While obtaining his PhD from UW-Milwaukee, Stephen Roger Powers taught an Intro to Creative Writing class, the kind that few want to take and few want to teach. It was my first class as an undergrad, and Powers and I became fast friends—being the only two in the room who clearly wanted to be there.

That friendship carried beyond the classroom, buoyed by margaritas and MFA recommendation letters, and has continued to this day in an e-epistolary manner. In October of this year, Salmon Poetry in Ireland released Powers’ first poetry collection, The Follower’s Tale, centered around his deep and abiding fascination with Dolly Parton and her amusement park, Dollywood.

Recently I was able to catch up with Powers, and we chatted over a cup of coffee—albeit from two different coffeemakers, 500 miles apart, over email, with Powers exhausted after returning from a book tour in Ireland.

First question seems obvious: why Dolly Parton?

I first “discovered” Dolly in 1987. We took a family road trip to Tennessee to see some relatives, and we stopped at Dollywood. My childhood wasn’t terribly exciting because I lived in the Midwest and went to Catholic school. I loved movies like Star Wars and Jaws because they took me to more... more »