Illustration by Ward Schumaker

This April, Greensboro will buzz with poetry and residents will revel in words as they join in the activities of National Poetry Month.

Established in 1996 by the American Academy of Poets, the celebration allows communities to honor poets both on the national and local level. Poetry Greensboro has been headlining big names — including former Poet Laureate Billy Collins and Pulitzer Prize winner Nikki Giovanni — since 2003, and will mount another program this year. In addition, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro will be hosting the Southeastern Literary Festival April 21 — 25.

Three award-winning local poets will be in the thick of the excitement. Sarah Lindsay, author of three books, a National Book Award finalist, and in the running for a 2009 Pulitzer Prize, will take part in the festivities. Rhett Iseman Trull, who edits the poetry journal Cave Wall with her husband Jeff, is looking forward to visiting coffeehouses to hear what other poets are up to. And Michael Boccardo, a recent winner — along with Trull — in the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Annual Poetry Competition, is looking forward to a month of enjoying the pleasures of the written word.

I sat down with these three artists to talk with them about their work, their process, and their enthusiasm for sharing poetry with others.

So how does one begin life as a poet? Lindsay wrote fiction as well as poetry originally, but she gravitated toward poetry because it allowed her to be more introspective. “Poetry lets you stop once in a while and try to look at what an emotion really feels like,” she says.

Trull stumbled into poetry in middle school. “I had a friend who had written poems, and it was really more like a journal. I had never thought about poems as a way to put your feelings into words. I guess I got the bug.” She then continued her study of poetry through high school and college.

Boccardo, though, says he came into poetry accidentally. “I started out writing prose. Then I didn’t write anything for a couple of years. One night I just sat down and started typing out words and inserting line breaks. It looked like a poem and sounded like a poem. I wasn’t quite sure what it meant, but I liked the sound of it.”

He began to read poetry voraciously as a means of educating himself.

That desire to read is significant for all three. Trull says she finds inspiration everywhere from comic books to former North Carolina Poet Laureate Deborah Pope — one of her college professors. Lindsay admits to reading a dozen things at a time, ranging from magazine articles to a biography of painter Grant Wood to Laura Lee’s Schadenfreude, Baby! “You have do a lot of reading; be curious about the world,” she says. Boccardo agrees, “I don’t think I could write poetry if I didn’t read. The reading feeds my writing.”

Inspiration seems to come from all sorts of places; these three make it their duty, and passion, to grab those morsels and save them up. Trull and Boccardo carry notebooks with them to jot down impressions and ideas. Lindsay favors the backs of page-a-day calendars.

Armed with the sights and sounds they absorb during their daily lives, the wordsmiths go to work. And it is work. Even though Lindsay has just published her latest volume, Twigs and Knucklebones (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), she’s already busy with the next, rewriting and refining. “There’s this potent myth that it’s all about inspiration,” she says, but it’s a lot of hard work that can be frustrating. Boccardo struggles with his perfectionist tendencies, too. “If I get stuck on a line, it’s all I think about all day,” he says. Likewise, Trull admits to struggling with trusting her own instincts and with trying to find the right word. “I love language,” she says, “but it always comes up short.”

And yet they’d have it no other way. Boccardo enjoys both writing and reading poetry for “the experience of words, the emotion it evokes. Sometimes I read a poem and just sit back in awe.” Trull finds poetry exhilarating because it gives her a chance to connect with people, to experience the way someone else sees the world. This connection is also a great part of the joy she gets from doing readings of her own work.

For those who might feel intimidated by the art, these masters offer plenty of encouragement. “Don’t be afraid of poetry,” Boccardo says. Trull recommends trying lots of different poets. Journals are a great way to start, or sign up to receive a poem each day from Web sites like versedaily.org.

And if you’re thinking you’d like to jot down a verse or two of your own, “Don’t be fanatical about publishing,” Lindsay advises. “Get pleasure out of writing.” Trull and Boccardo add that you cannot be discouraged by rejection. Trull’s first published poem was dismissed nine times before she won a $1,000 award for it. Boccardo remembers one poem that was rejected 21 times before it was published.

“Take any advice editors give, look at your work objectively, make changes, and keep going.”

For information, go to Poetry Greensboro at poetrygso.org. To read sample work from these poets, go to http://www.GreensboroMonthlyMagazine.com.