Sandy Hiortdahl
Sandy Hiortdahl says her life in poetry began before she started school.
“I loved songs. I’d make up new words to nursery rhymes and popular songs. To be honest, I was quite a nuisance to my elementary school teachers. My first-grade teacher wrote on my report card, ‘Sandy is writing poems again instead of doing her work,” she says.
Hiortdahl’s first influence was Dr. Seuss, and she learned to match his cadences. Poe, Whitman, Gwendolyn Brooks and Shakespeare followed. She also loves poets who make her laugh, like Billy Collins.
“Poetry allows me to weave imagery with story in new ways. Poems can work beneath the surface, which makes the work more playful and more serious at the same time.
“Mostly, I write free verse and blank verse with a strong lean toward the narrative. I enjoy writing formal poetry (sonnets and sestinas), as well as rhyming poetry, though all of those are harder to publish in today’s markets.
“My ideas usually start with an image or phrase or sound that won’t leave me. ‘Who Cooks for You?’ began the first time I heard a barred owl. I was walking beside an empty silo on a dark night when the owl called from the rim, and the sound echoed inside. It felt like a question in the dark. A birdwatcher friend later told me the mnemonic: ‘Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?’ Once I heard it that way, the poem began.
“Writing for me comes fast, whole phrases and ideas complete, but then I’ll do a cutthroat revision before a final walkthrough. For ‘Who Cooks for You,’ I traded out birds a few times, cut a few, added a few. Also, I wanted to capture the movement of the relationship and the movement of afternoon into evening,” she says.
Hiortdahl has a Ph.D. in literature from Catholic University and MFA in creative writing from George Mason. She teaches creative writing at Northeast State.
“I love teaching poetry, and I do so when I can. Nearly everyone who loves writing can help others let inspiration take hold: the freedom to write, in a room of like-minded supporters is a lovely experience,” she says.
She won Washington College’s Sophie Kerr Prize when she received her undergraduate degree. Since then, she’s won the Pen2Paper first prize in poetry from the Coalition for Texans with Disabilities. She’s been published in Thema, Metonym, Barely South Review and a variety of others. Her book, “Hang Five,” was published in 2023.
“The poems in ‘Hang Five’ center loosely on being born without a right foot (‘hang five’ being a pun on ‘hang ten,’ where surfers hang all 10 toes from the front edge of the surfboard). Themes of identity, inner growth and the connections we share, all seem to recur. While other poems of mine focus on location, those same themes come through,” she says.
Who Cooks for You?
for Danny Lane
by Sandy Hiortdahl
We meet as though
just passing time, like grackles
on the wire, chirping about
the day’s deeds, until two robins
in the grass beneath the cedar tease,
Could we? Could we?
and cardinals start flirting
Pretty, pretty, pretty
from the dogwood.
I’m not sure we’ve known
each other long enough for this,
but the black and white warbler hints
Let’s see, let’s see, let’s see.
(Could we sweep down from the wire,
Pretty pretty, and then find ourselves
beneath a tree, let’s see,
Let’s see?)
Cherry blossom petals
freckle the sidewalk as twilight
swallows slice the gloaming,
winking and chirping seductively,
Sure we can, we can,
while gentle mist lifts
toward the streetlamps.
Maybe the sparrow’s right,
Yes, yes, yes, oh my gosh, yes!
The yellow warbler adds
Be easy, easy, be easy,
here in the soft chill of
New Spring, and the barred owl asks
Who cooks for you, who cooks for you?
Safely on her nest, the chickadee speaks:
Me... Me.
(Reprinted with permission)
