Spotlight: Sarah Kremen-Hicks

by Sukie Juhan

Uncapped has found a new poetry editor in Sarah Kremen-Hicks. Sarah grew up in Portland, Oregon and moved to Seattle to attend the University of Washington where she received a bachelor’s degree in English. She currently resides in the heart of Ballard. Sarah discovered the Writergrrls during Bookfest when she says, "It had been a long day and I was signing [up for] whatever anyone gave me … Writergrrls was probably the most useful thing to come out of that, although I'm also still using all the free pens I picked up."

In her day job, Sarah edits Web sites. I asked her why she volunteered to take over as Uncapped’s poetry editor. She told me that she had spoken with Wendy Blake, the previous poetry editor, who suggested that she attend an Uncapped meeting. Wendy was upfront about the workload and Sarah was not sure if she should add more to her plate but then she had a change of heart. As Sarah puts it, " . . . somewhere in the back of my mind, that sounded like a challenge, and I'm nothing if not incredibly stubborn. I get it from my grandmother . . . It seems like most of the major decisions in my life boil down to ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time,’ and this one pretty much worked the same way."

Sarah does not consider herself a poet, though she has been trying to work on more of her own poetry in the past year, and she does enjoys reading poetry. The majority of Sarah’s writing experience—so far—is in writing prose. She hopes this experience [as the poetry editor] will expose her to a variety of other poets and their poetry, work that she might not otherwise come across.

I asked Sarah what she hopes to gain in her role as poetry editor; she had this to say:

"I'd like to learn as much from this [experience] as I can and expand my ideas about what poetry can be. I got some great submissions for this issue, and I'm working with my co-editor, Pat Halsell, […] a wonderful woman [who] makes up for my deficiencies in breadth of knowledge.

"I'd say the most important thing I'm bringing to the position is a good ear for language and rhythm, and I hope the poets submitting their work can teach me everything else I'll need."

One of Sarah’s favorite poems is One Art by Elizabeth Bishop; she said, "I have it hanging up at work to read whenever I get frustrated." Sarah also loves The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot "because it reminds me how much I still have to read, but it also drives me nuts because I think Eliot was often deliberately obscure just because he could be." Another favorite is Paradise Lost by John Milton because "making sense of the lines is like a puzzle, and once you've finished, you've had to work for every sentence, but it makes it seem like a huge accomplishment." She also enjoys reading the poetry of Yeats as "he seems to have such respect for language; I have to smile whenever I read one of his poems."

Some of Sarah’s other hobbies include knitting, dancing, and "curling up under a pile of blankets with a book and a plate of cookies."

For my last question, I asked Sarah what she aspires to be, and she responded as follows:

"That changes every day. Someday I'd like to support myself writing novels, and, depending on when you ask me, I'll either be doing it in Rome, or in a beach cabin, or some other place I haven't thought of yet.

"I'm also working on becoming Empress of the Universe, but I've run into some problems with getting the native populace to acknowledge my reign."

Uncapped is always looking for new poetry. If you are interested in submitting something to Sarah, please visit the Uncapped submission guidelines page at: http://www.seattlewritergrrls.org/uncapped/submit.htm. Submit your work to Sarah at: sarah@clodia.org.

Sukie Juhan recently moved to Seattle. She is aspiring to one day be a full-time writer and possibly a librarian. She looks forward to getting more involved with the Writergrrls.