interview with ohio center for the book

OCFB: When did you begin writing poetry?

LC:  I started writing poetry in high school. Although I was writing short stories in middle school, in high school I discovered poetry through my English teacher at University School, Kevin Kay. We completed a poetry unit in which I read poems like “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hadyn (a Detroit poet), “Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio” by James Wright (an Ohio poet) and others. I fell in love with their lyrical voices and that was it for me.

As time progressed, I became interested in other genres of writing – songwriting, journalism and creative nonfiction. But I have always come back to poetry.

OCFB: Congratulations on the publication of How to Live in Ruins . Last year you published your first poetry collection, The Shape of Home and now your second collection will be released in November. Does the new collection expand upon the ideas present in the first?

LC:  My first collection braids together poems about growing up in Northeast Ohio with pieces about urban parenting, and the whole endeavor in set in a recessionary environment. I’m exploring themes of creating your own identity amidst the echoes and influences of the past. How to Live in Ruins tells the next chapter of the story – one couple moving into and raising kids in the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood of Cleveland, a place that might appear “ruins” when viewed from the outside. The poems grapple with challenges facing urban neighborhoods like crumbling schools, homelessness, people losing their homes to foreclosure. They’re personal but also political.

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