459: The Power of Poetry to Survive, Heal, and Connect — Interview

DIY MFA Radio

Today, Lori is interviewing Anne Marie Wells. They’ll be talking about her poetry collection, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse, and using poetry as a method of dealing with heavy emotions.

Anne Marie Wells (She | They) is an award-winning Queer poet, playwright, memoirist, and storyteller navigating the world with a chronic illness. She is a faculty member for The Community Literature Initiative through the Sims Library of Poetry and Strategic Partnership Fellow for The Poetry Lab. She earned the 2021 Peter K. Hixson Memorial Award in Poetry, the 2020 Wyoming Writers Milestone Award, and was a 2021 Wyoming Woman of Influence nominee in the arts for amplifying the voices of the LGBTQ and disabled communities with her writing. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems, debuts with Curious Corvid Publishing on April 30, 2023.

You can find her on her website or follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

In this episode Anne Marie and Lori discuss:

• Choosing poems for a collection and deciding on their chronology.

• Using poetry as a way to deal with grief and its power to heal.

• The significance and symbolism behind white space.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

For more info and show notes: diymfa.com/459