Mary Margaret Carlisle

Writer/editor Mary Margaret Carlisle has an easy answer to the question “What is poetry?” “It is your voice / and not so much / what you say / but that you say it” (from her poem What is Poetry). Now, answering the question “Why write?” is a little harder. “The reasons are as individual and diverse as the poets themselves,” Carlisle says. “I write to share what I think and feel with others, and listen to others to discover where we overlap. Perhaps, as Rushdie said, poets should point at frauds, take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep. I know it keeps me awake.” Carlisle won’t be appearing alone. “The 2008 Texas Poet Laureate, Larry Thomas, is from Houston,” she says. “I’m happy to say he’ll be with us at the reading.”