In honor of National Poetry Month, we’ve asked some of Arizona’s most exciting poets to share their thoughts and insights about poetry. First up is Kelly Nelson of Tempe. “As a poet, I’m interested in blending fact and imagination,” says Nelson. “I’m fascinated by the process of mixing external ideas and internal experiences to create poetry that is both intellectually and emotionally satisfying to readers.  The themes I find myself continually returning to are family history, place, death, secrets and things unsaid.”

2014 ARDG Kelly NelsonLast year, Nelson was one of 11 Arizona artists to receive an Arizona Commission on the Arts Artist Research & Development Grant. Her proposal focused on the development of Knife River, Thief Lake, a book-length collection of poems that will trace her uncle’s life based on his 500-page prison record.

Though she has plenty on her plate at the moment, Nelson was kind enough to talk with us this week about poetry, her peculiar approach to it and finding inspiration in unlikely places.

When did poetry first connect with you in a significant way?

I started writing poetry in high school. One of my English teachers required us to keep a daily journal and for me that morphed into writing poetry. I submitted poetry to my high school literary magazine under three different names (don’t recall why!) so I was first published as Noelle Daniells, Andy Carr and Kelly Nelson.

As you have worked to develop your own voice and style, what has been the greatest challenge you have had to overcome?

Holding onto the idea that I had to develop a voice and a style! I was very concerned with this several years ago, as if I needed to select my style (like putting on an outfit) before writing. This created all sorts of mental stalling and worry. It worked out a lot better to just write and let my voice/style sort itself out. I’m currently putting the finishing touches on the manuscript of a chapbook that will be published this fall and as I read the 23 pages of poems, I clearly see the threads and colors that hold these poems together without having consciously worked at it.

Your Artist Research & Development Grant proposal focused on the development of a hybrid form you call “lyric found biography” which merges elements of biography and poetry. What are you able to accomplish with poetry that you would not be able to do with a straight prose, non-fiction narrative?

Overall, I have a Scandinavian aesthetic so I don’t like too much furniture or decorations or window treatments in my writing. Poetry allows me more space between words and lines. In terms of this specific book project, poetry lets me blend and juxtapose voices without stating “this news article reported…” or “the prison psychologist noted….” It also brings to the story a leaner quality, like a piece of music with two or three instruments versus the sound of a full orchestra. And it allows my uncle’s short life to pass by more quickly: in 70-80 pages versus 200 or so.

Another technique you work with is “found poetry.” What drew you to this sort of work?

Found poetry found me. The current book-length project I just mentioned involves my uncle’s 500-page prison record. Facing that huge stack of texts, I sought out techniques that would help me incorporate the voices of judges and prison guards and psychologists into my work. The language I’m borrowing from these documents helps to capture the 1950s and 1960s in a way my own vocabulary in 2014 might not.

What’s the last thing that inspired you to run to your computer keyboard or scribble something in your notebook?

I’m participating in a National Poetry Month project of writing a poem a day using prompts devised by Oulipo, an experimental writing group founded in France in 1960 that encourages the use of writing constraints to generate new and unexpected work. The name stems from the French words for “workshop of potential literature.” Some examples of writing constraints are not using the letter E, having every word begin with the same letter, and having each word in a line be one letter longer than the previous word. The 70 or so poets participating in this project are applying these writing constraints to words from a daily newspaper so it’s a combination of writing constraint and found poetry. For the month of April, this is what is inspiring me to write every morning! You can follow my poem-a-day challenge at www.kellynelsonpoet.tumblr.com

Kelly Nelson is the author of the forthcoming chapbook Rivers I Don’t Live By, winner of the 2013 Concrete Wolf Chapbook Award. Her poetry has appeared recently or is forthcoming in 2 River View, Mixitini Matrix, Watershed Review, I-70 Review and Another Chicago Magazine. She served as a judge in 2012 for the Poetry Out Loud state finals and for the Arizona Authors Association’s annual writing contest and currently chairs the Tempe Municipal Arts Commission. She has lived without a car in Tempe for the past 14 years and is editing an anthology of car-free poetry: poems where people get around on foot, on bikes, on buses, subways and trains. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Brandeis University and teaches Interdisciplinary Studies at Arizona State University.