Interview with Poet LindaAnn LoSchiavo
1. Have you always been a writer?
Yes, I’ve been writing since my Crayon-hood. When I was 3 years old, I started searching through cabinets for lined paper for my short metrical poems, set forth in a toddler’s block capitals – vowels and consonants loud with an insistence to BE. By my 9th birthday, one of my poems had been accepted for a school magazine. That year I also had my first one-act play onstage in New York City for a cast of five girls. Shortly after my 16th birthday, I won my high school’s gold medal for “Literary Achievement.” The die was cast.
2. What compelled you to start writing poetry?
Since my parents couldn't afford housing when first married, we lived in a large household with grandparents, aunts, and a Great-Uncle until I was 4½ years old. Many greeting cards arrived for family occasions and, since I learned to read at age 2, I was given the privilege of opening the cards and reading them aloud when everyone gathered at suppertime. But those awkwardly rhymed poems from popular greeting card manufacturers offended my little girl sensibilities! Even then I hated clunky moon-June-spoon rhymes. Why couldn’t mass-produced sentiments be better? This frustration led me to create my own line of bespoke greeting cards. My artistic aunt illustrated each cover while I wrote poems that aimed for more natural rhythms, surprising imagery, and a personal connection. This early appreciation for sound and structure continues in my work today. Thanks to those horrible Hallmark clichés, a young formalist was born.
3. How do you feel about only being paid to have your poetry published?
Compensation is important. My first choice would be to send a poem (or prose) to one of those paying markets before trying another lit-mag. Or save the material for my WIP and not release it until the book is published.
4. How has writing poetry helped you in other areas of life?
Poetry has sharpened my command of language across all type of writing. The precision, imagery, economy, and rhythm that formal verse demands have enhanced everything else from my storytelling and drama reviews to professional correspondence – including effective complaint letters. I've learned to convey complex ideas through vivid metaphors and to select words not just for their meaning but for their emotional resonance—skills that make any type of communication more compelling, engaging, and memorable.
5. What was your biggest accomplishment as a poet?
So far it has been the recognition I have received for my hardcover collection published in England “Apprenticed to the Night.”
Here is the press release:
“LindaAnn LoSchiavo’s Apprenticed to the Night Receives Accolades and Global Acclaim”
6. What other poets have inspired you the most?
When I attended a Catholic elementary school, the nuns assigned us to memorize narrative poems and recite them in front of the class. I loved memorizing Longfellow’s “Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie” and I’ve often performed it during lulls at Jury Duty. This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, ...
Years later, some of my favorite moments would be sharing these long narrative pieces in front of a captive audience. A jury room, for example, usually has great acoustics and NYC jurors welcome a poetry recital during those inevitable wait-times.
Another beloved classic is “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll, ideal for being enhanced with comical gestures, thrusting that vorpal blade – snicker-snack! – at the audience. Poetry is meant to be heard and dramatized.
However, a sea change occurred when I was 9 years old. A fellow classmate introduced me to medieval authors: Christine de Pizan, Jean Froissart, Chaucer, and, of course, Dante. My fascination with this era led to my first graduate degree in Medieval Literature.
I’m still obsessed with Chaucer and his “Canterbury Tales.” My short story inspired by The Wife of Bath (based on my stage play of the same name) was just published by The Yard: A Crime Blog: “A Worthie Woman All Hir Live.”
7. What are some of the challenges you have faced in writing poetry and how did you overcome them?
The main challenge I have faced is getting a poetry book released by an indie publisher who, not only will do no marketing, but who will actively work against my marketing.
How to overcome this: never engage with a disappointing press twice.
8. What is the best writing advice you have ever received and why do you feel it is important?
When he autographed my copy of Story, Robert McKee wrote: “Write the truth.” Some of my most successful poems – be it speculative, horror, or literary – are based on nonfiction, i.e., true events, real people.
9. If you have books of poetry published, please list the titles and where they can be purchased online.
Currently, these titles are all available on Amazon (occasionally on B&N and Bookshop):
1. A Route Obscure and Lonely – earned an Elgin Award
2. Women who Were Warned
3. Messengers of the Macabare: Hallowe’en Poems – Elgin nominee
4. Vampire Ventures – Elgin nominee
5. Apprenticed to the Night – earned the BREW Seal of Excellence from The Chrysalis BREW Project, the Spotlyts Story Award from Spotlyts Magazine, as well as recognition from Book World Front. 6. Felones de Se: Poems about Suicide
