During the annual AWP conference in Denver in April, Fringe contributor Rachel Dacus asked a few poets a few questions. Over the next few days, Fringe will be posting their responses–enjoy!

Mary Biddinger is the author of Prairie Fever (Steel Toe Books, 2007) and the chapbook Saint Monica (forthcoming, Black Lawrence Press). She edits the Akron Series in Poetry, co-edits Barn Owl Review and the Akron Series in Contemporary Poetics, and directs the NEOMFA.

Fringe:  When did you first become interested in poetry and writing poems?

My parents gave me a number of children’s poetry collections when I was growing up, but it wasn’t until I started clandestinely perusing my mother’s college poetry textbooks and anthologies that I began taking it seriously as an art form. Of course, I was around eight years old at the time, and also clandestinely reading John Irving novels which I’d stash under piles of stuffed animals in my room. My childhood poems were incredibly serious and dark. I remember making a little book of my poems, and not needing many colors from the box of crayons to illustrate them. Shades of dark blue and gray, a bit of brown, and, of course, black.

Fringe: Which poets or poems have influenced you?

I am tremendously influenced by the poet Barbara Guest, though it’s not always evident in my work. Wallace Stevens is a huge influence, as well. I also admire the work of Zbigniew Herbert. But mostly, I find inspiration in the unsolicited poems I read as an editor. There’s nothing like a knockout poem crossing the transom (at /Barn Owl Review/, or the Akron Series in Poetry) and making me want to immediately shift gears and begin writing my own poem.

Fringe: How does poetry enrich your life?

Poetry allows me to tell people things I’m too timid or inarticulate to say with conventional language. It also gives me the chance to bring typically unpoetic subjects and individuals (or versions thereof) onto the page. Sometimes I feel like I’m paying homage to my past through poetry, even if the past is just a collapsed barn I glimpsed on a highway in 1988. I like to create real and imaginary spaces, and fill them. My newest book manuscript contains 45 hyperbolic love poems. In real life, I am not nearly that romantic.

Fringe: If you could change one thing in your writing, what would it be?

I wish that I was one of those steady writers who could produce work at a normal pace. My writing habits resemble the lifestyle of a lab rat forced to transition between manic overdoses of caffeine and lengthy interludes of chamomile tea. Sometimes I write a poem or two every day for a month, or more. Then I write nothing for a month. I get distracted by my thousands of side projects, which are mostly poetry-related. I wish I could spend as much time on my own work as I do on everyone else’s, but that’s just not my way.

Fringe:  What’s your favorite moment or milestone in your poetry career?

I am quite convinced that my favorite moment or milestone in my poetry career has not yet happened. That’s what keeps me going, after all.