Episode 459: The Power of Poetry to Survive, Heal, and Connect — Interview with Anne Marie Wells

by Gabriela Pereira
published in Podcast

Today, Lori is interviewing Anne Marie Wells. They’ll be talking about her poetry collection, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse, and using poetry as a method of dealing with heavy emotions.

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In this episode Anne Marie and Lori discuss:

  • Choosing poems for a collection and deciding on their chronology.
  • Using poetry as a way to deal with grief and its power to heal.
  • The significance and symbolism behind white space.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Anne Marie Wells

Anne Marie Wells (She | They) is an award-winning Queer poet, playwright, memoirist, and storyteller navigating the world with a chronic illness. She is a faculty member for The Community Literature Initiative through the Sims Library of Poetry and Strategic Partnership Fellow for The Poetry Lab. She earned the 2021 Peter K. Hixson Memorial Award in Poetry, the 2020 Wyoming Writers Milestone Award, and was a 2021 Wyoming Woman of Influence nominee in the arts for amplifying the voices of the LGBTQ and disabled communities with her writing. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems, debuts with Curious Corvid Publishing on April 30, 2023. 

You can find her on her website or follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

Survived By: A Memoir in Verse

Anne Marie Wells’ debut collection of poetry, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems, chronicles her experience coping with her father’s terminal cancer diagnosis, his death, and her subsequent bereavement. She will be traveling this summer on tour with her book as well as a writing workshop, Finding the Poem in the Pain, in which she provides participants writing prompts to process and explore their grief.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link where, if you choose to purchase via the link, DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 459

(Right-click to download.)

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