Beyond the Gates
In Conversation with Susan Kinsolving
Expressionism is a modernist movement that seeks to depict emotions
and responses to evoke a particular idea or mood. Why did you choose
poetry as the medium to express your interactions with the world? Why
and how do you write?
Susan Kinsolving: I was alone in many circumstances growing up,
as I was an only child and my father was very ambitious. As a
family, we often traveled for his work. My mother would make
a home for us whenever we moved, but by the time we would
become settled in one place, we would move again.
I went to fifteen schools by the time I completed my graduate
degree. That type of experience gives you a kind of insecurity
but also a sense of resilience, which is kind of a paradox. Poetry
became a way of finding expression both for me and from me.
The Keystone Magazine 102