Beate Sigriddaughter, author of hundreds of poems, is the winner of the 2014 Jack Grapes Prize and a multiple Pushcart Prize nominee. She has promoted women’s writing at her blog, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, for many years, an activity which grew out of her earlier Glass Woman Prize. Siggriddaughter is the author of Emily (review below) and Dancing in Santa Fe and Other Poems. Her forthcoming Dona Nobis Pacem will be issued in December 2021 by Unsolicited Press. Emily, in your latest collection, you assume a unique voice, so different from the personas you presented in Dancing in Santa Fe. Can you tell us a little about how Emily originated? Did the collection fall together, for example, over a period of months, or years? In late summer to early fall 2017, I had an opportunity to have a solo writing retreat in a friend’s condo near the ocean at California’s Central Coast for about two months. Beautiful! Especially since I normally live in contrasting New Mexico mountain desert terrain. I challenged myself to write a poem each day and I did that, although the daily poems did not all survive into the final form. The Emily collection came from continue...