, I've mostly abandoned end-rhyme, but wordplay is still a huge part of my process. I've written a series of mermaid poems in the last few years. The first one was called "The Straightforward Mermaid" which arose… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I don't think that you can say by any stretch of the imagination that all Wisconsin or Brooklyn-based poets write in a particular way.… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I think poetry involves heightened noticing or imagining as well as creating a certain made shape. On the other hand, that shape can be… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
When I get interested in a new topic I teach a class on it. There's a graduate seminar I teach in which the students… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
"Confessional poetry" is another one of those labels. It goes in and out of fashion. — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I don't think all poems need to be written in conversational language - those are often great poems but there should also be poems… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
When I have my students do erasures, I'm always amazed by the way their voice comes through, whether they're doing an erasure of a… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
Whether you're talking about political borders or aesthetic divisions (and clearly, the political ones have much more tragic consequences), it seems like once they… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
Usually form seems to find me in the process of writing a poem, though I have nothing against starting out with the form. — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I'm pretty lenient with myself about time - if I feel like taking photographs of small things inside ice cubes or making animal collages,… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
Recently, while I was in England, I saw a documentary on the BBC about the border between India and Pakistan at Wagah. When the… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
A lot of people are writing poems and don't realize it. They have this limited idea of how the poem should sound or what… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I am pretty interested in hybrid forms. I love graphic novels and I think there should be more graphic poems in the world. — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
I suppose it's useful in designating writing that tends to come from personal experience, work that delineates an "I," but it's a loose lasso,… — Matthea Harvey Copy Share Image
