Love Letters to Poetry | Personal Anthologies

National Poetry Month
Written By Anindita Basu Sempere

In poetry school, one of my professors asked us to make personal poetry anthologies. He carried his with him when he traveled. That way, he said, he always had something good to read.

He told us to type our favorite poems so that we could get a feeling for their construction, like an apprentice copying a master painter’s work. How long were the lines? Where were the turns? When were there pauses and punctuation? How did it feel to type the lines we loved?

Once we finished, we could print and assemble our personal collections of our favorite compositions.

I no longer have my original anthology — the one I made in class — but I keep an adapted version within reach of my desk. Whenever I encounter a poem I love, I paste it into the journal that has become my new personal anthology.

Every so often, I reach out and open it to a random page, and the poem there inevitably delights me. I chose it, after all.

I never remember everything that I put into that little book, so every page is both surprising and familiar, like running into an old friend. Oh, it’s you! It’s so good to see you.

Anindita Basu Sempere

Anindita Basu Sempere is a lecturer with the University of Neuchâtel's Institute of English Studies where she studies change of place and poetics and teaches undergraduate creative writing. She has a PhD from the Université de Neuchâtel, an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults, and an MA in English from Boston University’s Creative Writing Program in Poetry.

http://anindita.org
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