Question: Christine, tell us a little about yourself.

Answer: I think this is the most difficult question for me to answer because I don’t like talking about myself. I was raised to be polite, and that includes not bragging, so every time someone asks me this question, I squirm. I live in southeastern Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley and I love it here. The landscape is a mix of farms, forest, hills, and city, which suits me perfectly. I grew up in northeastern Pennsylvania, the heart of the coal-mining part of the state. The landscape is filled with strip mines and mountains. These things have their own beauty, which I didn’t appreciate until I moved away.

When I went to school in Pittsburgh, I was amazed at the “big” city since I grew up in a rural area. When I moved to New Jersey, I worked in Manhattan for a few years and that experience shaped my idea of what a city should be like. New York is a really amazing place. My favorite memory is of the days when I’d leave my building in Herald Square and find twenty or so men playing percussion on upturned paint buckets in the open space of the square. You can’t imagine the electric feeling of that music. It was wonderful.

After that I became a stay-at-home mom, a role I still consider to have been the greatest challenge of my life, so far. Dealing with two children born two years apart really brought home the most basic of lessons: humans need love, food, warmth, and care to survive and prosper. These are some of the underlying themes of my poetry; I often find myself writing about the human spirit again and again.

Question:  How did you become a poet?

Answer: I’ve known I was going to be a writer since I learned to read, around 4 years old, but I wrote my first poem at age 10. I distinctly remember sitting on the swing at my family’s cabin in Pennsylvania, watching the rain patter into the water of the Nescopeck Creek. I wrote a lot about the water and the rain and the flowers that year. Ever since that time I associate the beginning of my writing with that swing.

I used to write a lot more prose when I was a teenager: short stories, essays, etc. Now I find that there is so much I still don’t know about writing that I need to concentrate on one aspect of it: poetry. I am trying to write perfect poems. For me, poetry is the art form of language. Mastering it will take me the rest of my life. In that sense, I am still becoming a poet. Does one ever stop becoming? I don’t think so.

One thing that might surprise many people is that I didn’t write more than a handful of poems between 1991 and 2001, and of those poems, I only consider two of them “real poems.” I felt as though I hadn’t lived enough to have anything important to say in a poem. Most of the lines I wrote were so banal that I couldn’t bear to read them. I waited a really long time to begin. I wrestled with illness, death, childbirth, and other difficult things before I found my voice.

Question: In addition to capturing images with words, you are a photographer. Please tell us about that, and how poetry and photography often go together in your world.

Answer: As a child, I’d never been interested in the visual arts. I hated to color with crayons. Also, there is a huge learning curve involved with any new craft or art and I just didn’t have the concentration or desire, once I started writing, to begin a new calling. Then my husband bought me a small point-and-shoot digital camera in November of 2000. Soon, I “borrowed” his old Pentax K-1000 to learn how film worked. I was hooked. It wasn’t a difficult or tedious craft to learn; instead I found myself hungry for the knowledge of how a camera worked, how people interpret visual information. What I though would be a frustrating and unpleasant experience turned out to be the complete opposite. It was relaxing and fun.

Photography uses a part of my brain that isn’t taxed by words. When poetry becomes difficult, as it always does eventually, shooting photos relaxes me and allows me to create something beautiful without the stress of finding the perfect adjective or verb. Everything becomes real again. Of course, then I get frustrated because the photos don’t look the way I want them to and go back to writing, which suddenly seems easy again. It’s a wonderful creative cycle that keeps me interested in life and the world around me.

Question:  What are some of your poetic inspirations?

Answer: I’m not sure how to answer this because what inspires me is a more complicated question than it at first seems. In the beginning, when I was a teenager, the writing of William Carlos Williams inspired me. His ability to take a few simple words and wrestle them into a shape on the page that resonated with truth was something I wanted to be able to do. As I grew older, I found myself drawn not so much to other writers as to visual artists. I remember loving Monet’s paintings while I was in college and then, over the years I found myself moving towards Van Gogh instead. The funny thing is, I hated Van Gogh when I was young. Now his explosion of color interests me.

Another inspiration is the book written by Carolyn See, “The Handyman.” I found this book before I began writing again in 2001 and the message was electrifying. The main character in the book wants to be an artist, but has not yet found his inspiration. The book details the journey he takes as he finds his voice and begins to paint. This is exactly how I felt for most of my twenties. Once I reached thirty, thirty-one years of age, I began to have something to say. Often, it’s only a few lines about the dandelion out in the yard, but somehow I’ve begun to find the words that describe the flower. Before, I was empty.

