Wordclay Interviews Poet Brenda Mirsky, Grand Prize Winner of the Book of Poetry Contest
April 7, 2008
Cue the music. Dim the lights.
And now, the starting wordsmith on your poetry crusade into the grueling literary scene, please join me in welcoming the poet who won the Wordclay Book of Poetry Contest, the sultan of stanza, the tycoon of modern transcendentalism, the mender of myth, the one, the only, Brenda Mirsky.
The crowd cheers.
She’s kept you in suspense for the last month. But now, finally, she reveals some telltale details of her artistic and turbulent past to Blogger Justin Dimos.
Justin: How did you feel entering the contest?
Brenda: I never dreamed I would win so I didn’t really have any feelings about entering. I thought there was nothing to lose by trying.
Justin: How did you react when you found out that you had won?
Brenda: Honestly, I was in shock. I read the email and then asked my husband to read it and tell me if he thought it was legit. When he assured me it was, I went to the website to see if it was listed there. Then I kind of believed it. But I refused to tell anybody for a couple of weeks because I was afraid it was a mistake.
Justin: How did you learn about the contest?
Brenda: My husband is also a writer and he received the email from Wordclay announcing the contest. He passed it on to me and encouraged me to give it a shot.
Justin: Is this your first time entering a writing contest? If not, how did the Wordclay contest compare to others you’ve entered before?
Brenda: When I was in Graduate School, I’d occasionally enter a contest. Once a poem of mine was supposed to be published but the publication went under before that happened. It was relatively easy to submit to Wordclay.
Justin: When did you start writing? What is your experience with writing poetry?
Brenda: I’ve been writing since I was a little girl. I didn’t get serious about writing poetry until I was an undergraduate in college. But you have to realize that I was an undergraduate while I was married and already had three children in school. One of my favorite English professors was giving a creative writing course and I decided to take it. He liked my writing and encouraged me to work at it.
Justin: What is your writing process? How does your work come to you?
Brenda: I don’t know if I have a writing process. Usually, something happens and I need to work it through so I write about it.
Justin: What was the inspiration for Spare Parts?
Brenda: The title of the book is the title of one of the poems in the book. It’s based on something that really happened. After my dad had died, the TV repairman, a man who’d always been kind of friendly with my dad, came to fix the TV. He’d been to our house about a week before and said he needed to order a part and he’d back as soon as it came in. By the time, he came back a week later, dad had died. He was really broken up about it and packed his stuff up and left. We never saw him again.
Justin: Did you meet any difficulties while writing Spare Parts?
Brenda: Most of the poems in this collection are based on real incidents in my life. Writing poetry helps me get things in perspective. And it’s way less expensive than therapy!
Justin: Have you published any other work?
Brenda: I’ve never published any other work and I’m thrilled that Wordclay wants to publish my first collection.
Justin: What are your five favorite books?
Brenda: The Great Gatsby is number one. Anything by Alice Hoffman. The Old Man & the Sea. Anything Seamus Heaney has written. Emily Dickinson is by far the best poet.
Justin: Do you have any advice or tips for other emerging writers?
Brenda: It’s tough to get published. Publishers today seem to have an unwillingness to give new writers a chance. But just keep plugging away. And enter contests like the one Wordclay sponsors. That’s a good way to get started.
Justin: Is there anything else that you would like to share? Thoughts? Interesting facts about your life? A short bio? Or a favorite quote or saying?
Brenda: My father’s death was probably the most difficult and traumatizing part of my life. It’s what this collection begins with. I think dealing with his death when I was only nineteen years old gave me an unusual perspective on life. And that’s what keeps me going when things seem complex and intense. My dad was only forty-four when he died after a long bout with cancer. Every minute I have is precious because I know how quickly it can be taken away.
Look out for Brenda Mirsky’s book Spare Parts in the coming weeks and visit Wordclay’s Contest Connection page for a sneak peek into her new publication.
Thanks Brenda for the honesty and courage that not only gives poetry power, but life as well.
This is Justin, blogcasting from Wordclay, signing off.
Entry Filed under: Announcements, Behind the Scenes, In the News, Interviews. Tags: book of poetry, contest, Mirsky, poetry, Spare Parts, Wordclay.
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1.
Stuart W. Mirsky | April 29, 2008 at 3:53 pm
I’m Brenda’s husband and I’m really, really proud that her work has found an audience. She’s been a poet for as long as I’ve known her (since we first dated when she was 17 in fact) and I’ve felt badly over the years we’ve been together as she seemed to let it all slide away while we raised our family and dealt with all the vicissitudes that come along with that. Then, when our three children were all old enough to be in school, Brenda decided to go back to college (she’d never finished because of various life issues back then) and I watched in fascination as she rediscovered her poetic bent.
