“During a Traditional Holiday Meal,” “While Hiking Out of a Ravine,” and “In the time before therapy” by Sharon Pretti appeared in Issue 45 and can be found here.
We’d love to hear more about “In the time before therapy.”
“In the time before therapy” is a poem that had gone through many versions and just wasn’t working. When prompted in a workshop to write a mirror poem, I went back to those earlier versions. The constraint of the mirror poem form helped me re-work the material—add and subtract details, find ones that best served the form. Working in form gave me a fresh perspective and provided some needed distance from the emotional content of the poem.
What was the most difficult part of writing this poem?
It’s always difficult to write about family. I always start with a true event which, in this poem, was the childhood trauma. I never feel bound to retelling every detail of a family event. I do, however, feel committed to staying true to the emotions of the event. The poem, for me, is a container for the event and its emotions The word choices, the details and the line breaks were crafted with the needs of the poem in mind.
Recommend a book for us which was published in the last decade.
I loved Valérie Perrin’s Fresh Water for Flowers. It’s a beautifully written novel about how one lives and loves after great loss. Jill Osier’s, The Solace Is Not the Lullaby, is a gorgeous book of poems. It’s spare and understated, two elements I greatly appreciate in all writing.
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
I’d like to have tea with Leila Chatti. Her book of poems, Deluge, astonished me. I’d love to hear about her approach to craft when it comes to writing about the intimate topics of illness, God, the body.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
A first poetry collection. Fingers crossed.
Our thanks to Sharon for taking the time to answer a few questions and share these poems. Read “During a Traditional Holiday Meal,” “While Hiking Out of a Ravine,” and “In the time before therapy” here.
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Sharon Pretti lives in San Francisco, CA. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Calyx, The MacGuffin, Spillway, The Bellevue Literary Review, and Canary. She has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations and was nominated for the Best New Poets 2024 anthology. She is also an award-winning haiku poet and frequent contributor to haiku journals including Modern Haiku and Frogpond. Sharon is a retired medical social worker and, for many years, she had the pleasure of teaching poetry workshops in a nursing home and at assisted living facilities. Her website is sharonpretti.com