Pushcart Prize Winner Dishes
03/04/2015
By Julia Gavin
Sandra Lim is an award-winning poet and assistant professor who teaches poetry and writing courses in the English department. As she writes and publishes poetry, Lim provides an inside look into the life of a working writer. She shared some of her thoughts on reading and teaching the keys to a good day of writing.
Q. When did you begin writing?
A. My mother told me that I wrote little poems as a child, but I don鈥檛 remember this! I began writing poetry in college, when I took a beginning poetry workshop. I had always loved to read, and I thought I would write fiction, but I fell in love with poems after taking that beginning poetry course.
Q. How do you write poetry?
础.听Often, poems start when a line comes to me. It鈥檚 like listening to music, when you can鈥檛 quite get a tune or lyric out of your head.聽
Q. Do you have a writing routine?
础.听I don鈥檛 write every day, unfortunately. I write in bursts and do my best to write in the mornings. I have to have the right pen and paper and if I don鈥檛 have them, I find it terribly hard to write. I like to have my books nearby, sometimes just to glance at the spines, as they often trigger memories and ideas. And coffee. Always coffee.
When the writing is going really well, what鈥檚 great is that I don鈥檛 feel like I should be doing anything else. It鈥檚 an amazing feeling. When I鈥檓 writing intensely, it can be hard to go back to the rest of my life. 聽
Q. Why do you enjoy teaching your classes?
础.听Introduction to Creative Writing is a gateway course I often teach, and it is really fun to see new students get excited about writing. New students also don鈥檛 have any sticky preconceptions or bad habits about writing yet! Contemporary American Poetry is another (non-workshop) course I enjoy teaching; it can be a challenge for some students who haven鈥檛 been exposed to much poetry, but I really relish teaching this literature course.
Q. How do you think students benefit by learning from a professor who is a publishing poet?
础.听I think that with any subject, it鈥檚 a delight if the professor is an interesting figure actively working in his or her field, especially for students who are serious about the subject. We can talk of practical matters about making a life in writing, as well as matters of craft, etc.
Q. How did you feel when you heard your poem was selected for a ?
础.听I was very surprised and pleased. I wrote the poem during a writing fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center. There was a woman there who was starting a new journal, 鈥淭he Account,鈥� at the time, and she asked me to submit a poem that I had written and read while at the center. So, I鈥檓 really glad that the award also helped get attention for the new journal.
Q. Everyone always wants to know what a writer is reading. Do you have any current favorites?
础.听I鈥檓 usually reading poems for classes and then there are the poets I often return to, like Sylvia Plath, T.S. Eliot, Anne Carson, Emily Dickinson, Frank O鈥橦ara. Recently I鈥檝e been reading some plays and a lot of nonfiction as well. I read a lot of prose in my downtime. Some writers I鈥檝e recently been reading again are Leonard Michaels and Grace Paley.聽
Lim鈥檚 first collection of poems, 鈥淟oveliest Grotesque,鈥� won the 2006 Kore Press First Book Award for Poetry. Her second collection, "The Wilderness," was selected by Louise Gl眉ck for the 2013 Barnard Women Poets Prize聽and the聽2015 Levis Reading Prize. She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Vermont Studio Center and the Getty Research Institute. Lim鈥檚 poems have appeared in 鈥淏oston Review,鈥� 鈥淐ourt Green,鈥� 鈥淕uernica,鈥� 鈥淐olorado Review,鈥� 鈥淎merican Letters & Commentary鈥� and other journals. Lim was born in Seoul, Korea and educated at Stanford University, UC Berkeley and the Iowa Writers鈥� Workshop.