How to Survive a Blizzard
(first published in Mid-Bloom)
by Katie Budris
Outside, snow buries this Midwest winter,
the only remaining inhabitants a family
of cardinals, the ones who have been living
in the tree beside the window.
As the wind wages war,
biting through skin and feathers,
the bold red cardinals belly down
beneath the snow. They know
the best protection from a blizzard is not
to fly, but to burrow, escaping
the elements by surrounding themselves
in a cave to keep warm, wait out the storm.
How do you approach your writing? What are you interested in as a poet?
I’ve always been a “write when I feel moved to write” kind of person, for better or for worse. Sometimes that means I don’t write much for long periods of time, and then I write a lot at once. When I do write, it’s always by hand first and always in paragraph form. I like to get the words and ideas down on paper and then when I type them up I can start crafting it as a poem—putting in line breaks, trimming down for concision, playing with syntax and rhythm. That, to me, is really the fun part.
I’m primarily interested in writing narrative poetry, and almost always write from my own experiences. I’m not so self-centered that I think readers are all that interested in me. Rather, I think as people we have more shared experiences that we often realize, and I think narrative poetry can help us tap into those aspects of life that connect us, those experiences that remind us we’re more alike than different. I hope my poems can do even a little bit of that for others.
You recently published your second chapbook. Tell us a little about Mid-Bloom.
The poems in Mid-Bloom are a combination of poems about losing my mom to cancer when I was in high school, and then poems about facing my own cancer diagnosis at age 38. I’ve been trying to write about my mom for many years (with varying success) and so this chapbook came together pretty organically.
While I was undergoing chemotherapy, I really wanted to try writing a series of “Dear Cancer” poems, but the only thing I ever came up with was “Dear Cancer, F you.” So as I emerged from the haze of treatment, I realized what I really needed to write about was how the experience made me feel so connected to my mom even though she’d been gone for so long. It’s a really strange and surreal kind of grief and comfort all at once to suddenly feel so close to someone who’s not actually here, and for that to come through such a traumatic shared experience. The topics in the book are pretty heavy, but I think I’ve approached them in a way that is delicate and reflective while hopefully still giving an honest expression of what it’s like to lose a parent and what it’s like to face your own mortality through cancer.
You are a professor at Rowan University in the Writing Arts Department and Editor-In-Chief of Glassworks magazine. Does teaching writing to college students and editing a student-run literary journal influence your writing or writing style?
Absolutely! I am a better writer because of my students. There’s nothing like reading a line or a poem one of your students has written and thinking “why didn’t I come up with that?” They amaze me all the time. And they’re so eager to learn and inspired to write. Just the other day, they were doing a revision exercise in class, so I pulled a poem of my own up on my laptop and made some revisions myself. They push me to spend more time on my writing and to keep striving to write better lines, to come up with stronger metaphors.
Working with Glassworks also helps keep me immersed in the wider literary community. I love being able to publish so many talented writers, and exposing my students to the wonderful world of lit mags is truly the best part of my job. It’s always easier to see what’s working and what’s not in someone else’s writing, so I think being an editor gives me that unique perspective. And if I can take even a little of that back to my own work, that’s just a bonus.
What do you find most helpful to get yourself and your students actually writing?
I’m a big fan of prompts, actually. Not always a subject matter prompt, because we all have different obsessions and experiences to write about. But anything to get the juices flowing. We do a lot of brainstorming in my creative writing classes—make a list of emotions, then make a list of places you’ve been, now pick one from each list that don’t seem to go together and write about it—broad, open-ended prompts like that. I think trying to write within different forms and constraints can be helpful too, even if we ultimately abandon those constraints in revision. Interesting things come out when you try to write a sestina for the first time, or limit yourself to a specific word count.
In addition to a poet, you are also a tap dancer and Director of The Lady Hoofers Tap Ensemble. Do these creative pursuits influence each other? Do you find there are similarities between directing a dance troupe and editing a literary journal?
I don’t know how much they directly influence one another in my daily practice, but I do think the genres I’ve pursued are related. Poetry and tap dance are both very much centered on rhythm. I love to play with line breaks to create a varied rhythm in my poems, and maybe that’s not all that different from the ways I use syncopation in my tap dancing. Running the two organizations is very different logistically, but in both cases the goal is to give the audience a satisfying experience using rhythm, tone, imagery, storytelling . . . The more I think about this question, the more connected the two artforms seem to be!
Where can readers find more of your work? Buy your books?
I try to keep up with posting newly published work on my website at katiebudris.com and I’m also on Instagram and Twitter @ktb8482 and have a Facebook Page - Katie Budris Writer.
Readers can contact me through any of those sites to purchase my books through me directly. Mid-Bloom is also available at Finishing Line Press or on Amazon, and my previous chapbook Prague in Synthetics is on Amazon.
Katie Budris is a Senior Lecturer in the Writing Arts Department at Rowan University where she serves as Program Coordinator for the Master of Arts in Writing and as Editor-in-Chief of Glassworks literary magazine. She has published two chapbooks with Finishing Line Press: Mid-Bloom (2021) and Prague in Synthetics (2015). Katie holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Roosevelt University and her poems have appeared in over a dozen journals, most recently Deep Wild Journal, River and South Review, Philadelphia Stories, Border Crossing, Temenos Journal, and the anthology Crossing Lines (Main Street Rag). She is a breast cancer survivor living in South Jersey with her husband, Chris, and their English Mastiffs, Harper and Winnie.
John Wojtowicz grew up working on his family’s azalea and rhododendron nursery in the backwoods of what Ginsberg dubbed “nowhere Zen New Jersey.” Currently, he works as a licensed clinical social worker and adjunct professor. He has been featured on Rowan University’s Writer’s Roundtable on 89.7 WGLS-FM and several of his poems were chosen to be exhibited in Princeton University's 2021 Unique Minds: Creative Voices art show at the Lewis Center for the Arts. He has been nominated 3x for a Pushcart Prize and serves as the Local Lyrics contributor for The Mad Poets Society Blog. His debut chapbook Roadside Oddities: A Poetic Guide to American Oddities was released in early 2022 and can be purchased at www.johnwojtowicz.com. John lives with his wife and two children in Upper Deerfield, NJ.