What is it like for a poet to teach at a school like the Georgia Institute of Technology?
Georgia Tech is best known for engineering and the sciences but it’s an all-around world class university, both in research and teaching. I teach in Ivan Allen College, which is Tech’s liberal arts college, in a department called Literature, Communication, and Culture. A relatively new major, called STAC (Science, Technology and Culture) is one of the fastest growing majors on campus. What is your writing routine like? I don’t really have a routine. Writing is 80% reading so I read a great deal. I tend to work on poems in batches (that way if I get stuck on one I move on to the next). I do most of my writing over the summers and during breaks from teaching. I write doggedly, 15-20 drafts. I’m not prolific but I’m pretty steady: each slim volume takes about four years to write.
