Ann Walters is the pen-name for Sharon Hurlbut. Ann/Sharon is a poet, short fiction writer, and an avid knitter. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous publications, including Carousel, Poet Lore, Poetry International, Main Street Rag, Literary Mama, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Pedestal, NOÖ Journal, and Strong Verse. Her poems “Conjoined” and “Mirrored Surfaces are Not to Be Trusted,” won the Grand Prize and first place, respectively, in the Dangerous Alice Contest at Mad Hatter’s Review. Ann’s recent fiction can be found in SmokeLong Quarterly, Salome, and flashquake, among other places, and she has work forthcoming in Kalliope. Before taking a leave of absence to raise her children, Ann worked as an archeologist and physical anthropologist. Visit her blog, Field Notes.

You take part in a project called 30-30. Tell us about that.

I participate in 30-30 at Inside the Writers Studio, an online poetry workshop. It’s about writing 30 poems in 30 days and I’ve just completed my ninth round. What I love about 30-30, and why I keep coming back to it, is the freedom it gives me. When you’re cranking out a poem a day you don’t have time to let your inner critic slow you down. It lets me indulge in a sense of playfulness and go unexpected places that I might otherwise not explore.

About twice a year I do the same thing with flash fiction at Zoetrope Virtual Studio by running a flashathon. It’s challenging to write a flash a day, but there’s a great sense of shared community and creative energy when a bunch of writers make that daily commitment.

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This summer, you plan on putting together of chapbook of your poetry. Do you have a title for the collection yet? What type of poems do you plan on including?

Having been through nine rounds of 30-30 I have plenty of material to choose from, but for my first collection I plan on using poems that touch on a topic I’m very close to: physical anthropology. My working title is “Grave Reflections.” The poems range from descriptions of specific burials in archaeological settings to musings on the connections between past and present as shown by the remnants of humans and their societies. It’s not all serious and heavy topics, though. There are also poems about Cleopatra’s eternal sensuality, the musical nature of Mozart’s bones, and surreal glimpses into archaeological fieldwork.

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One of my favorite poems of yours, “Taphonomy,” won the Adroitly Placed Word Award. What I like best about this poem is the rawness of death juxtaposed against the images of life-giving. Take this verse, for example:

Underground is another dimension of destruction
where rodents gnaw and insects etch, incising patterns
like the notches on a pistol’s grip, like the winding trails
of snakes. Nature mouthing the milky nipple.

What does this poem mean to you?

Thanks! In many ways this poem embodies my professional career because the topic of my dissertation was taphonomy, which is defined as the processes of burial and fossilization. So on the surface this is simply about the things that happen to a body from death onward. Beneath those descriptions, though, is the implication that death is merely a part of the process of life, and that together they form a continuous pattern that remains the same today as it was thousands of years ago. The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius said: “Everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be” and that’s what is meant by ‘nature mouthing the milky nipple’.

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Which poets have influenced you the most?

I have to admit that I am shamefully less well-read when it comes to poetry than fiction. Certain poets like Whitman, Neruda, Laux, Addonizio, Kooser, Frost, and others, inspire me both as a reader and a writer. But in terms of influences on my writing style, I think everything I’ve ever read — fiction, poetry, non-fiction, academic texts, comic strips, juvenile literature — has helped to form my worldview and therefore the way I write. I am the product of many fine writers filtered through my own perceptions.

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You also write short fiction. Does it come as naturally to you as poetry?

I tend to write primarily flash fiction and it often has a poetic feel to it. In fact, I only began writing poetry a couple of years ago after numerous reviewers commented on how my stories felt like poems. I don’t usually draw a distinction while I’m writing because to me fiction and poetry are all part of the same continuum and I’m usually smack in the middle of it. It’s far less important to me which category my writing falls into than whether it reaches readers and makes them feel or think or both.

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Your most recent fiction publication, “This is Just Another Yarn,” published in SmokeLong Quarterly, is an exceptionally well-told fable, which, as you say in your interview with SmokeLong’s Features Editor, Randall Brown, is “the kind of story in which characters are bigger than life, where surreal events serve as metaphors for reality.” What is your favorite metaphor in the story?

This story is one of my favorites that I’ve written, so I’m ecstatic that it found a home in SmokeLong Quarterly. The entire thing is a metaphor, but I’d have to say that the part I like best is the scissors. The idea of being able to cut away all the things that are tying you down and preventing change is quite appealing.

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Tell us about your knitting habit. What kind of projects have you undertaken?

