Anne Overstreet on Not Becoming a Writer

Poet Anne M. Doe Overstreet describes thinking about when she became a writer.

I come from a family that read hungrily and constantly; there was music—banjo to clarinet to piano—and hikes beside copper-colored ponds, beneath the huff and shrug of spruce at places like Peaks of Otter, reciting the names of deciduous trees. In between, stillness, time to reflect. And within that, Walter Farley’s novels and Webster’s Dictionary, the 1970 edition, I Capture the Castle and World Book Encyclopedia, which opened up the universe and made me hungry to understand why a Tennessee Walking Horse was what it was. But I cannot tease it apart, say, here I begin, here I turn my face toward a different tree line, moving from reader and listener to writer. It doesn’t begin. It doesn’t end.

I attended a reading of her poetry many months ago. I loved the sound of her words. You can read them for free through Noisetrade now, though leaving a tip would be kind. She’s a poet who rewards her audience with beautiful mystery and perhaps inspiration.

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