Trauma Truth & Outrage

Mailler a poet for nearly six decades earned his MFA from UMASS in 1974. Initially fascinated by indigenous Chinese and Japanese poetry as well as classic modern poets like Williams Olson Creeley and Levertov he continues to explore the bounds of poetic form while allowing diverse influences to help shape his work. Of his creative process he says For me poems always begin in the heart not the head. If I had to write a poem on demand or look for something to write about I wouldn't bother. I prefer to let the poems find me. They each arc out of the subconscious already in possession of their own unique DNA. My job is to craft an inhabitable form out of which they are able to speak.In the current domestic and geopolitical environment Mailler takes James Baldwin's advice especially to heart: ... what you are doing as a writer or any kind of artist what your role is... is to bear witness: to what life is does and to speak for people who cannot speak.