Terry Blackhawk is a teacher and poet who graduated from Antioch College and earned her Ph.D. in Reading and Language Arts Education from Oakland University. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and distinctions including being named Michigan’s Creative Writing Teacher of the Year in 1990 and receiving a National Endowment for the Humanities sabbatical award to study Emily Dickinson. In 1995, Blackhawk founded the InsideOut Literary Arts Project, an organization fostering literary arts in the schools. For more information, please visit the InsideOut Literary Arts Project Web site.
Why is important to you that children get excited about writing?
Writing helps children express the magic within them. To write something beautiful is an accomplishment to be proud of, and children’s writings make their families proud as well. My son wrote THE GHOSTLY GHOST and THE LOST STAR when he was in first grade. I still treasure them. As young people get older, writing is the same adventure into learning about the world and about the self that it is for the rest of us. It helps children to become readers and thinkers. We also find through InsideOut that writing classes develop a sense of community. Students learn to appreciate and respect one another more, as their poems and stories let them in on one another’s lives.
What is your favorite part of the writing process?
Getting lost in it. Losing all sense of time. Letting language lead the way and making discoveries.
How has your writing changed over time?
It’s easiest to talk about how my subjects have changed. It’s hard to say about the writing itself. My newest collection contains some of my earliest poems, as well as some of the most recent. I’ve been writing for almost exactly 20 years now. Early on I was interested in mythology. My first book, a chapbook from Ridgeway Press, was devoted to myth. It’s still an interest of mine, perhaps something I will return to. I also had several series of poems about birds, pottery, women artists.
What writing goal are you excited about achieving next?
I’d like to work more in form. I have started exploring my ancestry in poems. I’d like to put together another book of poems for sure, and maybe do some writing about teaching.
What section of the bookstore always seems to capture your attention?
Poetry, of course, and history. I also like to read about the history of ideas and religion.
What incident/experience do you recall where you were proud to be a writer?
Most recently, I was proud to read my 2nd place poem at the Detroit Metro Writers reading during the Detroit Festival of the Arts. My good friend Linda Nemec Foster took 1st place, and it was a fine feeling to be part of such a lively writing community.
Web posted by Bethany Broadwell on June. 18, 2007.
