Pspoets' Interview w/ Mara Boyce: April's Poet of the Month Winner
Let's give a big congratulations to Mara Boyce for being the winner of our Poet of the Month contest for April! It is also National Poetry Month! We’ve been putting up poetry writing prompts from our last blog post all month long to celebrate.
We thought it would also be fun to interview Mara to learn more about her as a poet and how she works through her writing process.
Meet Mara Boyce.
Mara Boyce is a writer and actress living in Los Angeles with her fat cat, Agnes. Born and raised in Ohio, she moved to LA after college and has been missing the rain ever since.
Her day job includes various tasks in Network Marketing. Still, her favorite is the interstitials she helped write for Disney Channel. Mara also co-hosts a podcast called Why-A with her good friend Morgan, where they discuss the ugly side of teen fiction. Once everyone is allowed outside again, you can find Mara on stage in a Banzerini House production or in various coffee shops. But for now, you can find her poetry here.
Pspoets: What moved you to write poetry? At what age did you start?
Mara: Poetry is how I work through emotions I'm too scared to face directly. It allows me the chance to distance myself from those emotions and figure out exactly what I'm feeling and why. I started writing in my early teens because I had a lot of big, new emotions and needed some type of outlet. I remember writing little poems in the margins of my notebooks in high school.
It wasn't until a couple of years ago I thought I could be a "poet" and decide to share my work with people. Despite having been writing poetry for years I was never much of a poetry reader, just the occasional book here or there. My boss bought a bunch of poetry books for my birthday one year and it opened up this whole new world I hadn't realized I've been a part of.
Poetry wasn't this elite group it felt like when learning about it in school. It was this little community of people overcome with emotions putting on paper things I've been feeling my entire life.
Pspoets: Where did you find the inspiration to write the #POM winning poem?
Mara: My Aunt had passed away from quick-setting dementia. I was completely consumed with how one's life becomes fragmented as the mind deteriorates. You start to relive these moments of your life in new ways. It's one of those things that are beautiful in the way only terrifying things can be.
I wish I could remember exactly what I was thinking when the inspiration struck. I just remember I was in the shower, and it appeared in my head almost fully formed. I had to keep repeating it over and over, so I wouldn't forget before I could get it down on paper.
Pspoets: Tell us about your writing process. How do you start? Where do you like to write? Do you have any rituals?
Mara: I'm very much a wait until inspiration strikes kind of writer. It's like an emotional release for me, so I let whatever I'm feeling build up inside me until I have to write something, or I feel like I'm going to burst.
Sometimes, like with #POM, it starts to form in my brain and I have to write down whatever it is, usually at the most inconvenient times. For moments I like that, I use the Evernote app on my phone. I've been using that app for almost ten years, so it's like a digital journal.
Other times, I'm like, okay, there's clearly something I need to work through. Let's figure it out. For those moments, I try to journal through my feelings until I hit a line I particularly like and then build a poem from there. It's fun to look at a poem when I'm done with it and be like, oh, that's what I was feeling.
Pspoets: Who are your favorite poets or writers?
Mara: A very incomplete list of poets includes Mary Oliver, Sylvia Plath, Maggie Nelson, Sarah Kay, and Savannah Brown. For other writers, it would have to be Neil Gaiman, Diane Wynne Jones, and Shirley Jackson.
Pspoets: Are you currently reading any books? If so, what are you reading? Does what you read impact your writing in any way?
Mara: I just finished Wilder Girls by Rory Power. It's about an all-girl boarding school quarantined on an island due to a mysterious illness, so maybe it wasn't the best book to read at the moment...
What I'm reading definitely impacts my writing. There will be times when I have to put down whatever I'm reading because it inspired something. My brain will only focus on this new idea, which makes reading difficult in those moments. Also, if an author has a very lyrical way of writing, I find myself thinking in prose similar to their style. It's the literary equivalent of getting a song stuck in your head.
I like to imagine I have my own unique voice as a writer. Still, you can definitely see the inspiration from the various people listed above.
Pspoets: Since it is National Poetry Month, is there anything special you have done this month to celebrate?
Mara: This is my first year actually participating in #napowrimo! I figured with being quarantined and all I don't have an excuse not to. I'm following prompts by @letsescapril, @kristianporterpoetry, and @amykaypoetry. I am basically picking whichever one I feel most drawn to that day. It's a learning experience for sure, and I enjoy seeing all the other poems people create with the same prompt. I probably won't continue with daily poems once the month is over. There are a few things I've written. I've really liked it, but some feel incomplete.
In Sarah Kay's Ted Talk, she talks about looking back at the end of the month and finding 30 different poems about the same thing. There are definitely days where I feel like I'm writing the same poem as the day before. On the flip side, there are days where I wouldn't have created the work I did if it wasn't for the amazing prompts, so there are definitely pros and cons.
Also, if you haven't seen Sarah Kay's Ted Talk, go watch it now! I'm pretty sure half the views are from me, and the video is a big reason why I started to share my poems with people.
The other exciting thing I'm doing is stockpiling on free or discounted e-poetry books this month! I have at least 10 new collections to read, if not more.
Pspoets: Lastly, what advice would you offer to other aspiring poets?
Mara: Don't try to be good. Or better yet, don't worry about being bad. As writers, we have this need to justify the use of ink, but you only get to the good stuff by writing the bad stuff.
The best poems are the most personal. My most well received poems were the ones I thought no one would be interested in because of how personal they were to me, but people want to feel connected so they look for that in poetry. If you're scared to write something for fear of what people will think, that's a pretty good indication that you need to write it.
Read Mara's winning poem and check out the poet of the month runners up!
You can read Mara's winning poem on our website. Also, check out our two runners up winners for April, Jessi Jarrin, and John Mungiello.
Congrats to you all, and thank you to everyone who submitted their work. Stay tuned for more contests and opportunities! Meanwhile, check out Mara Boyce's Instagram and websites for more poetry and inspiration: