Gregory Luce was born in Dallas, Texas, and raised in various locations in Texas, Kentucky, and Oklahoma. (His father became an Episcopal priest when he was very young and the family moved around as the father was attached to several parishes thereafter.) He graduated from high school in Oklahoma City and received a BA in English and an MA in Creative Writing from Oklahoma State University, followed by additional graduate work in writing at the University of Southern Mississippi before moving to Washington, DC, in 1980. His childhood was relatively uneventful until his parents’ separation (when he was 15) and their eventual divorce.
Of his introduction to poetry, Greg recalls:
“My first encounter with poetry beyond nursery rhymes (which I still love, by the way) came when I was 3 or 4 and my grandparents read to me from A Child’s Garden of Verses, by Robert Louis Stevenson. Aside from the charm and music of the verse itself, I identified strongly with the poems’ persona; Stevenson as a boy seemed to have a similar sensibility and view of the world that I could perceive even across the time and distance. Like many children I wrote poems from time to time, on my own or for school assignments. In high school I began to read Modernist poets such as Eliot, Pound, and Marianne Moore, and began to write more seriously.
Over the years I have published numerous poems in various print and online journals. In 2010 I was blessed with the nearly simultaneous publication of my two chapbooks, Signs of Small Grace and Drinking Weather after many years of attempts.”
Greg is always thinking about poetry, reading poems, and discussing them with poetically minded friends and acquaintances. “I don’t have projects in mind, but I always try to stay open to inspiration. It might come from a word or phrase that gets stuck in my head, or an unexpected observation in the natural or urban world as I move around. The rhythm of city buses and the sights they make available are frequent sources of poems.”
Luce's blog is http://enchiladasblog.blogspot.com and has two chapbooks available:
Rilke; favorite living poet: Charles Wright
What is your favorite poem?
“Ode to a Nightingale”
What line(s) of poetry do you love?
Perhaps we are here in order to say: house / bridge, fountain, gate, pitcher, fruit-tree, window— / at most: column, tower….
Here is the time for the sayable, here is its homeland. / Speak and bear witness….
Between the hammers our heart / endures, just as the tongue does / between the teeth, and, despite that, / still is able to praise.
(Rilke, Ninth Duino Elegy)
What word do you love?
throb
What word do you hate?
beautiful
Where do you write?
At home in bed; on the bus; on the subway
If a dead poet visited you in a dream, who would it be and what do you wish the person would say to you?
John Keats: “You too shall be among the English poets after your death.”
Mountains or beaches?
beaches
Summer/warmer climate or winter/cooler climate?
summer/warmer
Brain/mind or heart/soul?
brain/mind
Dogs or cats?
cats
Tea or coffee?
coffee
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