East Texas and North Carolina landscapes are present in your poetry in many ways. What are some of the differences in the two?

North Carolina has a gentler climate than east Texas. The central North Carolina Piedmont where Raleigh is located has a landscape much like my earlier home, the same kinds of trees and flowers, the same easy growing seasons, though east Texas has a longer one, with perhaps more exotics, like pomegranate trees. Both wilderness areas are haunted, magical. The two are enough alike that I felt close to things in North Carolina from the day I arrived. Of course, we bring our own landscapes with us as well, whatever they are, don’t we?

I used to say ‘Geography is destiny’ and never knew if I had read it somewhere or made it up. I do believe it; whether it is the real land or the man-made cityscape laid over the land — certainly it is true for poets…

I used to say “Geography is destiny” and never knew if I had read it somewhere or made it up. I do believe it; whether it is the real land or the manmade cityscape laid over the land — certainly it is true for poets, whether the poems are set in Nebraska, Texas, New England, or four square blocks of Manhattan. Or in the nowhere of the disembodied mind. Or in our current cultural cyberspace. The place we came from or have settled into shapes lives, and so of course it shapes poems.

You worked in advertising. What did you take away with you from that kind of work?

I stayed in advertising for eleven years and I wrote my first book while I was working as a copywriter at a small agency. I was not ambitious in that field; if you are ambitious, it will devour you, for it’s a risky and demanding business. Our clients were mostly regional, small businesses, banks, agricultural organizations, even a travel trailer manufacturer and some politicians. I did not believe in what I was doing… I did the only thing I could to make a living. I have, to this day, no college degrees, not even a BA.

A friend, knowing I had never held a job of any kind but was already publishing poetry in journals, and knowing I really needed a job, got me the interview at this small agency in Raleigh. I told them I could write anything — I figured if you can write poetry, you can write anything.

I started at the minimum wage. I think it was $1.50 an hour. I started out by answering phones at the front desk and wrote a few ads. The first ad campaigns I designed would have been expensive to produce and would have bankrupted the agency. I think I had one for a bank involving a hot air balloon and an airplane with several zoo animals. First they laughed, then they hired me. The job was purely a necessity. I had no degrees, no skills, couldn’t type except with three fingers. We had an 11-year-old daughter, college looming. I had gone back to college myself but we had run out of funds entirely.

I did much better later, of course. I bargained with my bosses to let me come in when I chose, leave when I chose, could take time off for literary things, and work by the hour. As long as I got everything in on time, they didn’t care. There were times of pressure when I had to work fourteen hours or more, all night on TV shoots. I had to have been the most inexperienced “producer” ever. My first TV shoot was my first sight of the inside of a TV studio. It was all rubber bands and scotch tape, flying by the seat of my pants.

What did I get out of working in advertising? The answer is, I got out of it as fast as I could. And I wrote a considerable part of my first book on their time. If I could finish the ad in five minutes, I could work on poems.