Sometimes a poet can hide inside their work, choosing metaphor over facts. In this episode of Emerging Form, we talk with poet and essayist Wendy Videlock about how writing essays invited a more autobiographical approach–and how that stretched her as a writer and as a person. We talk about Desert Kin: Speaking Animal in the Southwest, Essays and Poems, as well as how using a mythological approach helped her to write about her family members. We also talk about writing from the body and the mind, how her creative practice has deepened as she ages, how to write a good invocation poem, and much more.
Wendy Videlock lives on the edge of a mesa in western Colorado. Her poems and essays appear in Dark Horse, Best American Poetry, Poetry Magazine, The New York Times, Rattle, O Magazine, Hudson Review and elsewhere. Wendy is the two-time recipient of the Keats Soul Making Award, and the winner of the Cantor Poetry Prize, The Fischer Prize, the PbtS Sonnet Prize and the Rattle Ekphrastic Prize. Wendy is a syndicated columnist for newspapers across the Four Corner States. Her books are available wherever books are sold. Her book, Desert Kin: Speaking Animal in the Southwest, Essays and Poems just came out.