In terms of what things inspire me now to write, I find that nearly everything inspires me when I’m in the mood: the landscape, the human condition, politics, words, songs, traffic, almost anything. When I’m feeling blank, then nothing can move me to write.

Question:  Your work often uses imagery to evoke emotions. Is this style deliberate?

Answer: Yes, it’s completely deliberate. I’m still trying to figure out how to speak an emotion through action, without coming right out and saying: “She’s sad,” or “He’s angry.” I believe that imagery and the action of the characters in a poem can speak of these things in a way that makes the reader absorb them without fear. I’m probably focused on this technique because I’m the kind of person who hates being told what to do, see, think, feel, etc. I want to make my own decisions about what I’m experiencing.

Also, I think that without emotion of some sort, a poem fails. If I want to know what the weather will be like tomorrow, I read the weather report in the newspaper. If I want to learn about the latest political controversy I read the day’s news. If I want to experience something that speaks to me as a human being, I read a poem. Poetry is an art that speaks to the emotions. This is why so many poems are read and/or remembered at weddings, funerals, births, and disasters.

Question:  Have you a particular form of poetry you find most appealing? I’ve recently come across a poem of yours that rhymed, that was quite delightful. Any plans to delve into various writing styles?

Answer: If you had asked me this a few years ago, I would have replied “free-verse” with no hesitation. Now, I’ve read a great deal more poetry and find that I’m inexplicably drawn to those forms of poetry that exert a rigid control over the language in a way that is invisible. The poem then becomes enormously graceful and vivid, yet does so in a way that make the reader think the poem is doing its work effortlessly. I love poems that have rhyme or meter that works beautifully, yet doesn’t intrude. For me, the meaning of the poem must support the structure. If the structure imposes on the poem’s message, than it fails as a poem. I want my poetry to be controlled and wild at the same time. This is not a rational or easy choice, but it’s one that I feel is important. I may write in the form of a sestina, or in a form of my own devising, but I will continue to write in a way that appeals to me aesthetically and logically as well as emotionally.

Question:  How important are publication credits to you?  Do you write for the sake of your own craft, or do you tailor your poetry to the available markets?

Answer: Publication credits are both extremely important and not at all important. I have goals and desires, of course. I’d like to be as widely read as possible. I would love to become known better in my own country as well as internationally. Yet, I don’t write to become famous. If I wanted fame, it would have been far easier to pursue a singing career. There is a much greater audience for pop music than for poetry. I write because I love to play with language. I love to write poems. Even if I were never published again, I’d still continue writing. Nothing compares to the joy of sitting down and writing some words that you just know are fabulous. Nothing compares to the wonder of revising a poem into precisely what you want. It’s like building the perfect wall, or baking the perfect loaf of bread. It’s an accomplishment all in itself.

I tried a few times to tailor my poetry to available markets, but I’ve given that up. I can’t do it. And I’ve found that I have no idea why editors accept some poems and reject others. The poems that I love and think are the best I’ve written get rejected all the time. The poems that I stuff in the envelope as an afterthought get published. I’ve started having my husband help pick the poems I send out because obviously, my own opinion cannot be trusted to choose wisely.

Question: How do you handle rejection?

Answer: I don’t handle it well at all, actually. I get really angry. Usually I then do something crazy, like, oh, decide to publish my own journal. Or begin a blog. Sometimes I even get so upset that the very day I get a rejection I gather a pile of poems, stuff them in envelopes, and send them out to more places to get rejected again. It’s perverse, but that’s how I work.

Question: You have begun an exciting new venture, an online poetry publication entitled Autumn Sky Poetry. How do you like wearing the hat of editor?

Answer: Autumn Sky Poetry was born the day I received three rejections in the mail at once. I figured that if an editor doesn’t want my work, than I’ll just publish the stuff that I think is fabulous. Which makes no sense because I refuse to publish my own poetry. The journal has also become a way to share those poems I’ve read on the web and loved, either in blogs or on poetry forums. It’s become a wonderful learning experience. I get to interact with all sorts of people from all over the world. I also have begun to understand the overwhelming choices that every editor faces, as well as the frustration of deadlines and typos. This has been one of the smartest things I’ve done in terms of growth for myself as a person. It’s one more thing I can add to my box of experiences.

Question: What can we expect from Christine Klocek-Lim in the future?

Answer: I’m trying to write a book of poems that I hope to finish at some point in my life. I’ve even entertained the idea of writing a novel, but that will probably have to wait until my children are older and not needing my time so much. Other than that, who knows? Hopefully life will bring me great opportunities and great joys as well as the usual disasters and sorrows. This is the stuff out of which I make my poems, and for that I am grateful.

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