Seven Questions with Lindsay Ellis

In our newest Scribeworth Magazine interview, poet Lindsay Ellis, whose poem "Geometry" is featured in our inaugural issue, invites us into her world, where poetry is both delight and discovery. For her, writing isn’t about chasing recognition—it’s about deepening relationships and capturing joy. She shares how her creative process is a combination of structure and spontaneity, how writing groups keep her grounded and inspired, and why she believes poetry still has a vital role to play in a world that often resists complexity.

1. What inspired you to start writing poetry, and how has your relationship with

poetry evolved over time?

Music and poetry juice me. I think my brain literally floods itself with happiness

chemicals in response to rhythm and revelatory meaning-making. Who wouldn’t want more of that? When I’m going through my day, and a concrete occurrence delights

me—a raccoon walking along my window ledge, my baby daughter staring wide-eyed at me from the sling around my torso when I thought she was asleep—I sense an opportunity to amplify that pleasure by making a poem, using the tools of rhythm and imagistic comparison.

2. How do you decide when a poem is "finished"? Is there a particular moment or feeling that signals it's ready to be shared?

Ha! A poem is “finished” in the same way that a doctoral dissertation is “finished,” when it’s (a) due and (b) good enough not to embarrass the writer. If you do an internet search for “writing is never done, it’s just due,” you find myriad versions of that sentiment attributed to everyone from Leonardo Da Vinci to Bill Condon. I actually send very few of my poems out for publication, though I share drafts shortly after I create them with a local audience—a writing group or friend who will appreciate the particular insight that I’ve tried to capture. Writing groups are invaluable for creating hours specifically devoted to sharing and listening. The primary aim of my groups is to delight one another, so we do what we can to show up at a particular time (i.e. a due date) with something of value. I revisit my collection of poems when I have time, and I revise them repeatedly to increase the rhythmic and revelatory joy that they provoke.

3. How do you approach the writing process? Do you follow a specific routine, or

do you write when inspiration strikes?

I direct a National Writing Project site, which means that I write creatively for a few

hours a day for a few weeks every summer with a group of K-12 teachers. I am most

productive during those weeks, poems being what I choose to draft most of the time. During the academic year, I have seasons of drafting “morning pages” daily, following the advice of Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way. Those pages keep me honest. When I have an insight that I want to communicate, often a comparison or an objective correlative that will help someone I love to understand me better or resolve a conflict, I take the time to draft a poem. I’ll share the draft and then add it to the collection of ones to tinker with over the coming years. I’m not writing to “be a poet.” I write to strengthen relationships and to give myself and others small moments of pleasure. Perhaps I should believe that publishing more poems would provide more pleasure to more people, but there are already more delightful poems circulating than I have time to read. (See question five.)

4. What themes or ideas do you find yourself exploring most often in your poetry,

and why do you think these resonate with you?

I think I’m not unique. At root, I write about love and grief, but those overdetermined,

vague words are utterly useless to describe the experiences that flood us. How else

can I manage the overwhelm without the concreteness of poetry? The poem

“Geometry” in this issue ponders how a one-dimensional speck becomes a three-

dimensional child existing across the fourth dimension of time and evoking the

conceptual dimension of family.

5. Are there any poets, past or present, who have significantly influenced your

work? If so, how have they shaped your voice as a poet?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Poets are rock stars. In college, I attended a choral adaptation of W. B.

Yeats’s work, and I launch many of my classes with his poem about writing, “Adam’s

Curse.” I love reading aloud lines that lean into alliteration, everything from

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 to Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “God’s Grandeur.” I’m a fangirl

of performance poets like Al Letson, Patricia Smith, and Sarah Kay. I’ve been delighted to see Amanda Gorman bring attention to the genre.

6. What role do you believe poetry plays in society today, and how do you hope

your work contributes to that?

I agree with Emily Dickinson that poets “tell the truth but tell it slant.” Telling it slant

allows us to circumvent the knee-jerk resistance of audiences to particular messages by laying a trail from one concrete observation to the next. This enables readers to discover their own aha of clarity. At a historical moment in which lists of conceptual terms are considered dangerous, it’s all the more vital for poets to keep it close to the bone--observing and arranging phenomena for readers’ analysis.

7. What advice would you give to aspiring poets looking to develop their craft and

share their work with the world?

Find a writing group of humans whose lives you genuinely care about and who

genuinely listen when you speak. Write for them, and send poems out to a wider

audience when they remark that a phrase is particularly memorable, or when you reach a self-imposed deadline to submit your favorites. Also, read a poem a day in a journal like Scribeworth, and read the poem aloud. If you feel some joy, figure out how the writer gave you that little hit of juice, and thank them.

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Lindsay M. Ellis loves not only the logic of argument but also the lens of poetry tuned to the natural world. Lindsay has a Ph.D. in English and Education from the University of Michigan and an M.A. in Humanities from the University of Chicago. She is a Professor of English at Grand Valley State University where she directs the Lake Michigan Writing Project. She survives Michigan winters by capturing the sun in her wood-burning stove and feels compensated by long summer days on the white sand beaches of fly-over country.