Today we’d like to introduce you to Karen Paul Holmes.
Hi Karen, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Hi, thanks for having me! I’ve always loved words — reading them and writing — and I had some inspiring English teachers in middle and high school. Though I majored in music at the University of Michigan, I eventually worked my way into a writing career in Corporate America. My last job was VP-Communications at ING (now Voya Financial), and I’ve been a freelance writer for many years since. But my real love is poetry.
I wrote poems in a notebook for years, but it wasn’t until 2009 that I started sharing and getting published. Sharing with audiences and in poetry workshops definitely lit me up! Wow, to see my poems through the eyes of others really helped me hone my craft and enjoy it even more. I love reading my work in public — poetry definitely comes alive when it’s read out loud.
It’s important to me to capture ideas, feelings, events, reactions, etc. in writing, and that usually means writing poems. I very much want to make an emotional connection with readers. I want them to relate to the things I share in my poetry.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Poetry is a hard business to be in! It’s extremely competitive: lots of poets out there and a lot of MFA (Master of Fine Arts) programs in poetry or creative writing. You spend precious time submitting poems to journals and other publications, and the majority of your submissions get rejected. Like most poets, I had to grow a tough skin. I’m lucky if 10% of the submissions I send out are accepted for publication. And that’s similar to most poets’ experiences.
When you do get published, unfortunately, there aren’t that many poetry readers in the U.S. Many people have the idea that poems are hard to understand or relate to. People may have hated learning about it in school because of the way poetry is often taught. Much of the poetry written (past or present) IS hard to read!
Yet, there are many many poems that will touch your heart or make you laugh or make you say, “Yes, that’s me!” or “Wow, I never quite saw it (the subject, image, or idea) that way, but now I do.” So the challenge is reaching readers. I’ve sort of made it a mission to show people how accessible poetry can be. You just have to find the poets you love… and there are tons of them out there.
Oh, and poets don’t get rich! Even if a poetry book becomes a best-seller, the poet really doesn’t make much money from sales. Like many creative endeavors, it’s a labor of love.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m in my element when I’m writing poetry. My husband can attest to the fact that I will hole myself up to write when I’m inspired… and sometimes forget to eat. (Don’t worry, he brings me food). When I get inspired in the middle of the night or while driving, I record the ideas on my phone. After I draft a poem, I revise, revise, revise!
My two dream-come-true-moments were when Garrison Keillor (of Prairie Home Companion fame) read one of my poems on his Writer’s Almanac and when former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith discussed a poem on her podcast, The Slowdown. I’m also proud of being published in many excellent literary journals.
Many poets find that they have to submit manuscripts to many publishers over many years before they get a book contract. I was lucky. Both of my books got accepted pretty quickly — each book with a different publisher. The books got several good reviews (and no bad ones, thankfully!). For example, Grace Cavalieri wrote this in the Washington Independent Review of Books about my second collection, No Such Thing as Distance (Terrapin Books, 2018).
“It’s rare to find a poet who can make you feel you’ve known her your whole life because she embodies the wit of your best friend, the sadness of your other best friend, and the sweetness of your oldest friend. And she might have been the smartest girl in the senior class… I’ll take this book on vacation with me. It’s that entertaining and moving; it wants to read twice.”
We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?
Hmmm, that’s not an easy one to pin down. I’d say swimming in Lake Huron with my father when I was young. He worked a lot, so the only quality time we really got to spend with him was on our summer vacation to the beach. I often draw from childhood memories in my poems, and this one of my father comes in at the end of this poem:
IN FOOTBALL SEASON, I LEARN TO APPRECIATE WHAT I HAVE
Glenda, a widow for three years, says she misses
football sounds rolling through the house each weekend,
though she had fussed when her husband
wouldn’t turn it off. My new guy watches now.
I’m getting used to it again: the crowd’s low thunder
under commentators’ prattle. Sometimes I watch a bit
or bring my laptop to the couch, look up
when the noise swells or he swears. Sometimes I get tired
of that TV rumbling most of Sunday after rumbling
most of Saturday, but I remember Glenda. And I remember
my ex-husband’s snoring: I’d lie there telling myself
I’d miss it if he were gone, but sometimes I slept
in the other room. I remember Mother, who never spoke
of these things, hinting to me that she wished
she’d been more intimate with Father when she had the chance,
before the earthquake of his Parkinson’s. And farther back,
during my family’s three-week migration to Lake Huron,
I remember Mother mad at him for sticking to the radio’s static
as Ernie Harwell crackled the Detroit Tigers’ play-by-play.
My sisters and I picked at Daddy to swim with us again,
carry us again on his shoulders across the blue deep
to the sandbar—that clear strip of aqua—
where we’d splash up to our knees in laughter.
– Karen Paul Holmes, published in Atticus Review 1/14/2015
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.karenpaulholmes.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/sharing_poems/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karenholmespoetry/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqBc6hR2t3BTp9kcQQD1wKg
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/matthew-glenn-ward/reality-show-save-this
Image Credits
Counterclock Journal
