by Aurora Antonovic ~

Question: Ursula, on March 19, 2006, you were installed as Poet Laureate for Sunland-Tujunga, California for the two-year period of 2006-2008. You were editor of Poetic Voices, a top-notch, impressive online poetic magazine, from 1997 until its close in 2005. You are author of The Blossoms of the Night-Blooming Cereus, which won first prize in the poetry division of the DIY Book Festival 2005, as well as the author of three chapbooks (Eyes, 1990, Two Tujunga Poets, 1993, and Spirited, 1996) and the book, Be Prepared, Don't Mumble, Look UP! or How To Read Poetry Aloud. You are also a member of the California Federation of Chaparral Poets, Inc.(Treasurer 1997-2005), and of the California State Poetry Society.

How did you begin your poetic journey, and what have your influences been?

Answer: I wrote my first poem when I was ten, and my teacher liked it! That set a place in my heart/mind for poems to be useful in communication with others. My parents, from Germany, loved classical music and introduced me to the songs of Schubert, Brahms, Hugo Wolf, Mendelssohn, and others, and the poetry set to music that often brought tears to my eyes was a definite influence. In high school, one English teacher introduced me to "diagramming" of English sentences, and I became aware of structure, precision, choice of language, and emotional content. I wrote poetry (and other things, like exams) in college, and my love of language was reinforced by some quality teachers who widened my acquaintance with the Masters and showed me current trends in poetry and how to read it. In a two-semester class on Oral Interpretation taught by Dorothy Kaucher in 1951, geared primarily for Speech and Drama majors, I learned how to read poetry and prose aloud effectively, and at the end of the second semester, they awarded the first Dorothy Kaucher Award for Excellence in Interpretation, and I was the winner!

After college, I became a legal secretary in 1956 and learned about other people's lives through that channel, and I released myself from some of the work stress by writing. By 1988, I was writing poetry regularly, and I'm happy to say I've written 699 poems since then. About a third of them are worth reading twice. :)

Question: Some of your poems are touchingly autobiographical, such as "Thanks", while others are clearly not. How do you choose which voice you will use in your poetry, and is there any topic about which you will not write?

Answer: Well, a poem like "Thanks" stems from my hope that my life -- I'm now 76 -- has added something good and/or useful to this remarkable Earth. Since words are the only way I know to convey ideas (unlike my astronomer husband who can point at far-distant miracles in the sky and succeed in knowing what he does is useful!), and my preferred form of writing is poetry, my personal viewpoint comes out as a poem. When I observe or learn or know something from outside myself, however, the form of the poem and its viewpoint may become more objective or impersonal -- as though it might be some more "universal" experience known by most of humankind, and I'm just putting words around it. I value humor in good taste and strive for it, and sometimes it works! I don't yet know if there is a topic about which I would not write, but I refuse to use "shock" words (otherwise known as four-letter words) in my poetry just to catch the reader's attention. I think the "innocent reader" who doesn't see your eyes, watch your facial expressions, see your hand gestures, or your body posture, deserves some respect and sensitivity.

Question: You have written two books and three chapbooks. Take us through the process of writing a book. Do you plan beforehand what theme you will tackle, or do you let a more whimsical approach guide you?

Answer: The book, "Be Prepared, Don't Mumble, Look UP!" resulted from a workshop seminar I gave for the California Federation of Chaparral Poets, Inc. at its 2000 Annual Convention in San Bernardino, and repeated it at the 2001 Annual Convention in Sacramento, California. People asked for my "text," and the book resulted. I enlarged my seminar notes, polished the writing, threw in some further examples of what I was talking about, and put a cover on it, thanks to Jim Shuman, the manager of Dry Creek Press ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ). The first of the three chapbooks, "Eyes," was the result of inquiries from friends who wanted some of my poems. And "Two Tujunga Poets" originated from a duet program I gave with Nancy Trowbridge for the Readers Edge Bookstore in Montrose, California. The third chapbook, "Spirited" resulted from my awareness that no one was asking for the other two any longer, and because the title poem won a prize! Also, I recorded all the poems of "Spirited" on a CD and also had cassette tapes made of the recording. That was fun -- to illustrate my own oral interpretation principles! "The Blossoms of the Night-Blooming Cereus", a collection of 68 of my poems, was a more serious undertaking, partly to have the "satisfaction" of a book I could give to my friends and relatives, and partly because the poems in it are some of my better work. When Publish America, Inc. made its publication feasible and accepted the manuscript, it was very exciting.

Question: Percey Bysshe Shelley said, "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." Do you agree with this statement?

Answer: Well, I think we raise a lot of questions that need governmental attention. Whether we manage to create any improvement in the human condition remains to be seen.

Question: The late Jane Kenyon, who was once American Poet Laureate for the state of New Hampshire, believed that the poet's role was primarily as recorder and consoler. How do you define the role of the poet?

Answer: Poetry is "condensed emotion", and each poet seems to have a unique viewpoint of life's happenings, and a unique sensitivity to human relationships and how they work, succeed, wither, or fail. The poet's job is to remain aware and open to experience, no matter where it comes from, and to apply his skill, talent, insight, intelligence, and heart to "explaining" why an experience or observation is worth looking at twice. I fully believe that a poem should mean something, whether it is evoking an emotion or identifying a wonder or creating a rebellion, and all the other human experiences in between. Otherwise, the writing is just words on a page that do not move me or change me or recognize me.

Question: If we were to pay you a visit today, what books would be found in your library? Which would be the most worn?

Answer: Oh, funny! When we moved from Glendale to Tujunga in 1979, we packed our own books and transported them to our new house. We loaded the boxes into an Econoline van (1,500 pound limit), and our wonderful little Plymouth Horizon (450 pound limit), and made NINE fully loaded trips with both cars! One room in our two-bedroom house, the "den" is nothing but bookshelves. The living room has the LP record collection (over 2,000 platters), and an eight-foot-long bookcase, halfway up the wall. The hallway has two bookcases; all walls in our bedroom have bookcases, and the "office" (the second bedroom) has a six-foot, six-shelf monster dividing my part of the office from the Astronomer's side! Old friends, ranging from our science fiction collection from college and post-college days (Analog, Galaxy, Fantasy and Science Fiction, etc.) to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, and the novels and stories from our youth (Aesop's Fables, the Mary Poppins books, A.A. Milne's Pooh Bear books and poetry, fairy tale collections, Greek mythology, Shakespeare, and the poetry -- Edna St. Vincent Millay, Emily Dickinson, Robinson Jeffers, etc., etc.) are still active in our lives.

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