James Gering: “Depression takes various forms in my poetry. I used to think writing came first, now I believe health is paramount—of body, mind, and emotion. When writers approach optimal health, they have a stable base for sustainable writing. The character in my poem reaches out to people, despite himself. He houses the wisdom, in a remote embryonic chamber, that ongoing solitude and its array of pitfalls are detrimental to his cause. When I am writing sustainably, my poems gradually take on life. Some of them have been gestating for over five years. I regularly visit the notebooks and files housing them and meander through, waiting for insight, waiting for a sublime line or metaphor to elevate the poem such that it gains weight, warmth, and shape while shedding all remnants of melodrama and sentimentality.” (website)
