Erika Nichols on Poetry, Prose, and Editing the Anthology

Erika Nichols of Burlington has written and studied poetry for many years. Whenever a poem comes up for discussion in our workshops, she has something intelligent and helpful to say about it.

She’s also attended more meetings than any other workshop member (68), so it’s fitting that she is the first guest of what I hope will be a series of BWW podcasts featuring interviews with BWW members.

Erika writes both poetry and prose. “What I love about poetry is I think that you can really focus on the language,” Erika says. “That you don’t necessarily need to develop characters and develop an entire story. You can really just sit with a beautiful image.”

What about prose? Erika says that with prose you can “really expand upon one particular moment or image or scene and really develop that into more.”

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/110992463″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

A member of the BWW since 2011, Erika says she could never have anticipated what the workshop experience has done for her. “It’s really helped me develop my work and get it to where it is now.”

We also spoke about how she went about editing the poetry submissions for The Best of the Burlington Writers Workshop 2013. She gives some insight from an editor’s perspective, which I think you’ll find very encouraging, especially if you’ve been throwing your work out into the world.

Think you’d make a good interview subject? Don’t be shy. Contact me!