Verbatim

"I learned that making poems is not just about reading deeply and writing liberally and adventurously, but also about allowing oneself to become an obsessive noticer. Having come from a film background, I started thinking of myself as a roving camera. I’d fall across things, quite literally: a girl eating the pages of a book in the library, a bearded fellow taking his socks off in a waiting room, a dead opossum blocking the entryway to the corner 7-11, a man slapping a sobbing woman in the cab of a pickup. Everything was important and relevant."

Alexandra Oliver writes about the experience of working on her upcoming collection, Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway.