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My last interview as part of the Couplets Poetry Tour I am happy to share with you the story of Jen Minkman! Also as an added bonus you can WIN a copy of Jen’s chapbook! Here is how to enter:
3. Comment below that they have done all 3!
We will announce the winner next week! And now here is Jen’s story!
Jen Minkman (1978) was born in The Netherlands, in the town of Alphen aan den Rijn. When she was 19, she moved between The Hague, Salzburg (Austria), Brussels (Belgium) and Cambridge (UK) to complete her studies in intercultural communication. She is currently a teacher of English, career counsellor and teenage coach at a secondary school in Voorburg, Holland. She is also a published writer of paranormal romance in the Netherlands. Her poetry is always in English, however, and she publishes that in the US through CreateSpace and KDP Amazon.
Jen tries to read at least 200 books a year (and write a few, too!). In her spare time, she plays the piano, the guitar and the violin. For every novel she writes, she creates a soundtrack.
1. In your poetry volume you mention how the title “Undercurrent” came to be. Tell us a bit more about that-at what age did you start using writing to express yourself?
As far as I can remember, I have always used words to express myself. I could speak when I was 18 months old, I could read simple books when I was three, and I have always submerged myself in worlds of wonder by reading fantasy books and fairy tales. I wrote my very first book at the age of nine ( a sci-fi story about four kids finding a flying saucer in the woods and helping the aliens to vanquish their enemies and go back to their own planet), for which I painstakingly taught myself how to use a typewriter, bind books by hand and correct my typos as neat as possible with Tipp-Ex (a European type of correction fluid).
I have always held back in expressing deep emotions, though. If I felt sad, I would go to my room and comfort myself by picking up a book or drawing something. If I was in love, I was never gonna tell that boy, but instead I would write longing poems. I think I first started to write poetry when I started to really take notice of the lyrics to my favourite songs by Tori Amos, Suzanne Vega, Heather Nova, the Beatles, the Doors and Metallica. Also, we read a lot of poetry in school during Dutch and English class, so I was used to reading it a lot. The poems in Undercurrent have been written in a time-span of about ten years. I wrote tons of poems when I was a teenager, but I didn’t include those. They are just too much part of a certain era in my development and I didn’t think they would be interesting or good enough for a larger audience than myself.
2. What inspires your poetry? Where to start? Everything! Life. Love. Pain. Watching the world go round. Other people’s stories. Sometimes I write poems or lyrics from other people’s point of view, because I can feel what they feel, and I feel the need to write down what I think it is they’re going through.
3. What does your writing routine look like? Are you disciplined, or do you go with the creative flow?
I suffer from a mild form of ADD, so in my writing, I can be extremely hyper-focused. There are days when I am too busy doing other things (I have way too many hobbies for my own good!), but once I feel the urge to write, I just have to sit down and let it flow for hours. If people disturb me or I suddenly have to do other things, I can get quite cranky. Because the poems and stories demand to be written, and because once I’m in the flow, I write stuff that really matters to me. So it’s really not a question of discipline for me (although to many people, it looks like that on the outside). It’s a simple question of being struck with OCD and having no way out but to WRITE! 🙂
4. I thoroughly enjoyed reading “Undercurrent.” I was struck by how some of your shortest poems were the ones that hit me, moved me and inspired me. Does it require a lot of editing for you or does the poetry just flow that way?
Thank you for your kind words! Actually, I never edit poems. They just come into being like that. I have been likened to a machine gun of emotions, writing in short staccato bursts by one of my reviewers on Amazon, so I guess I know what you mean. It’s funny how I discover more about my writing style by listening to my readers; I never realized it was actually kind of different from most poets (who tend to write longer poems). With me, it’s like I am spitting out powerful emotions. I never need many words for that.
5. Tell us how you came about putting together this particular collection.
As I was saying before, the poems in this collection have been written in the last ten years. Of course, I wrote more than just these poems in that decade, but some of them were just too lyric-ey to include (because I also write songs, I’m in a band actually) and some of them were in foreign languages (I have also written in German, French and Dutch, but the English poems make up about 75 % of my work). When I put this collection together, I kept the theme of the undercurrent of emotions as my guiding light, and this is what came out.
6. What other projects are you working on?
Oh, so many! I have currently completed three romantic novels in Dutch and am working with my editor to finalize the manuscripts for publication. I am also translating one of my paranormal romance novels into English (publication for ‘Shadow of Time’ is scheduled for April 2013, book trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uglRUoxUx-k ), and I am also working on a new collection of poetry called ‘Songlines’, which in all likelihood will come out in October 2012.
7. Where can people find out more about you and your writing?