Although the pandemic sent my writing into a dry spell, I’ve been productive in other ways. I continue to volunteer with MilspoFAN, which has been wonderful because I love feeling connected to other mil-spouse artists. I also continue to serve as a poetry editor with Inklette Magazine. Not generating new poems gave me ample time to revise and organize previously written poems. I compiled three manuscripts: Forces was published by Middle West Press in the fall of 2021, and the other two manuscripts are looking for homes.

Although these last nearly two years have provided little inspiration or motivation to create new poems, the not-writing has given me ample time for editing and organizing what I’d written before.

Since checking in a year ago, I did finish a poetry manuscript before the pandemic hit. Some of the individual poems have been published in journals, some of them quite recently. One of those poems, “Pursuit,” won first place in the military family member category for Line of Advance’s Col. Darron L. Wright Award, and my poem will join all past and current winners in an anthology – Our Best War Stories – that will be published this month. Other than an honorable mention, I’ve never won an award before. To say the least, I was excited.

Well, a lot has happened since MilspoFAN interviewed me two years ago. I’ve had two new books come out: American Samizdat (Diode, 2019), a collection of poetry about our current political moment, and through smoke (New Rivers Press, 2019), a book-length essay about how I came to fall in love with perfume. I also have another collection of poems, Simple Machines, which won the Richard Wilbur Poetry Award and will be published this year by the University of Evansville Press.

I began 2019 by staying in line with my daily poem (or at least editing some poems). I like to keep a steady routine because my mind feels more open and the ideas looser. When I know I’ll be writing, something gets put on the page. Sometimes it’s a keeper; sometimes it goes to the poetry graveyard.

In April, I published my second collection of poetry: Permanent Change of Station (Middle West Press). The poems revolve around the move that brought us from California to North Carolina. My daughter was two, and all of the changes of environment, coupled with all of the changes associated with coming into her toddlerhood, was quite traumatic for her.

In this month’s MilspoFAN Artist Interview, Lisa tells us all about her work - how she became a poet, what her poetry means to her and her family, how she nurtures her creative work, and how she stays actively involved in poetry communities despite regular moves. In her poetry collection, Uniform (Aldrich Press 2016), Lisa unwraps her military spouse experience with a steadfast dedication to authenticity.