Erica Meitner photo and book cover.
Erika Meitner recently arrived in Madison as a professor and master of fine arts program director in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s English Department. She’s written six books of poems, and her work frequently appears in anthologies. In her latest collection, Useful Junk, Meitner considers what it means to be a sexual being in a world that often renders women all but invisible. Meitner takes the podium Oct. 15 at the Central Library at 7:30 p.m.
Isthmus: What is the greatest challenge in writing intimate poetry like the pieces in Useful Junk?
Erika Meitner: Useful Junk is my sixth book, and while I've always written poems that could be considered “intimate,” it was a lot easier to do this with my first few books, because I could tell myself that no one would read my poems. While that wasn't totally accurate, it wasn't inaccurate either. I published my first book in 2003, before the internet and social media were major things, so poems had a finite circulation and shelf life. They couldn't be pulled up with a click of a button by your great aunt or your kids. Now, in order to be raw or vulnerable on the page, I have to kind of trick myself into believing the poems are just for me, and won't head out into the world in unfettered ways. So the greatest challenge was pretending I had no audience.
Why is it important for readers to spend time with poems?
My only favorite statistic of the pandemic is that in the first nine months of the pandemic, the Academy of American Poets "Poem-a-Day" series, which features new work by contemporary poets daily, saw a 20 percent increase in subscribers, and is now up to more than 350,000 people who all receive a new poem each day in their email inboxes. Poetry reaches deep to help us understand the human condition and each other. It offers us comfort in unsettling times and unsettles us in complacent times. It focuses our attention; it helps us celebrate and mourn. It brings people together across differences by fostering empathy, and it can do all this in tiny bodies with line breaks.
What advice do you have for aspiring poets?
Read as much poetry as you can get your hands on—in actual book form, as well as in online and print literary journals. Social media platforms are terrific gateways for poetry, but there's so much more out there that resists the compressed forms of Twitter and Instagram and TikTok! Definitely set aside time to write regularly and be tenacious about coming to the page (or your laptop). And most importantly, seek out a community you can be a part of — an online writing group, a local open mic at a coffee shop, a Zoom poetry reading series, a book group, a workshop, a letterpress class — whatever kind of community feeds your writing and your spirit, and keeps you feeling accountable and inspired. Poetry doesn't happen in a vacuum, and part of the joy of the medium is being in community with other artists.
See more Isthmus coverage of the 2022 Wisconsin Book Festival here.
