Tin Fogdall is a native of Seattle, adopted child of New England, and currently living in Vermont, U.S.A. Her work appears most recently in Literary Matters, The Missouri Review, SWWIM, Poetry Northwest, and Sixth Finch, as well as The Threepenny Review, Poetry, NER, and Slate, among other venues. She earned her M.A. in creative writing from Boston University. Find more at tinfogdall.com, and follow her on Instagram @kmfogdall, where she documents a minor obsession with circles.
You can read Small Wind in the July 2025 issue.
Would you like to tell us a little bit more about your poem? For instance, how or why you wrote it, or perhaps provide some extra context?
My first experience with the word ‘abduction’ came early in life when a girl about my age was taken from her neighbourhood. She wasn’t found until decades later, despite massive search efforts across the city. Of course, her story grew into an even darker meaning once my daughter was born. In fact, the early working title for this poem was “All the Girls.”
Is there a collection of poetry that never leaves your (perhaps metaphorical) nightstand?
Well, Zbigniew Herbert’s Collected Poems has been there ever since the book came out in 2007…
If you didn’t write poetry, how do you think you might access the same fulfillments that poetry offers in your life?
Probably as a photographer or painter. At least, I’d try. I’m not blessed with those gifts, but I think I’m after a similar objective, very often, in my poems.
How do you revise your work?
Extremely slowly.
As a poet, what does creative success or achievement look like for you?
I think I’ve been made happiest by the occasional note from a stranger who says how a poem moved them in a magazine or on a website. I’m interested in any art that is psychically or spiritually useful. Especially lately. Small Wind comes from a book I wrote to find my way out from the loss of several loved ones. I hope someday that book can do the same for a few others.
What are you reading or watching or listening to lately that intrigues or inspires you?
I went to the “Sargeant and Paris” show at the Met in New York City recently. It absolutely blew me away: room after room of (mostly) women whose portraits he did during just one decade. I kept thinking “These are made of only canvas and oil,” but these women looked so alive and filled with colour and light — in a way that showed their power, even during a time when women had so little agency. Even in a way that outlasted their deaths.
Have you ever received advice (or has there been something you’ve learned on your own) about writing or revising poems that has made you a better poet? What was it?
Derek Walcott once told me, “Stop writing to the third grade.” Hard to hear. But it helped.
How did you begin writing poetry? Was there a specific inspiration or reason?
I began relatively late, by taking a class with Mary Jo Salter while I was working in the advancement office at Mount Holyoke College. As an employee, I was allowed to take one free class per semester. I thought I wanted to get a PhD in history, but then these poems just came flying out.
In terms of poetic style or craft, is there a big question you are trying to find an answer for?
I’m trying to figure out how to speak as simply as possible, while saying something quite complex. I’m pretty sure I’ll always be working toward that.