Sep. 4, 2018
Maybe the poet’s most important function is to visit the world and report what is found—to make us all aware of things we fail to notice. Susie Meserve takes this role seriously in her debut collection, Little Prayers. It’s a book full of wistfulness. And of wisdom gained from friendship, music, marriage and parenthood. —David Roderick
February 26, 2002
Everyone’s a critic? Maybe in New York. In Portland, it seems, everyone’s a writer. In fact, writing may be the city’s only true art form. For every local writer of national fame (Chuck Palahniuk, Ursula K. LeGuin, Tom Spanbauer, Whitney Otto, et al.) there are thousands of other budding scribes hitting open-mike nights, writing for small journals, self-publishing chapbooks or otherwise parking for hours on end at a cafe table with Powerbook or pen at hand…
Terra Ojeda: Do you have a writing routine? If so, what does it look like?
Susie Meserve: I do have a writing routine—of sorts. My mantra is, ‘write first, before everything else.’ If I try to start my paid work first, or start with paying bills or anything else, I never get to the writing.
When people ask what do you do, you tell them… ?
I say, “I’m a writer, and I teach.” I started telling people I was a writer fifteen years ago, on the advice of one of my teachers who told me it’s important to identify that way even if you’re aspiring/attempting/up-and-coming/unpublished. So I decided, I’m a writer. I have been ever since. Now I feel a little less like a fraud when I say it.
I'm working from the premise that motherhood is not just all diapers, tantrums, and setting limits. It's interesting. Okay, sometimes. 