Thom Ward Interview, Part VI

In this last part of my interview with Thom, he talks about the poet and madness, his work as an editor, why it’s so hard to finish a poem, and two tricks to keep a poem going. He finishes up by reading a poem in tribute to the late Al Poulin.

Thom Ward Interview, Part V

Thom reads another poem from his collection and discusses the meaning of etcetera, among other things:

Thom Ward Interview, Part IV

Thom discusses his loopy and lucid method with Etcetera's Mistress, shares a review written by Kurt Brown, and reads more poetry from the collection.

Thom Ward Interview, Part III

Thom talks about the "How, What, Why, Where, When Bone" section of his collection and reads the poem "Anticipation."

Thom Ward Interview, Part II

Thom reads "Rumpus, Cohesion, Mess" and discusses his lyric associative mode of writing, what he calls Loose Sonnets in his latest collection of poems, Etcetera's Mistress.

Thom Ward Interview, Part I

This is the first part of an hour long interview with poet and editor Thom Ward. We talked about his newest collection of poetry, Etcetera's Mistress (Accents Publishing, 2012), as well as poetry in general.

From his publisher: Thom Ward is sole proprietor of Thom Ward's Poetry Editing and Proofreading Services (thombward@gmail.com). Ward's poetry collections include Small Boat with Oars of Different Size (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2000) and Various Orbits (Carnegie Mellon, 2004). Ward's poetry chapbook, Tumblekid, winner of the 1998 Devil's Millhopper poetry contest, was published by the University of South Carolina-Aiken in 2000. His collection of prose poems, The Matter of the Casket, was published by CustomWords in 2007. Ward teaches creative writing workshops at high schools and colleges around the country, tutors individual poetry students, and edits poetry manuscripts. He is a faculty and advisory board member at Wilkes University's Graduate Creative Writing program in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Thom Ward lives in western New York with his girlfriend Jennifer and their cat Phantom.

Here's what Thomas Lux has to say about Thom's latest book: "Reading Thom Ward is to enter a brilliant and restless imagination – sometimes poignant, sometimes crazy-with-a-purpose, but always with a deep lucidity in the logic of its illogic. His poems remind me how much we need language and how much the language needs us."

Thom has been my poetry teacher/editor and friend since 1996, when I took his class at Writers & Books.

In Part I, Thom talks about his process for writing a poem: