THR Interview Series: Tina Mozelle Braziel
Tina Mozelle Braziel beside the cover of her most recent collection, Known By Salt.
Our Managing Editor, Laura Metzger, caught up with THR’s Chapbook Prize judge Tina Mozelle Braziel to figure out how, when, and why she writes, and what you can do to find inspiration in the little things.
Laura Metzger: When did you begin writing poetry? And did you know then that you wanted to write poetry?
Tina Mozelle Braziel: I wrote my first poem in the 7th or 8th grade when the teachers at my school requested that we turn in something for an anthology. We had received no creative writing instruction. In fact, we had read little to no poetry. The teacher pulled me aside after reading my poem and told me she wanted me to write my own poem, not copy someone else’s. That’s when I knew writing poetry was something I could do.
LM: Which poets have influenced your writing the most?
TMB: Early on, Lucille Clifton and William Stafford. Later, Brigit Pegeen Kelly and Seamus Heaney. Lately, Philip Levine and Jane Hirschfield.
LM: What is your writing space like?
TMB: I write where I can watch trees. Writing in my hammock on the deck of my house is my favorite spot. Because I live in a glass cabin, I’m fortunate to see the wavering of leaves, the sway of branch and trunk while I write at my desk or on the couch.
LM: The last poem you wrote: did it begin with an idea, a line, a title, or something else?
TMB: It came from the tension of a perfect day—one when the temperature isn’t too warm or cool and the humidity is low—a day that asks to be savored with a picnic or a swim even though there’s work to be done.
Tina Mozelle Braziel, author of Known by Salt (Anhinga Press) and Rooted by Thirst (Porkbelly Press), has been awarded the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry, an Alabama State Council on the Arts literary fellowship, the Magic City Poetry Festival’s first eco-poetry fellowship, and an artist residency at Hot Springs National Park. Her work has appeared in POETRY, The Cincinnati Review, Southern Humanities Review, and other journals. She earned her MFA at the University of Oregon. She directs the Ada Long Creative Writing Workshop for high school students at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She and her husband, novelist James Braziel, live and write in a glass cabin that they are building by hand on Hydrangea Ridge.
