Nancy Flynn

sundial buddha bricks Whitefish peaches
nancyflynn

My writing shapes idea and image into language and form, a journey to my river of truth. When I write—poetry or prose—I meander through a world of objects and memory. Sometimes it feels like I’m taking dictation from voices in my head.

I'm madly in love with words.

I write about journeys and seeking, serendipity and mistake, exile and home, abandonment and connection. I write about feeling like an observer, an outsider, out-of-synch with the mainstream world. I write in search of what I know but keep forgetting. I ask questions fully aware there are no answers. I write about getting lost and finding my way.

I like to play with words: their sounds and shapes, their look on a page, the musicality of letter and syllable, phrase and line. To juxtapose what I’ve felt, witnessed, and lived alongside the unrelated and unexpected. I like when I’m taken by surprise and forced to reflect on meaning. In my writing, I have found less is often more; I tend to favor the “one truer thing.”

I am drawn to narrative that celebrates life and lives, appreciate poetry that puts a moment into sharper relief and somehow elevates the humble, the seemingly mundane, and enchants it. I would like to have my own work inhabit both the personal and the universal, the secular and the sacred.

My poetry chapbook, The Hours of Us, was published by Finishing Line Press of Georgetown, Kentucky in December 2007.

In November 2008, my blog, Apostrophe, began to appear regularly at the Writers' Dojo, an on-line literary magazine based and writers' center in the St. John's neighborhood of Portland, Oregon.

In August 2009, I completed a booklength poetry manuscript, What Rivers Cannot Quench. And I finished another chapbook, The Muse of Hanging. Both of these have been entered into assorted poetry contests, many offering publication if you are a lucky winner. Fingers crossed!