WHAT SHE WRITES:
I write about everything. It's just an outpouring of everyday experiences. So, it could be about my experience with work; it could be about family; it could be about spirituality, love, whatever it is. There's no particular genre of poetry that I focus on.
THE WORD PROJECT:
I started the WORD project a few years ago, and it's a poetry writing workshop company. What I do is focus workshops for those who are in the process of healing. So, they're dealing with grief, or they have an illness or something traumatic that has happened in their life. We use poetry as a way to really center ourselves, find out what's going on, write about it and discuss it.
WINNING Poetry CONTEST:
(Winning the Press 53 Open Awards Poetry Contest) was a complete surprise and shock. I found out a couple of months ago, and I'm still just humbled by it. It's absolutely fantastic. I became familiar with Press 53 (www.press53.com ) by seeing them set up at different writers' conferences. So, I knew that they were an up-and-coming local press company. I found out about the contest via e-mail, and I decided. "Why not?"
They asked that you submit three poems that would be judged as a complete body. I didn't write anything along those lines, but I picked three poems that had similar themes. And that theme is really about my experience moving back to North Carolina to find my roots. There was a series of months when that's what all my writing was about. I chose three that I felt were universal but still spoke to the steps that I took to find out more about my family's history.
HOW SHE GOT HER START:
I wrote my first poem that I shared with someone about 15 years ago, and it
was about a break-up. I let some of my friends read it, and they thought it was great, and I thought, "This is interesting; someone can relate to what I'm going through." Then it just started becoming natural. A couple years after that, I had my first poem published, and I shared it with my dad. And then a month later, he passed, and my writing took another turn because I was dealing with my own grief and trying to understand how this happened. So, I was just really poring through my poetry about that experience, which led to the WORD project.
WHY POETRY?:
It just comes out that way. I tried fiction writing, and I still have this hope of one day writing a novel. I really try hard at that, but when I'm just being truly me when I write, what comes out is a poem. I think the fact that it's shorter than any other type of creative writing, that it's more succinct, that you deal with images on a different level, that you can use metaphors and similes and play with words and line breaks. I think I have more fun with writing poetry than any other genre of writing.
WHAT SHE HOPES PEOPLE GET OUT OF HER WORK:
I don't know if it's so much a feeling that I want people to get. I would like for people to read my work and be encouraged to be honest. I think in today's society we lose that a little bit. If we're being honest, we're being rude, or if we're being honest, we're over the top. It's better to kind of suppress what we're feeling and what we're thinking. I feel that writing allows you to do the opposite. It allows you to be free and be who you are without apologies. So, I hope my writing inspires people to do the same, to say this is who I am, this is how I'm feeling, you don't have to agree, but this is it.
- Alexa Milan
