Even Saints
Meter Speeder with Marjorie Maddox
In this Meter Speeder, we get to spend a little time getting to know the work of Marjorie Maddox.
Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University, Marjorie Maddox has published 16 collections of poetry—including How Can I Look It Up When I Don’t Know How It’s Spelled? Spelling Mnemonics and Grammar Tricks (Kelsay Books 2024) and Seeing Things (Wildhouse 2025), as well as Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Yellowglen Prize); Begin with a Question (International Book Award winner and Illumination Book Award winner); and the Shanti Arts ekphrastic collaborations Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (with photographer Karen Elias) and In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind, featuring work with her artist daughter, Anna Lee Hafer (www.hafer.work), and including work by Karen Elias, Margaret Munz-Losch, Antar Mikosz, Greg Mort, Ingo Swann, and Christian Twamley. In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind was awarded the 2023 Dragonfly Book Award in the photography/fine arts category and honorable mention in the poetry category and won the American Fiction Book Award in the poetry category. Hover Here (Broadstone 2025) is forthcoming. In addition, Maddox has published the story collection What She Was Saying (Fomite) and 4 children’s and YA books. With Jerry Wemple, she is co-editor of Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania and Keystone Poetry: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (PSU Press) and is assistant editor of Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry. She hosts the radio show Poetry Moment at WPSU-FM. www.marjoriemaddox.com.
For more information on Small Earthly Space: https://a.co/d/jh7Jbef
For more information on Seeing Things: https://a.co/d/42VqHlN
Interview
1.) What poet’s work are you currently in love with?
I’m often most “in love” with the books I am reading at the moment. The most recent is Waiting for the Mercy Ship by Lois Roma-Deeley (Broadstone Books 2025). Here’s the blurb that I wrote for the back of the book:
In Waiting for the Mercy Ship, Lois Roma-Deeley writes from grief’s “weary journey of what-ifs” after a loved one’s suicide. Heart-wrenching but moving against the current toward hope, these stunning poems “sing into the shadows of too much sorrow.” Masterfully, the poet punctuates the collection with letters to “My Sweet Boy” and well-meaning friends. Throughout, the word if is pivotal—“If I were brave,” “If Wisdom Could Be Dug Out of the Desert Earth,” “If we forget / the language of the earth,” “If healing has a starting point, / where does it begin?” But Lois Roma-Deeley ultimately is brave, wise, and able to capture the seemingly unsayable.
Waiting for the Mercy Ship offers healing in honest questions, lyric laments, and unconditional embrace of family. For those grieving and those trying to help, each poem is a life raft.
-Marjorie Maddox, author of Seeing Things
I’ve also loved reading in the past several weeks Enormous Blue Umbrella by Donna Hilbert and Love as Invasive Species by Ellen Kombiyil.
2.) What advice do you have for a younger version of yourself?
Because I live in a relatively small city (30,000) without a lot of poetry venues nearby, I would advise my younger self to connect much earlier with poets around the country. Some of the few good things to come out of our shared Covid experience were the poetry communities and readings available through Zoom and Facebook. These have been life savers while living far from the larger venues in bigger cities. I also would get involved much sooner in smaller, local poetry conferences where community is fostered. Of course, much of this was hard to do will raising a family and teaching full-time at a university.
3.) What advice do you think a younger version of yourself would have for you now?
Advice a younger version of myself might have for me may seem to contradict the above in #2. I think my younger self with advise me not to stress, that there would be plenty of time to write the poems I needed to write in the future. It is important to savor family time, to experience the moment, and to allow yourself as much time as possible to “just live.” The poems will come when they come. Not writing and just “being” also can be an important part of the writing process.
Prompts
Are you inspired to write? Me too!
1) Set a timer for 10 minutes. Freewrite about the most confident person you know. Who is it? Do you know them in real life or just know of them? What’s the line between confidence and arrogance? Nothing is “off topic,” just follow your brain wherever it goes. Maybe you start writing about one person, but then your brain just keeps throwing all kinds of things about the dog you had in the 5th grade at you, well, then write about the dog you had in the 5th grade. Don’t judge, just write.
2) Set a timer for 10 minutes. Freewrite about a time when you’ve seen this person be less than confident. If you’ve never seen them being less than confident, imagine a scene. This is inspired by Marjorie’s line “Even saints stutter.” Remember, no judging, just writing. And write for the full 10 minutes. If your brain throws something else at you, catch it and run with it.
3) Time to en-rhythm. Set a timer for 10 minutes. This is where we read another poem for 10 minutes straight, so over and over, the same poem. You can also get up and move around to a song if you’d rather. I’m going to suggest the poem Donna Hilbert’s poem “Dark Spring as the poem. And if you want to get moving, I’m going to suggest Ukrainian duo Jerry Heil and Alyonya Alyonya. Remember, whatever you do, do it for the full 10 minutes and with the same song or poem over and over.
4) Time to draft! Set the timer for 10 minutes. Write a poem, short story, or essay about whatever is on your mind (look back over your freewriting if you need to refresh your memory). Nothing coming to you? How about starting to write an ode to mistakes. Remember, editor voice can be on but can’t be very loud. Let it shape you, not scare you.
And there you go! In under an hour, you’ve got something to work on revising next week, next month, or the 12th of Never!
Thanks for letting me stop by!