I don't remember my first attempt at writing poetry, but I do remember swinging on the front porch on Sunday nights and scribbling down all the sounds I could hear. I'd be sent to bed in the front room next to the porch, and I'd open the window to listen to the night, and I'd memorize the sounds into lines of poems and whisper them to myself over and over, to remember them long enough to write them down. I know this was before the fourth grade, because when I was in the fourth grade, we moved from that house on Stockton Street. So, as long as I can remember writing, I have been writing poetry about place. Now poetry has landed me in an extraordinary situation. I've won a Fulbright Scholar Award to study and teach poetry in Northern Ireland at the Seamus Heaney Centre in Belfast. Ireland is rich with writers, and poets a plenty, which is understandable given all those long hours of winter darkness, fairies, ancient lore, and green lands by the ocean. In seven days, I'll be in the land of poetry, and I will spend the next six months writing about it.
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