Short Interview: TS Kerrigan, Poet from California, US

TS Kerrigan, (interview to be reposted soon.) 1. [b]Muses: Tell us something about yourself.[/b] T.S. Kerrigan: T.S. Kerrigan. I am a member of the California Bar and a few years ago argued successfully in the United States Supreme Court to preserve a law enacted in the Great Depression to protect workers on public works projects. I am also a longtime theatre critic in Los Angeles and a member of The Los Angeles Drama Critic's Circle. My principle life pursuit is and has been poetry. I am mentioned in Wikipedia as one of the leading formal poets writing in English. 2. [b]Muses: Tell us something about your the poetrybook/ poemchap you just submitted to Muses Review.[/b] T.S. Kerrigan: The chapbook ...... represents some of my best poetry written last year. It was printed on a hand press. 3. [b]Muses: What are your favorite poems in your latest volume of poetry? Why?[/b] T.S. Kerrigan: My favorite poems in the chapbook are "Elegy for an Actress," "Deceptions," and "Storms." Each represents an effort to create a poem within a restrictive form. The first poem about an actress is written in sonnet form (14 lines in iambic pentameter). Within that form I had to create a portrait of a particular actress. The last line is a surprise, giving the women, with all her faults, her due. The second poem was written in the form of a Pantoum, a very difficult form because the second and fourth lines of the quatrain must reoccur as the first and third lines of the next quatrain. I has ti justify the repetition in this poem by the narrator's reluctance to tell the woman about his dream. The third poem, "Storms" another sonnet, was in two Katrina anthologies. It is unique in English I think because each two lines is a double couplet (with both interior rhyme and end line rhyme). Each of these poems represent a struggle against form and a attempt to transcend form. 4. [b]Muses: Who chose the design of your poetrybook/ chapbook ?[/b] T.S. Kerrigan: Tom Leighhty designed the book. 5. [b]Muses: Is there any significance in the design of your poetrybook/chapbook?[/b] T.S. Kerrigan: The gradation of shades on the cover represents the gradation of shades in the poems from light to dark. 6. [b]Muses: What is the title of your latest poetrybook/ chapbook ?[/b] T.S. Kerrigan: Shadow Sonnets and Other Poems. 7. [b]Muses: Why did you chose that title of your poetrybook/chapbook?[/b] T.S. Kerrigan: The sonnets are not typical sonnets of love and romance but deal with loss, survival, and death. "Storms," for example, is about the strength to survive all of the storms we face in life. 8. [b]Muses: What is your official website?[/b] T.S. Kerrigan: My website is at: http://home.earthlink.net~T.S. Kerrigan/