Moxxy is a poet and an artist studying as a junior in the Poetry MFA program, minoring in film studies.
Q: Who are your favorite poets?
A: It’s a very typical answer, I really like Sylvia Plath. She’s always had incredible meter and rhythm. I think I’m more enamored with her life than her poetry, and that’s because her life is reflected so much in her poetry. I feel like she’s speaking to me from beyond the grave. I also love Robert Frost and Maya Angelou.
Q: How does your daily life influence your art?
A: I think I walk around constantly in a state of love, I fall in love very easily, whether that be with people, or nature, or moments, or memories, so when I write, I pull from the strongest memory in that moment so I’m always writing from a place of love. If I’m not writing from a place of love, it’s a place of pain that has resulted in that love hurting me. I love a little too hard.
Q: Is it important that your art feels alive and in conversation with you?
A: Yes. When I’m writing, it’s like the page is speaking to me, I almost don’t know what I’m writing until I’m done. It’s really important that my pieces are alive, it’s really important that readers are able to feel a fraction of what I was feeling when I was writing the poem. I know if the poem can speak to me, it can also speak to other people. Poetry, I think, is one of the few art forms in which when you’re reading it, it reads you back.
Q: How do you go about transforming an idea into a finished project?
A: Sometimes I get stopped by the fear of writing bad poetry, then I remember that I just have to write. I have to get away from being so scared of not producing perfection and just dive in. The thing with poetry is I feel like its almost never finished, there’s always so much more you can add or take away. You can read a poem and it can take you back, and in that way it’s going to read differently at different points in life, even if it’s a piece that’s 5 years old. Some of my favorite poems are going back to my old ones and revising those.
Q: What are your goals?
A: By the end of my college career, I would really like to have published a poetry book. I have been keeping a journal since freshman year of college of all my poems, and I would like to publish that as it is. As a film minor, I want to be a screenwriter one day, and I would like to find a way to incorporate poetry and film together. My biggest goal is to be happy. I’m constantly hoping to be happy, and to find my peace, and to grow closer to God in everything that I do.
