I was in seventh grade when I discovered poetry for the first time. My English teacher had each of us write a poem for Earth Day. 16 terrible lines later, I was hooked. My love for the written word started mostly with those angsty teenage poems almost all of us have written at some point or another. Somewhere, though, at some point before I graduated from high school, someone recognized something in my writing as potential, and starting me on a journey that will never cease. As of yet, it led me to graduating Phi Beta Kappa with my BA at Penn State, my MFA at a University nearly on the other side of the country, and then back to the East Coast to once again find myself immersed in a creative culture.
Words are everything–the way we connect with one another, the way I connect to myself, and the way we connect to the world. Without them, we would be stumbling through the dark in some contemporary version of Plato’s cave. As we currently use them, though, they hold this incredible potential to rise above strict communication purposes and to turn into art. To turn into ways we can connect universal truths to those we may have never even met. To capture the beauty of the every day. To start to transform the way we view the entire world.
I have been honored to be a part of some fantastic journals with varying audiences. From those more established in the online literary community, such as BlazeVox and The Fox Chase Review, to those just beginning their path, such as the first issue of Timber out of the University of Colorado, Boulder. I have been invited to readings and had an essay accepted for a panel at an International Interdisciplinary Conference. Most recently, I have started collaborating with a visual artist, and the possibilities behind this combination of words and media are endless.
I don’t know where this path will lead me. All I know is that wherever it goes, I will follow it. I have no other choice.
contact: breonna.krafft (at) gmail(dot)com
“Poets are mostly voters and taxpayers, but the alienation of the poet is a common theme. Among poets there are also probably higher than average rates of clutch burnout, job turnover, rooting about, sleep apnea, noncompliance, nervous leg syndrome, depression, litigation, black clothing, and so forth, but this is where we live, or as Leonard Cohen put it, poetry is the opiate of the poets.”
-CD Wright, Cooling Time
