well cocksure Beverly is

"going to a workshop for poetry is like not trusting poetry;
it is like not fully loving a lover, or wanting to play the field."
                          --Beverly J. Wilcox aka Bevrly

the panda speaks to the elusive Bevrly, a writer who quit writing at age 27 and keeps making shit up.

Bree: when did you start writing?

Bevrly: i wrote on my walls at home with my mom and grandma constantly repainting. i was maybe ten when it began. i broke a promise and to make up for it kept writing my apologies down, or upwards, as it was on walls.

Bree: and when and why did you quit?

Bevrly: i got too many critiques. i would hear, "this poem really moves but the punctuation might throw some readers off". i would think, "the punctuation is moving the words," and then maybe cuss them out in my head and never send to them again, or seek their 'opinion'. eventually i read my poems to myself and decided nothing moves in any of my poems because i was standing still, in life, in reflection, sitting reading my own work, how absolutely vain. and not wanting to appear vain to anyone else, (!) i wrinkled up all my poems into great balls and threw them outside on the roof which was waistlevel just outside my apartment. and then i moved.

Bree: do you still read poetry?

Bevrly: i read novels. novels all the time. i want to someday experience something in life worth lying about.

Bree: do you believe as many do that memoir and autobio are lies?

Bevrly: almost anything said aloud or written down can be broken down into connecting allies which on maps never do intersect.

Bree: you are a smartass.

Bevrly: my ass looks smart in a dress.

Bree: how do you think fellow poets would take your comment on workshops?

Bevrly: unfortunately, they might not see it as a faith i have. they might instead see hatred. but i have no hatred of workshops, or of people who give them or attend. i just have my own angle about Poetry. (hers was the capital P).


Beverly J. Wilcox's poems appear in presses like Retrowboat, Green Panda Press, ArtCrimes, deepcleveland press, The City and other small mainly Cleve. mags and rags. She attended Brown University until a sickness in the family drew her back home where she currently studies with no stated major, at CSU. While this interviewer shot many o more a question than has been transcribed here, Wilcox sure as hell didn't want to answer. She is beautiful with an outstanding lisp and very shy looking, barely giving eyecontact. her fave unsung is La Forgue, Jules, who was translated from the French into English, to my knowledge only by Hart Crane and T.S. Eliot, and who also quit writing poetry, at 27, because, according to Beverly J. Wilcox "a lamppost fell on his head."


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