Betsy Struthers : Writing Philosophy

Betsy Struthers. from People's Poetry Newsletter, 1994

from People's Poetry Newsletter, 1994

I am deeply affected by landscape, the shield country of north-central Ontario where I live and the beaches and forests I've had the luck to visit. These places resonate with passion for me, they engage the body as the play and structure of words and line ensnare the mind; what is real, tangible, and concrete reflects all that is inchoate in feeling and vision. To honour and enhance the everyday through a turn of phrase, sound and sense, that demands attention; to honour love and revel in the flesh; to mourn death; to live with eyes open to the trick of light and shape that triggers the memory of what has been done, what has been read, what has been felt; with hand ready to translate the experience of one person's eye and ear, heart and mind in words familiar in content, made new in context: this is poetry for me, a communion of the human spirit in the world. It is why I love to read it and hear it read, why/how I live by writing.

Betsy Struthers's works copyright © to the author.