Over the past three decades Judith Skillman has written and published numerous poems for books, journals, and anthologies. She has collaborative translations from Portuguese, Italian, and French. Skillman's publications include the Iowa Review, the Southern Review, Poetry, the Northwest Review, and Midwest Quarterly, among many others. She has published ten books of poems.
Jeremy Voigt: The natural world seems to play a major role in your writing. Do you see yourself as a nature poet, a regional poet, or a poet of any particular place?
Judith Skillman: I guess I would prefer not to be labeled as any particular kind of poet, other than, perhaps, someone who loves to write about what happens inside and outside the self. Nothing seems too small to be worth writing about, or too big? I do love nature but I am not a "nature girl," since I depend upon white noise in order to sleep and have rituals that, over time, seem more obsessive compulsive than reasonable. Having said that, I am so glad I moved to Washington state from Maryland in 1982. The northwest is my landscape. I've lived here for twenty-six years now, which is longer than I ever lived in upstate New York or Maryland. I love the light here, the terrain, the flora and fauna. I love that there is no poison ivy! And I also feel Washington state is unique for the way we can go over the pass and find ourselves in an entirely different kind of landscape within an hour.
JV: Could you talk a bit about your specific writing process?
JS: I don't follow a schedule, as my life is too hectic, much like everyone these days. But I do try to be receptive to the muse, or "inspiration." If it has been a week and I've not been applying the seat of pants to the seat of the chair--to use a fiction-writing maxim--I do sit down to write. Taking walks is more of a luxury than it used to be, but walking definitely helps generate the kind of thoughts that lead to poem-writing, if not poems. So does any activity outside, like gardening, hiking, or star-gazing. Sometimes a title or a line will come to me, and while I don't carry a notebook, and I don't journal as many writers do, I pay particular attention to words that come out of nowhere. The exception to this rule might be words that occur in a dream (yes, I do speak in my sleep) which often, while seeming profound during "dreamtime" amount to nothing more than "Hand me the handle."
I try to have more than one iron in the fire, and when I am stuck, I go back and revise older work. I also use revision to jump start the writing process when I feel dry or "used up," and try to keep reading and learning from other writers as much as time allows.
Having birthed and brought up three children, I thrive on interruption and have been known to create it if it is absent. Mothering teaches humility, and the interruption factor is perhaps the most lasting lesson. I used to think it was horrible; now I rather crave it. I know taking breaks from a poem often allows clarity to enter the scene, and also takes pressure off the angst of trying too hard.
