Sister – Carolyne Wright

2016 Jack Straw Writer Carolyne Wright talks with program curator Karen Finneyfrock about her current work in progress – a collection of poems about important women in her life, including her mother and sister – as well as her long career, global travels, and postgrad brush with the influential poet Elizabeth Bishop. “She said things like ‘. . . You’ve got to read all of the classics, and you’ve got to read all of the romantics and the Renaissance poets and the metaphysical poets and modernist poets and you’ve got to practice writing in form.’ So that’s what we did, we wrote in form. We wrote ballad quatrains, we wrote sestinas, I think I even tried a villanelle!”

Music by Seattle Jazz Composers Ensemble, produced as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.