She had some good teachers who recognized her talent and potential early on, including Allan Ginsberg (did I spell his name right?) with whom she studied poetry intensively and who encouraged her quite a bit. She used to tell me about his vast knowledge of the poetic form and his skill in applying the various poetic techniques, all with the verve and spirit of someone in whom a natural talent resided like a powerful natural wellspring. It was clear she was awed by the man’s capacity to put his soul into words.
Ginsberg and some of the others with whom she studied brought out the best in her as she honed her own craft to the point where she could chisel away at nearly any sentence or stream of words to find the poem within it. I guess that’s kind of an art, to be able to see, as a sculptor sees, the hidden sweep of words and thoughts that lie buried in our ordinary words. I have no talent for poetry myself and admire those who do, just as I am in awe of those who can work their magic on canvas (I can’t do much with a brush and oils either). Brenda’s work tends to be intensely personal and very spare, just like her poem “Spare Parts”. At her best, she whittles away, paring her words down to their leanest, tautest form and, when she does that, it’s a marvel to see her in action.
Sometimes, though, she stubbornly refuses to do it just because that’s what others, myself included, expect of her. But when she does, her work cuts deeply, never failing to prompt me to tears as she gets at the very heart of what it is to live, as we must, in a finite world — a world with final endings and partings and a thousand lost moments — the only one we’ve got.
Stuart W. Mirsky
author of The King of Vinland’s Saga and A Raft on the River
2.
angiekp | May 1, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Stuart, thanks for providing such an inspiring comment. We’re so happy for Brenda and all our authors. It’s nice to play a even a small role in encouraging writers to indulge in their talents, challenge themselves and just have some fun.
And, it sounds like you’re quite the writer yourself! Have you considered entering the short story contest?
3.
Elissa | May 5, 2008 at 1:16 pm
I’m Brenda’s younger Daughter and I’m also extremely proud of her. I’m not Bi est or anything, but my mother’s poetry is amazing. Her poems read like a short story, simple words cover pages and evoke some of the deepest emotions a human can feel, “Spare Parts” is an example of one of those poems. It’s a simple concept really, a TV needs to be fixed and the part must be ordered. Simple words that bring a sense of love, loss and hopelessness. That is her gift and what makes her poetry so unique.
Amazingly both my Father and Mother are writers who have an awesome grasp of the written word. It is a great feeling to know I am descended from them.
Elissa Rosoff
4.
Stuart W. Mirsky | May 12, 2008 at 10:12 pm
i’m afraid I haven’t written short stories in years and wouldn’t even consider reworking something from a long time ago but thank you for the suggestion (even if it is a might self-interested — but what else is to be expected from someone representing Wordclay — still I enjoy the opportunity to speak of writing, however perfunctorily).
While I used to love the short story form (Hemingway was my favorite in that arena though he was more uneven as a novelist on my view), short pieces are no longer my milieu. I’m much more interested in the long form now, if only because there’s still a viable market for it. But I admire those, like Brenda, who can do poetry. It just seems to be a form that eludes me and I suppose we always admire what we can’t quite do ourselves.
Hello Elissa, glad to see you’ve offered a comment here but as to your spelling . . . it’s “biased” not “biest”. Hope that was just a momentary oversight!
Daddy
5.
jdimos | May 13, 2008 at 9:01 am
To each his (or her) own, as they say. I myself am a fan of the all out explosion of shorter pieces, and you’re right, Stuart, Hemingway is amazing when it comes to the short story.
Either way, keep an eye out for future contests. Wordclay is definitely going to host some long form contests in the near future.
Thanks again, Stuart, for the comment.
-Justin
6. First a Free Poetry Conte&hellip | May 22, 2008 at 12:01 pm
[...] Our very own blog contributor, Justin, posted interviews he conducted with both Grand Prize winners Brenda Mirsky and Jamie Crawford. As you read the interviews, you can even see comments from Mirsky’s [...]
7.
Stuart W. Mirsky | May 22, 2008 at 8:30 pm
So you guys are getting flak for your contest? Personally, I think you’ve chosen a good way to go. POD is a commodity today and, while I think it’s a great way to create books, there’s not much of a bar to entry into the business. The size of the POD company must matter to writers (for the “staying power”, of course) but low cost, service level and community (as nebulous a concept as that may be) are also becoming increasingly significant. Your decision to run these contests ise a way of building that community and expanding the writers’ world.
