'Powerful language, powerful feelings and images'

 

“The kinds of things that poetry can offer are timeless - mainly the kind of compression it offers of powerful language, powerful feelings and images, and, you know, the inner experience becoming outer.” – Brenda Hillman

 

Born in Tucson, AZ in March of 1951, Hillman is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire, named for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Northern California Book Award for Poetry.   Her newest book, just out this year, is In a Few Minutes Before Later.

 

A “writer” of poetry since age 9 (“the first time I wrote a poem that I was proud of,”) Hillman is known for poems that draw on elements of found texts and documents, personal meditation, and observation including about topics like geology, the environment, politics, family, and spirituality. 

 

 Among her many awards are The Pushcart Prize and Fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.   A longtime writing professor, she holds the Olivia Filippi Chair in Poetry at Saint Mary’s College of California.  

 

“The techniques of contemporary poetry are probably the techniques of your daily life,” Hillman said.   “I don't know a single person who goes into the grocery store and thinks in complete sentences.”