I like to have 3 or 4 projects on the needles at a time, usually one or two pairs of socks and then a bigger project. I’ve made a mermaid dress-up outfit complete with fishy tail, as well as flower fairy and hula princess dress-ups. My older daughter wants an Egyptian princess dress, so I guess I’ll have to start that soon. I also knit toys, including a tea set for Valentine’s Day and the occasional bunny or dinosaur. I’ve been designing an entire wardrobe for Groovy Girls (we have a lot of them in our house!) on and off over the past year, which is a lot of fun. I really enjoy making up my own patterns. It’s also fun to knit for Barbie dolls because they’re so small that it’s instant gratification. Oddly enough, I can’t stand to wear sweaters, so the only thing I knit for myself are socks. Socks are great because the basic way of making them is always the same but there are so many wonderful yarns to work with and a great variety of stitches and patterns to use, that the variations are endless. Hand-knit socks are incredibly comfortable, too, which means if you knit them for others you have to be prepared — they’ll want more.

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What are Groovy Girls?

Groovy Girls are soft dolls. They come in lots of ethnicities, wear hip and funky clothes, and promote a sense of individuality.

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How long did you work as an archeologist and physical anthropologist? To what parts of the country did this job take you?

I worked in CRM (Cultural Resource Management) for 10 years while simultaneously getting my Ph.D. in Physical Anthropology. The company I worked for did projects all over the state of Arizona, from the Flagstaff region in the north all the way down to the very southern border with Mexico. The Sonoran Desert is a remarkably unique place and I’m glad I had the opportunity to spend so much time in the field there, despite the extreme heat and sometimes very primitive conditions. I was also fortunate to work on projects that ranged in time from the Salado of the Tonto Basin, with sites as old as 800-900 years, up to historic cemeteries only a hundred years old, where individuals from the modern Indian community could recall some of the people buried there.

For my dissertation, I studied human remains from Chaco Canyon, New Mexico that had been excavated during the 1920s and 30s. I had the wonderful opportunity to spend a couple of summers in Albuquerque and travel around New Mexico for my research. It’s a place I’d love to get back to.

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What is your favorite season, and why?

Fall. Because that crisp bite in the air is a sharp reminder of mortality; because too much summer is tiresome; because a pile of leaves is seductive; because the premonition of winter is better than the real thing; because it’s easy to be Spring but it takes grace to be Fall.

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The photograph you included here resembles a mug shot. Why did you choose this picture? How old are you? How did you get that black eye? And what are you holding?

It does look like a mug shot, doesn’t it? I think that’s part of the reason I chose it. It was kind of a defining moment. I was four. My brother is six years older than me and he was outside with a baseball and bat, practicing. I wanted to see what it looked like to be a batter so I stood right behind him. Unfortunately, he had no idea I was there, but when he swung that bat back he found out pretty quick. It was a magnificent shiner. I didn’t know until much later, when I was grown up with a child of my own, but my parents got a lot of dirty looks and even a few nasty comments whenever we were out in public while I had that black eye. People thought I’d been abused.

Despite the look on my face, I didn’t actually feel bad about the black eye. Like all my other scrapes and bruises, it was something of a badge of honor. I looked up to my older brother and he brooked no sissies. I was also short as a kid (still am, actually) and smaller than my peers. I prided myself on being tough, on being able to keep up with my brother, and on exploring the world around me, even when it meant I might get hurt. If I could take a baseball bat to the eye, what couldn’t I do?

In the picture I’m holding a Charlie Brown cookie. I was totally addicted to all things Peanuts at the time. It was elaborately decorated and I begged for it at the store until my mom gave in and bought it. The funny thing is, it was so perfect and beautiful I could never bring myself to open it up and eat it. Eventually it went in the trash, faded but whole.

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Contact Sharon

Read:

Brand New! “Sonoran Desert Sililoquy” at juked

Flash Fiction:

Masquerade
published in The Hiss Quarterly

Golden Years
published in Salome Magazine

Love is the Firmest Foundation
published in edifice Wrecked

Three Hundred Stones
published in flashquake

Cracks
published in SmokeLong Quarterly

Poetry:

Come
Dinner with Mr. Jones, Or,
How I Taught Tom to Appreciate a Good Beaujolais
published in The Hiss Quarterly

Seven Reasons We Never Met for Drinks at the Sand Dollar Lounge
published in juked

At Bedtime
published by Literary Mama

summer and winter
published in Tipton Poetry Journal

The Corps of Discovery Licks its Salty Lips
published by The Pedestal Magazine

Conjoined
Grand Prize winner of the Dangerous Alice Contest at Mad Hatter’s Review

Mirrored Surfaces are Not to Be Trusted
First Place Poetry winner of the Dangerous Alice Contest at Mad Hatter’s Review

A Night in Zion
published in Strong Verse

Twice in a Blue Moon
published by NOÖ Journal

Anatomy of a Tomboy
published by Salome


Family History, Part I
published by edifice Wrecked


Filed Under: The Writer Profile Project |