{"id":16015,"date":"2020-06-02T05:17:31","date_gmt":"2020-06-02T13:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/?p=16015"},"modified":"2020-06-02T05:17:31","modified_gmt":"2020-06-02T13:17:31","slug":"learn-more-about-western-poet-cylinda-neidenbach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/learn-more-about-western-poet-cylinda-neidenbach\/","title":{"rendered":"Learn more about Western poet Cylinda Neidenbach"},"content":{"rendered":"

Never Retallack<\/strong> |\u00a0 Entertainment Editor<\/span><\/p>\n

Last week, The Western Howl published an article titled \u201cArms, revenge and flower crowns\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

about the top three winners for the Peter Sears Poetry Prize. It\u2019s time to get to know the first place winner, Cylinda Neidenbach \u2014 a senior at Western majoring in English with a focus on writing.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Q: How long have you been writing poetry?<\/span><\/p>\n

A: I was prone to writing whimsical poems when I was about nine years old, a la Shel Silverstein. My parents used to read \u201cWhere the Sidewalk Ends\u201d and \u201cA Light in the Attic\u201d before I even knew how to read. I\u2019d be four or five years old, reciting \u201cThe Loser,\u201d (\u201cMama said I\u2019d lose my head, if it wasn\u2019t fastened on,\u201d) and for a moment my parents thought that I had somehow learned to read. To this day I can still recite it from memory. After grade school, however, I\u2019m afraid I seldom wrote poetry \u2014 unless it was something witty to amuse my friends. I took Dr. Hughes\u2019s poetry seminar last term and was dismayed to find that he didn\u2019t encourage goofy, half-baked poems. They were all I knew. I wrote the \u201crough draft\u201d of my winning poem the first day of class, when Doctor Hughes told us to \u201cdescribe something.\u201d I had just hugged my lover goodbye, and his arms were the first thing that came to mind. Misunderstanding the instructions and somehow forgetting that I was in a poetry class, I wrote a small paragraph that later became, through many revisions, my poem \u201cTo Bear Arms.\u201d You can imagine my surprise that it won.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Q: What got you interested in writing?<\/span><\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 I do love writing. It\u2019s one of the few things I do for myself. I have been writing short stories and novellas since I could read. It\u2019s a passion of mine. (My current novel was started in 2011 and I have been writing it forever. I hope to be done around the time I graduate.) As far as poems go, I never considered poetry my jam, but rather something I should know at least a little about as a future English teacher. (Many thanks to Dr. Hughes for helping me whittle down my natural tendency towards long windedness. <\/span>Constant Vigilance!<\/span> Word Economy!)<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Q: What does it feel like to write a poem?<\/span><\/p>\n

A: What does writing a poem feel like? I don\u2019t know how to answer this. I started to notice moments of remarkable beauty or connection with things: people, nature, the world. Moments that made me feel present, and I would try to get them out on paper. Often a single line would form itself right then, and I would try to hang on to it, press it in my memory, be the conduit. That\u2019s how it worked for me.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Q: Anything you\u2019d like to add?<\/span><\/p>\n

A: Serious poems, while not as fun as the lively, fickle, frivolous poems of my childhood, are rewarding. They serve as snapshots of memory, moments in time preserved.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Contact the author at howlentertainment@wou.edu<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Photos courtesy of Tristram Kerrigan<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Never Retallack |\u00a0 Entertainment Editor Last week, The Western Howl published an article titled \u201cArms, revenge and flower crowns\u201d about the top three winners for the Peter Sears Poetry Prize. It\u2019s time to get to know the first place winner, Cylinda Neidenbach \u2014 a senior at Western majoring in English with a focus on writing. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1094,"featured_media":10277,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"modified_by":"The Western Howl","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1094"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}