Now Taking Center Stage – An Interview with Tamara Woods

Want to get inside the mind of a poet?

Today is your lucky day!

Making a stop on her blog tour and joining us for a brief interview this morning is Tamara Woods, author of The Shaping of an “Angry” Black Woman. If you have not experienced Tamara’s words through the page or through her videos, you really must. It’s gorgeous. Gorgeous! I’m a pretty discerning poetry consumer and Tamara’s work is the goods.

I’ve shared a couple of links for you at the end of this post so you can listen to Tamara talk about and read a bit of her poetry.

But first, go grab a fresh cup of coffee, get comfortable in your chair, and see what our lovely guest has to share with us while we chat her up!

TMoM: Do you have a particular approach to your poetry – do you write when you’re inspired, for a certain time each day, or a combination?

TW: It’s all about the inspiration. I either feel it or I seek it. I find inspiration in new things, new location, being around different people, sometimes watching spoken word poetry—which can be awkward, because I want to write something down, but I also don’t want people to think that I’m trying to steal their words. The time of day isn’t really important for me. It may be into the wee hours of the morning, or it may be waking up in the middle of the night to scribble on my bedside notepad to go to bed.

TMoM: Who are some of your favorite poets? Do you have any particular favorites among their poems?

TW: It’s probably clichéd, but I don’t really care. My favorite poet is Maya Angelou. She was so strong in her truth. It felt like she held nothing back. It’s hard to be that honest. My favorite Maya Angelou poem is “Phenomenal Woman.” It talks about such strength in character and being a woman. Finding beauty in self inside and out regardless of what others think about you.

My favorite spoken word performer is Saul Williams. He’s branched out into making movies and music, but his poetry is what I come back to.

TMoM: Which writers – poets or otherwise – have influenced you most?

TW: My first short story I remember writing was a take on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Telltale Heart. I think his writing greatly influenced me. Of course Stephen King. But then there were writers of romance who I really enjoyed reading and read many of their books. My Mom was a big romance reader and I wanted to read all the things. (Both of those things haven’t changed.) I enjoyed Kay Hooper—her romances were interesting and intricate. And I enjoyed her writing even more when she started writing thrillers.

TMoM: It seems pretty clear that your poetry in this collection is autobiographical. Do you anticipate the same for any future collections?

TW: I’m not sure. If you ever check out my blog PenPaperPad, you’ll see that I write about a ton of different topics. I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a poetry/short story collection which wouldn’t be about me at all. I guess we’ll both have to stay tuned.

TMoM: How much do you dip into the world of prose? Do you anticipate publishing anything in that world?

TW: I write short stories fairly often. I’m working on a novel manuscript right now that if it goes the way I it to, I’d like to publish it. Even if it’s not that one, I will definitely be publishing novels in the future. That’s one of my top priorities. I just want to tell the world stories. The form doesn’t matter as much to me.

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Want to get to know Tamara and her poetry better? Check her out everywhere.

GoodReads Author page

Facebook

Twitter

Google+

YouTube

Take a few minutes to go listen to Tamara read and talk about some of her poetry. Links are right here for you.

Behind the name of the book: https://youtu.be/E8Ko52O5SJo

The Child That Never Was: https://youtu.be/vkvzY3_rcyY

About Tamara’s hair: https://youtu.be/X02yobA9g-o

And please make sure to check out Tamara’s very cool upcoming event!

Tha.Speakeasy Facebook Event

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Tamara Woods was raised (fairly happily) in West Virginia, where she began writing poetry at the age of 12. She published her first poetry collection, The Shaping of an “Angry” Black Woman in 2014 and is working on her first fiction novel. She works as a full-time freelance writer and posts poetry, short stories and indie author interviews on her blog PenPaperPad. She is a hillbilly hermit in Honolulu living with her Mathemagician.