Donna Lewis Cowan was born and raised in Arlington, Virginia, and spent a lot of time with her older brother in the backyard, riding bikes, climbing trees, tunneling through the bushes, and playing with our dog. She was very shy, and that made many things more difficult than they should have been, but admits she couldn’t have been born into a better family.
She started fooling around with poetry in high school; her brother, one year her senior, began writing poetry and Cowen followed suit, believing writing poetry was what one was supposed to do. (She hung out with the artsy kids so it didn't seen so unusual.) She kept a notebook back then and wrote down her favorite poetry quotes from books, sometimes writing out whole poems she considered her favorites.
Cowan attended Virginia Tech – first as a theater major, then switched to a double-major in English and psychology -- where she got into poetry seriously in her senior year after she fortuitously enrolled in three poetry classes with three extraordinary professors: Thomas Gardner, Esther Richey, and Lucinda Roy. She hadn’t written any poetry since high school and didn’t think she had any special ability, but they encouraged and mentored her, recommended books and helped her work on poems outside of class. "I think the English department there is very special; I can’t imagine getting that kind of attention anywhere else. They encouraged me to apply to MFA programs for poetry; I ended up at George Mason University, close to where I grew up." She didn’t complete the program there but would like to finish her MFA at some point.
Her first book Between Gods, published by Cherry Grove Collections, will be available in March 2012.
"They’ve published books by some other great DC-area authors – Deborah Ager, J.D. Smith – so I feel like I’m in good company.
Of its impending release Cowan says, "When the book comes out, I know the first question people will ask: what does 'Between Gods' mean? The poems were written in my twenties through mid-thirties, and reflect the transitional nature of that phase of life. Where am I going, which path do I choose? Every decision you make – who to marry, where to work, where to live – seems so monumental, and in many ways, it is. So the title is about that “betweenness,” but also reflects my interest in mythology. When I was in Croatia a few years ago, I took a photo of a tiny island with nothing on it but one small white house. When I look at the photo, I think of the isolation, but also the beauty of it. It seems protected somehow, by the gods in the sky and those in the water, the way that the house is perfectly centered between them. That’s where the title came from."
Her poetry emphasizes sound and image, and how they work together to create the atmosphere of the poem. "I’m interested in creating something beautiful, a poem someone would want to read over and over again. Any sort of 'meaning' grows from the images and the aural qualities of the language." Cowan wants each poem to feel like a painting, to evoke the same visceral feelings that an amazing painting would.
Cowan really wanted the poems in her first book to reflect the title – to have sort of a timeless quality, to explore questions of faith, time, our connections to nature. She's written a number of other poems that are darker than the ones in Between Gods – more gritty – so that is a direction she plans to explore more. She would also like to write children’s books: having read hundreds of children’s books with her kids, she feel like she understands how they are structured, and having a good ear and the ability to play with words is an asset in that genre.
Donna Lewis Cowan's Web site is www.donnalewiscowan.wordpress.com and her publisher's Web site is http://www.cherry-grove.com/cowan.html.
Who are your favorite poets?
T.S. Eliot, H.D, Louise Gluck, Jorie Graham, David Brendan Hopes, Bob Hicok
What is your favorite poem?
“Preludes” by T.S. Eliot.
What line(s) of poetry do you love?
“She was already loosened like long hair,/poured out like fallen rain,/shared like a limitless supply./She was already root.” –Rilke (Stephen Mitchell translation), from “Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes.”
“Now gold and purple scintillate/On trees that seem dancing/In delirium;/Then the moon/In a mad orange flare/Floods the grape-hung night.” –Hart Crane, from “October-November”
“I believe/forever in the hooks./The way things work/is that eventually/something catches.” –Jorie Graham, from “The Way Things Work”
What word do you love?
scarlet
What word do you hate?
angst
Where do you write?
In the sunroom or kitchen, on my laptop. But many great lines have come to me while walking.
Mountains or beaches?
51/49.
Summer/warmer climate or winter/cooler climate?
Cooler
Brain/mind or heart/soul?
Brain/mind
Comments