Brenda was very ambivalent about entering, by the way. She wasn’t even interested the first time I noticed the contest on the Internet and told her about it. But I knew she had compiled a tight little book of poems so told her she had nothing to lose . . . and I guess she agreed. The problem, of course, is she had no idea if you were legit or not when she submitted her material. Sometimes she still wonders aloud, since she finds it hard to think anyone would choose her work. But she really does have a knack for the poetic form, whether she realizes it or not, and I was less surprised than she when we got the word she had won.
“I never win anything,” was what she said, I think. Though I don’t know what the competition looked like, I certainly wasn’t surprised that your judges had found her words compelling. The best of her poems rarely fail to move me to tears because of that way she has of crystallizing the moment.
I just put together an anthology of local writers in our area and convinced her to let me use a few of her poems (I was short good contributors). With her agreement, I chose the one about her reimagined infant recollections, the one capturing the moment in the hospital where the spare, tinny sounds of the hospital machinery suddenly put our world into stark relief as we wait for a loved one to die, and the one about the moment where she realized our oldest daugther (sorry Elissa) was a child no more and, with her passage to adulthood, we must make our own passage, as well.
Maybe her stuff moves me because she writes about experiences we share to various degrees. But it apparently moved your judges, too, so it must be more than that. I expect your judges also saw the tight control she exercises over her words when she’s hitting on all cylinders and how she strips away excess words like so much chaff to find the nourishing kernel within. I’m not too good at that, I fear, as my often verbose posts here no doubt show.
Anyway, good luck with your efforts to develop writer community. Publishing is changing and this is part of that.
SWM
8.
angiekp | May 23, 2008 at 9:52 am
I don’t blame people for being skeptical. And, writers are thinkers, always questioning and exploring. But I’m glad that Brenda was able to put her doubts aside – with the support of her husband, of course ;) – and enter her work in the contest. She has quite a talent.
Thanks for the support, Stuart. And good luck with your anthology as well!
9.
Stuart W. Mirsky | June 2, 2008 at 10:25 pm
If anyone’s interested in about four days we will kick off our second annual Rockaway Literary Arts & Film Festival. I’ve included some information below on this (if it shows up on this list). Writers and readers are invited to participate in the various panel discussions, workshops and other activities (poetry readings, live musical performances, dramatic readings, author signings, etc.) that we’ll be running on that day (Sunday June 8th). If what I have posted here comes through, you’ll see this information clearly. If not you can find some of it at the URL I’ve also referenced here.
Click here if this page isn’t displaying correctly.
Click here to read more about the 2008 Rockaway Literary Arts & Film Festival.
Panel discussions on suspense writing, characterization in literature, real life and fiction, writing in the shadow of the Holocaust, writing about health, historical fiction, local journalism and book promotion. Also live music with an appearance by disc jockey and author Pete Fornatale, a workshop on copyright law conducted by a Manhattan-based copyright attorney, and poetry readings, dramatic readings, more.
Rockaway Seafood serving food all day; dinner available between 5 PM and 7 PM as the book side of the festival winds down and the film side kicks in (starts at 7 PM).
Getting there
By public transport:
Take the “A” train (to Rockaway Park) or the # 2 or # 5 heading toward Brooklyn, to Flatbush Avenue Junction. In either case, get off at last stop and take the bus from there to Ft. Tilden (just ask at the token booth for the bus stop and ask the bus driver to alert you when he/she arrives at the Ft. Tilden stop).
By car from Manhattan:
Take the Belt Parkway east to Flatbush Avenue, exit heading south, cross the Marine Parkway Bridge (over Jamaica Bay) and exit to the right, following sign that says Breezy Point/Ft. Tilden. Enter the fort after first light. (The fort will be on your left.)
By car from Long Island:
Take the Northern State, LIE or Southern State. Head south via the Cross Island or the Van Wyck to the Belt Parkway (if you’re on the Southern State just stay on it as it turns into the Belt). Follow the Belt west to Flatbush Avenue and exit heading south. Cross Marine Parkway Bridge and follow same instructions as above.
10.
jdimos | June 3, 2008 at 9:36 am
Stuart,
Thank you for the heads up on your second annual Rockaway Literary Arts & Film Festival. Everyone in the area should attend and participate in the discussions as well as the workshops. Not only is this festival a great opportunity to meet other writers and interesting people, but an amazing learning venue as well.
Thanks again!
-Justin
11.
Stuart W. Mirsky | June 3, 2008 at 9:24 pm
I see the URL I provided didn’t come through on this site. Here it is in a cut and paste form: http://www.sp0rky.com/rmac/litfest08/eblast.html
12. Enjoy the Fruits of Wordc&hellip | June 19, 2008 at 11:08 am
[...] we posted an interview with Mirsky back in April, Mirsky’s husband, Stuart, provided a comment and excellent description of her [...]