Meet the Mentor | Theresa Senato Edwards
Graphic by Andy Zeng. Photo courtesy of Theresa Senato Edwards.
The COUNTERCLOCK Arts Collective is an online, 8-week fellowship program that allows creative writers, visual artists, and musicians to explore, illuminate, and grow through collaborating on interdisciplinary projects. Learn more about the Arts Collective here. For the next weeks leading up to the application deadline, we will be featuring mini-interviews with 2020 mentors.
About the Mentor
Theresa Senato Edwards is a wife and mother, published poet, editor, and educator. She has an MFA in Creative Writing, Poetry, from Goddard College; an MA in English from Western CT State University (creative thesis, fictional novella, with critical scholarship); a BS Cum Laude in Music, Mercy College; and a Professional Artist Diploma in Music Theory and Composition from Westchester Conservatory of Music. Edwards received departmental honors in Music from Mercy College, a composition scholarship from the Westchester Conservatory, and won both the New York State, College Category of the MTNA Student Music Composition Award and Eastern Division, MTNA Student Music Composition Award, studying with Ruth Schonthal, for her piece entitled, Fragments for Five.
Edwards’ full-length poetry books include Voices Through Skin, (Sibling Rivalry Press), a poem from this book “Her Rituals” was a poetry finalist for the OCD Foundation’s Dare-to-Believe Contest; Painting Czeslawa Kwoka~Honoring Children of the Holocaust, full-color collaboration with Painter, Lori Schreiner (unbound CONTENT), which won a Tacenda Literary Award for Best Book; chapbooks: The Music of Hands, which was published in revised second print and Webbook editions by Seven CirclePress; and Green, republished, Finishing Line Press; first published by Another New Calligraphy with an accompanying cd of Edwards’ digital reinterpretation of the first movement of her piano sonata that she wrote more than 30 years ago (Pauline Lederer, pianist).
Poems from Edwards’ newest manuscript entitled "Fragments of Wing Bones" can be found in Stirring, Gargoyle, The Nervous Breakdown, Thrush, Diode, Rogue Agent, Mom Egg Review, Menacing Hedge, Moria, Harbor Review, Matter Press’ Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, 3Elements Review, Dialogist, SWWIM, Whale Road Review, The Shore Poetry, Recenter Press Poetry Journal and other journals, and forthcoming in PANK. Edwards was nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, received creative writing residencies from Drop Forge & Tool and Craigardan, is a poetry editor for The American Poetry Journal, and will serve as a creative writing mentor in poetry for the 2020 COUNTERCLOCK Arts Collective. You can visit her website here.
CAC: Could you briefly introduce yourself and your discipline? Why did you choose this discipline?
TSE: I am a wife and mother, published poet and poetry editor, and have been a teacher and tutor for most of my life. I had always written poems since I was a young girl but never had any formal training until later in adulthood when I pursued a Master’s in English and an MFA in creative writing, poetry. I studied academic writing and fiction writing but felt most comfortable in the poetry medium because the structure felt more succinct and inspiring to me. Also, poetry connected me to music, the medium in which I first realized how much being creative helped me.
CAC: Why do you make art? When did you realize it was something you wanted to pursue?
TSE: I make art by writing poetry because I realized at a young age that writing my thoughts/feelings down helped me process my fears and worries, even my hopes. Writing also helped me positively guide my creativity and imagination. Formally, I first wrote avant-garde music for creative expression; then I settled in on poetry and all its subtle possibilities, always keeping in mind what I had learned from studying musical composition.
Theresa Senato Edwards “Her Mothering” — Rise Up Review
CAC: Can you discuss the last project(s) that have meant the most to you?
TSE: My most recent full-length poetry manuscript “Fragments of Wing Bones,” has meant a great deal to me because it has been the most challenging book project to complete. And I have learned even more just how important not only revision is but also reworking/rethinking is to get at the heart and gut of what I need to share. This book also mixes writing techniques that I’ve learned from studying narrative fiction writing, music composition, as well as poetry craft. I’m finding my need to mix these techniques might not be what publishers are looking for, but I’m determined to stay with what I feel I need to do to tell the story—hoping it gets heard.
CAC: What are you currently working on in your artistic life?
TSE: Currently, I’ve been actively submitting “Fragments of Wing Bones” to publishers for consideration. I’m also busy reading and choosing poems with other poet editors for inclusion in The American Poetry Journal’s online issues.
On April 29, 2020, I hope to participate in Lynn Melnick’s Zoom online poetry workshop through AJHS entitled, Poetry Salon: A Poetry Writing Workshop Inspired by "The New Colossus."
On May 1, 2020, I plan to participate in Pandemic Poems: May Day, “a 24-hour collaborative poetry experiment. A sonnet crown—or "corona"—of epic proportions” through the Poetry Society of New York.
I’ve decided to participate in these workshops/collaborations to help me write some new poems, maybe start thinking about what my next book, if there is a next one, would explore.
Get a taste of Theresa Senato Edwards’ sonata
CAC: How do you manipulate medium, style, and/or voice?
TSE: I have never been afraid of taking some risks in writing, if the boundaries pushed communicate clearly to readers the heart and gut of the work.
With all my poetry books, I have tried to use different styles of poetry writing from lyrical to narrative to ekphrastic to concrete to language poetry, etc., creating fictional and non-fictional speakers, narrators, characters, scenes, and images. Although my books seem to be autobiographical; the driving force behind them relies on the use of fictionalization and magic realism. With poetry, there’s always room for fiction; sometimes getting to the truth through this type of imaginative lens acts as a safety net for me. But my sometimes vulnerable yet strong voice, even when I decide to shift into a different persona, remains honest.
CAC: Why did you decide to mentor for the 2020 Arts Collective?
TSE: Firstly, I want to help student poets feel comfortable with their writing and what they want to share through poetry. Secondly, I have been looking for a program like this that creatively fosters the importance of mentorship: the close creative/intellectual bond between “professional/teacher” and student. I think what can really make a difference in a student’s creative life is the positive yet constructive guidance of a mentor in his or her field of study.
CAC: Is there anything else you would like us to know?
TSE: I would like to say thank you again for this opportunity to mentor student fellows in poetry through this wonderful program. And I wanted to answer your question of “Why I make art?” here instead of ending my bio with it: I make art by writing poetry because as difficult as it can sometimes be for me to do, I just can’t seem to feel safe in my own mind or body without poetry’s process and its results. I also make art by reading, commenting on, and choosing poetry for publication. When I can’t write, I’m thankful that I’m able in some small way to help others write and get their work out there!
Sarah Feng is the editor-in-chief of COUNTERCLOCK Journal and the director of the Arts Collective. Her creative writing has been awarded by the Poetry Society of the United Kingdom, the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the Adroit Prizes in Prose & Poetry, NCTE, the Critical Pass Review, American High School Poets, the Leyla Beban Young Author’s Foundation, Teen Vogue, and the New York Times. She plays piano and dabbles in charcoals, and she thinks rhythm and light and lyric pulse in every field of the creative arts – if you can call them distinct fields at all. In other words, she has faith in the power of the interdisciplinary arts and their persistence in our memories and minds. She studies at Yale University.