{"id":4402,"date":"2025-01-11T12:18:45","date_gmt":"2025-01-11T17:18:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/?p=4402"},"modified":"2025-01-11T12:18:47","modified_gmt":"2025-01-11T17:18:47","slug":"chris-arvidson-on-becoming-a-poet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/blog\/2025\/01\/11\/chris-arvidson-on-becoming-a-poet\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Arvidson on Becoming a Poet\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The world of creative writing can be divided into three broad categories:  fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction.  When I first met Chris Arvidson about six years ago, she was known primarily as a writer of creative nonfiction. She wrote personal essays about such topics as her love of the North Carolina mountains and her passion for baseball.  Recently, however, Chris has taken an interest in writing poetry.  In 2022, she published her debut poetry chapbook titled The House Inside My Head. <\/em>This month Finishing Line Press brought out Nobody Cares What You Think<\/em>, her first full poetry collection. Curious about how and why Chris made the transition from creative nonfiction to poetry, I reached out to her and asked about this development in her writing career.  Here is what she sent to me:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Poetry is a relatively new genre for me. I have often tried to figure out how this MFA in Creative Nonfiction person ended up wandering into poetry. I think I have a couple of ideas about how that has happened. When I moved back to Charlotte in 2019, I started attending a weekly prompt-driven workshop at Charlotte Mecklenburg Library\u2019s Uptown branch. And, somehow, I started responding in poetry? It just started pouring out of me. I have kept a running notebook ever since, using it as a master collector of writing from every workshop I attend, which includes many with Charlotte Lit (where I now serve on the Board), Charlotte Writers Club, and Table Rock Writers Workshop at Wildacres, as well as the library. I especially find Jay Ward\u2019s monthly Saturday series at University City Library a fun and always productive couple of writing hours.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I suspect the appeal of poetry is partly driven by my age. With a poem you can respond to a prompt or notion, play with it, revise it, and FINISH it in a reasonable amount of time. I figure that I\u2019m naturally gravitating to things that I can finish. Call it done. Move on to the next thing I want to say something about, and know that I\u2019ll be around long enough to do so. I also think that the poetry I am writing in this book very much runs right up into memoir, and in that way, the MFA in creative nonfiction plays a role in my thinking and writing. Many of the sort of \u201cprinciples\u201d feel the same, attention to the telling detail, the universality in personal stories, and observing the world through a unique-to-you lense.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m going to do a book launch for <\/em>Nobody Cares What You Think at Charlotte Art League\u2019s gallery on February 14, 6-9:00 p.m., in conjunction with a show opening there that I co-curated called \u201cLatrina Ekphrastic\u201d \u2014 it\u2019s art and words from local poets and artists and it\u2019s going to be hung in the gallery bathrooms. I think readings that night will definitely be in order, maybe not IN the bathrooms, but just outside.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For readers who want to know more about Chris and her creative endeavors, please click on the following link:  https:\/\/www.chrisarvidson.com\/index.htm<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I congratulate Chris on the publication of Nobody Cares What You Think, <\/em>and I thank her for her many and varied contributions to Storied Charlotte\u2019s creative side.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The world of creative writing can be divided into three broad categories:  fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction.  When I first met Chris Arvidson about six years ago, she was known primarily as a writer of creative nonfiction. She wrote personal essays about such topics as her love of the North Carolina mountains and her passion for baseball.  Recently, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-4402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-storied-charlotte","tag-poetry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4402"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4407,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4402\/revisions\/4407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}