Poet Susan Meyers talks about her latest project

Susan Meyers has established herself as a poet through her poetry collection and chapbook.

Now, she moves on to work on a collection that explores new grounds called "My Dear, Dear Stagger Grass."

Her collection of poetry, "Keep and Give Away," won the S.C. Poetry Book Prize, the 2007 SIBA Book Award for Poetry and the N.C. Poetry Society's Brockman-Campbell Book Award.

What more validation could you need that Meyers is a talented poet that we should all keep an eye on?

Preview got the opportunity to ask Meyers about her workshops, the inspiration for her new collection and more.

Q: You teach writing classes and workshops around Charleston and Pawleys Island. How has teaching affected your writing?

A: Through the years, teaching has kept me in the world of language. For workshops, I often choose a topic that concerns a craft issue that I myself want to work on in my own poetry, such as diction, syntax, line breaks, the element of surprise. So the preparation and exploration for the workshop becomes all the more interesting and useful for me.

Plus, I love the interaction that goes on in the classroom, the energy that individual participants give to the whole. It inspires me, and I end up writing poems that I wouldn't otherwise write.

Q: Tell me about "My Dear, Dear Stagger Grass," your latest project.

A: Actually the impetus for my current manuscript came from an idea for a workshop. I decided that I wanted to teach a workshop on the epistolary poem, writing a poem in the form of a letter, but I had written only a few. So I set out to write letter poems and wrote about 80 or so. Then not only did I feel prepared for my class, I was hooked.

The manuscript I'm working on now consists of about 20 of those poems, plus poems that have to do with loss, always loss, and what's inconstant, the traffic of life.

The letter poems are mostly written to the natural world or to abstractions, not to people. ... I just finished putting it together for the first time, though I'm sure it'll go through much shuffling and revision. I guess you can tell I'm excited about it.

Q: What advice would you offer amateur writers in the area?

A: Well, in poetry, we're all amateurs. Mainly, though, I think the best path to take is to read good writing, to read both deeply and widely, especially in your genre, and to write regularly, no matter what. I always remind myself that a writer is someone who writes.

"Keep and Give Away" is available at Barnes & Noble bookstores, Amazon.com, and the University of South Carolina Press.

To see Meyers in action, check her out with Ray McManus at 2 p.m. April 18 at Paperwhites on Courthouse Square in Edgefield.