7. Always Haunted: Hallowe’en Poems – earned the BREW Seal of Excellence from The Chrysalis BREW Project
10. Where can we find some of your poetry published in publications online?
Dawn, please select from any recent credit below - - -
LindaAnn LoSchiavo, 3 Golden Shovel poems: "Lon Chaney, Jr. as The Wolf Man"; "Self Defense"; and "Ten" in Shot Glass Journal Issue # 45 from Muse-Pie Press, on February 4th, 2025; three links --
"G.S.: Self-Defense"
"G.S.: Lon Chaney, Jr. as The Wolf Man"
"G.S.: Ten"
LindaAnn LoSchiavo, abecedarian poem, "Nostalgic Terrors: Cropsey, an Urban Legend with Bloodstained Hands" in Quail Bell Magazine, on February 8, 2025
LindaAnn LoSchiavo, poem, "Involuntary Manslaughter on July 12, 2014" in Quail Bell Magazine, on February 8, 2025
LindaAnn LoSchiavo, 3 non-genre poems, “40 Days of Weeping,” “Back in the Black,” and “Autumn Leave-Taking” in “Piece by Piece: An Anti-Valentine's Day Collection” from Dark Moon Rising Publications, on February 10, 2025
LindaAnn LoSchiavo, one poem, "Ghostly Footprints in the Snow" and one nonet "Ice Skating on a January Night" in Sublimation: A Magazine of Speculative Poetry and Art, Volume 2, Issue 1, The Heart of Winter, Edited by TS S. Fulk, January/February 2025, on February 17, 2025
LindaAnn LoSchiavo, poem "Our Lady of Holy Death I" in Collaborature, on February 27, 2025
LindaAnn LoSchiavo, 5 non-genre poems, "After Lam Doy Died"; "Kinetic Kissing"; "Invitation to a Kiss"; "Boardwalk Soda Fountain Shop"; "Valentine Villanelle" -- in Creativity Webzine, "Love" theme, Volume 11 -- Issue 3, published on March 1, 2025
LindaAnn LoSchiavo, poem, "Dracula Considers Writing a Memoir" in Dissections, The Magazine of Horror, 20th edition, on March 13, 2025
(Apologies, LindaAnn. I chose them all!)
11. What advice do you have for aspiring poets thinking of getting their work published?
Join a critique group. Devote time to reading current issues of lit-mags before you try to submit there.
12. Is there a type of poetry you enjoy writing the most?
Yes, writing a dramatic monologue (also called a persona poem) in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) or in the format of a prose-poem.
13. Why do you favor it more than the others?
It takes a special sensitivity to take on the voice of a character, a fictional identity, or a real person.
Moreover, as a playwright-poet crafting a dramatic monologue for the page instead of the stage, I enjoy the way that poetry offers not just self-expression but liberation from the self—an escape from personality into universal experience. I think of it as a creative leap off the cliff into the realm of wonder — equipped with wings that won’t melt.
14. What is it about poetry that you love?
What I love about poetry is the transformation of ordinary expression into graceful articulation. A good poem elevates language beyond pigeon-toed prose through images, metaphors, and rhetorical devices — because, without these elements, what’s left is mere dullness disguised and “dignified” by line breaks.
What I love about formal verse: I am drawn to formal verse for its delicious constraints and its invitation to master the diverse implements in a poet's toolbox—sonnets, Echo Verse, abecedarians, mesostich acrostics, Golden Shovels, etc. — each form presenting its own particular challenge and satisfaction.
15. How does this influence your writing of poetry?
My love of poetry is inseparable from my practice—it's the engine that drives my formal experimentation and thematic exploration. What began as admiration for poetry's architectural possibilities has evolved into a dialogue between emotion and structure that defines my work.
When crafting “Apprentice to the Night,” for example, I found myself drawn to centos and Golden Shovels because they allowed me to honor the voices that shaped me while creating something uniquely mine. These forms weren't just technical solutions for transitions; they became vessels carrying emotional resonance across the collection's landscape, echoing the very apprenticeship the title suggests.
In contrast, my crime poetry manuscript [WIP] emerged from my fascination with poetry's capacity to simultaneously conceal and illuminate. The mesostich format transforms verses into visual investigations where the vertical text offers clues that complement — or sometimes contradict — the horizontal narrative. This little-used format is especially well-suited for a crime poem because it mirrors the detective's journey from mystery to revelation, giving readers the satisfaction of solving the poem's puzzle alongside the speaker.
In my werewolf collection [another WIP], my love of poetry's shape-shifting nature found its perfect subject. Different formal structures let me embody transformation on the page. The Glosa, a four-stanza structure, can expand on moments of humanity and philosophical reflection, for instance, whereas a haibun (with its duality of prose-poem and haiku) can amplify metamorphosis.
What sustains my writing is this continuous discovery: that the poetic forms I love are not constraints but catalysts. They create the necessary pressure that transforms raw experience into something crystalline and enduring. My relationship with poetry is ultimately reciprocal—the forms I cherish reshape my vision, allowing me to discover truths I couldn't access through prose or unstructured verse.
With each new poem I'm compelled to explore how that structure can unlock new dimensions in my work.
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Thanks for the opportunity, Dawn. I appreciate this.
(You’re welcome!)
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ABOUT LINDAANN:
Native New Yorker and award-winner, LindaAnn LoSchiavo is a member of British Fantasy Society, HWA, SFPA, and The Dramatists Guild.
Titles published in 2024:
“Always Haunted: Hallowe’en Poems” [Wild Ink], “Apprenticed to the Night” [UniVerse Press], and “Felones de Se: Poems about Suicide” [Ukiyoto].
Forthcoming: “Cancer Courts My Mother” [Prolific Pulse Press, Nov. 2025] and an E-book version of "Vampire Ventures" fully illustrated by Giulia Massarin.
Book Accolades earned:
Elgin Award for “A Route Obscure and Lonely” and the Chrysalis BREW Project’s Award for Excellence & Readers' Choice Award for “Always Haunted: Hallowe’en Poems” and the Spotlyts Story Award from Spotlyts Magazine for "Apprenticed to the Night."
BlueSky: @ghostlyverse.bsky.social
YouTube: LindaAnn Literary