Three Questions for Mary

What inspired your choice of genre(s) and/or form(s) for your work? What was your creative process? What is the significance of this work to you?

"Domestic Violence Shelter": I have written a number of poems based on my experiences working in domestic violence shelters. This particular one was written when I was writing a poem a day for a month a few years ago. I used the intake form format in order to describe cases of DV and the intern’s back and forth of her emotional reactions. 

"Early Autumn": some poems just seem to want to be prose poems. Others get revised as free verse and then prose again. This one just seemed to work better as a prose poem. I have been writing more nature poems recently—they tend to be odes, elegies, or a combination of those. 

"How to Have Sex": This poem is one of my process poems, currently in a full-length manuscript I am submitting. I wrote this as lockdown was lifting and I was thinking of things people might need to be reminded how to do. I had taken a Zoom workshop where we wrote an erasure poem. These two things combined and I wrote this poem. Since writing this, this dish’s title and webpage have been updated. I also must admit I have not cooked this dish.

Mary Christine Delea has a Ph.D. and is a former university professor. She continues to teach through in-person and online workshops and in her volunteer positions. Her poems have been published in one full-length collection (The Skeleton Holding Up the Sky from Main Street Rag Press), three chapbooks, numerous journals, and various anthologies. Originally from Long Island, NY, she now lives in Oregon.