Creators on Creating: Veronica Kornberg

Congratulations on the publication of your book, Strange Gift (Winner of the Wandering Aengus Press Book Award in Poetry 2025)! Could you tell us a little about how this book came to be and what you hope readers will take away from the book?   

Thank you, Meia! I feel very honored to have been awarded the prize and I enjoy working with Jill McCabe, the Publisher at Wandering Aengus, and with my Editor there, Tina Schumann. The book has a braided structure overall, rather than being a “project” book with a single theme or form. It is a mix of narrative poems and more lyric, image-based poems. Broadly speaking, for me at least, the book is about what it means to create a home for oneself in the world, and within one’s own soul. I am at home in my family and friends, in nature, and in language. My wish would be that every person understand that they have a voice and a story that only they can tell, and that it deserves to be heard and held.
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You write, “I thought maybe there was a place for me in this world, a little side street off the parade route.” Have you found that side street? How can we all find it, do you think?

Like most important desires in life, finding a place for myself will never feel 100% finished, but I think that's a good thing—to keep seeking and expanding. That said, yes—I do feel like I have found my little side street, through art and reading and writing. And through my poetry community—let's say it's a little side street filled with comfy couches and café tables, conversation and caring. How can we all find that? I'm not sure I'm qualified to answer that big question, and it may be different for different people. But I think that the surest way, is to connect with people engaged with and stimulated by the same creative endeavors that one has. None of us has to be alone.

Strange Gift is a beautiful debut. Each poem feels like a gift born of lived experience, crafted with great attention to the sound and musicality of language. Could you talk a bit about publishing your first book of poems later in life? How do you balance lyricism, narrative, and the spaces in between?

Thank you for saying that. Publishing a first book later in life made me somewhat self-conscious about whether I'd be accepted, but in my experience, poets have been incredibly open and inclusive, at least the poets that I've been drawn to. So, it's been unexpectedly affirming to publish a first book later in life. Lyricism versus narrative is a topic I'm particularly interested in at the moment. I am struggling a bit to complete a chapbook on a topic that seems to require a lot of expository writing. Because of that, I am being led into hybrid organization and hybrid forms, such as haibun. It's always the poem itself that demands the form that satisfies, so I try to stay attuned and open to what a poem is telling me it wants to be.

In the poem, “Sunday,” you write: “it’s embarrassing, / the degree of pleasure taken / in the easing of an intact root / from the loam. That slight give / of the fleshy taper / glowing faintly / like an upside-down altar candle / pulled from the dark.” You share the pleasures of weeding, elevate what might seem ordinary, and write wonderfully of your relationship with the earth time and again. Could you share a bit more about your evolving relationship with the earth?

I have always found great solace and awe in the natural world. As a small child, it was the main place of creative play and story-making for me. As an adult, I feel poems begin to form while trail-running through woods. On the coast, I am converting an acre of ice plant into a California native plant habitat garden. It's restorative work, life-affirming, and a humble act in support of something larger than myself. I'm thrilled that you see something in my work that elevates what might seem ordinary. For me, one of the dearest things that poetry can do is to show how extraordinary the ordinary truly is.

Your poems acknowledge “the slippery / undulating truth,” that “There is the order of the world that we understand, and the order of the world we do not understand.” Like slippery, ever-changing sea or sky, they’re comfortable with mystery, ambiguity. They’re meditative, never didactic. Could you speak to this at all craft-wise or otherwise?

My poetic impulse is away from tidy narrative. I am not trying to explain the world (and I couldn't if I tried). One way to think about a poem is as a construct that re-enacts some aspect of reality in such a way that a reader can step into it, wander around inside, and come away with their own experience of that reality. There is so much joy and surprise when we can enter the illogical, the paradoxical nature of life, even if the subject is a hard one. For me, poetry (and metaphor) is a vehicle for both meaning and freedom. Craft-wise, there are so many techniques to break open the door to mystery—the surprisingly-placed line break, the open fields of blank space for breathing, repetition and chant, the compression and expansion of time within a short space—to name just a few.

In “Soft Ground,” you write that you “can hardly bear to leave the garden” even for a week. And you go on to write about how it has changed you. How has gardening changed you and your life?

For one thing, it has attached me to a specific place, which I'd never truly felt before. It's given me a sense of belonging, and a feeling of home. It's a place and activity that is always asking something of me, defying me, or unexpectedly gifting me with pleasure. Kind of like a home or a family or a lover. There is also a sense of intimacy with the garden, and solitude. A sense of the quiet mind that comes with an active body.  

Could you share with our readers a little bit about your “lifelong quest for the ecstatic”?

I love this question. My first memory is as a two-year old put outside to nap in a perambulator beneath a giant maple tree. The weather grew very gusty and woke me up. I was watching the limbs writhe above me without really understanding what I was seeing, and the autumn leaves came swirling down into my stroller or spinning away against the blue sky. I can still feel my utter delight and belly laughter, coupled with a sense that I WAS those leaves and limbs and sky. That is what metaphor does—it shows the otherwise hidden connections of two completely unlike things, and by being porous to that, we can enter a state of transcendent exultation, akin to love. But it is always transient. We fall back into our ordinary selves, and seek again. For me, this feels like the ultimate freedom. At the end of his gorgeous poem, “Postscript,” Seamus Heaney shows how the beautiful or painful world comes at you “sideways / and catch the heart off guard and blow it open.”

Author Tina Schumann writes that your poems “remind us that if we pay close attention we too can stand ‘listening with our bodies’ to ‘the rivers braiding inside us.’” In a world where it can be increasingly difficult to pay attention, to listen with and to our bodies, do you have any thoughts or advice on the art of paying close attention and practicing presence?  

This question makes me think of the words of artist Robert Irwin, who said “Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing you are looking at.” Paying attention in a truly free and open way enables the poet to discover realities that exist beneath the surfaces of things, particularly emotional realities. It takes a certain amount of turning off of the logical, explanatory parts of the mind, so that the process of discovery can occur. One “easy” way to start is to write down everything you can observe about an object, every little detail. Then write questions about it: Who has touched this object? Where has this object traveled? If it could speak, what would it want to tell me? And so on. Very rich material will unfold from your imagination and feeling. This is only one of many ways to “trick” your logical brain to quiet down. 

Did you always know you wanted to write?

When I was very young, I wanted to be a person who could levitate (I actually practiced it for a long time, but alas, only levitated in my dreams). I did write poems as a child, but then became interested in the visual arts. What I would say is that I always knew I was meant to be a creative person. I think other people recognized that in me, as well. 

Who are some of the writers or books you hold most dear?

There are so many! I would say Heaney is the largest influence on my work, for his engagement with the emotional resonance of objects in the contexts of their stories and in the fineness of his imagery. Ellen Bass has been very important to me, especially in the handling of narrative. And I'm always striving to find language as vivid and surprising as Patricia Smith's. She is masterful. 

How do you know when a poem is ready to send out into the world?

To be honest, I don’t always. But I won’t send it out without feeling like the poem knows what it wants to say, and does so. Sometimes, I’ll change a poem after it’s already been submitted to places, but the changes are usually minor. In general, I do a lot of polishing before sending a poem out. 

How has living in the San Francisco Bay area influenced you and your writing?

I am a transplant to the SF Bay Area, and I can’t imagine living elsewhere. I love this place—the natural beauty, its sense of reinvention and freedom, and the tolerance for the strange that exists here. I really value that. The Central Coast of California, where I tend a habitat garden of what’s called coastal scrub, is often important to the imagery in my poetry. 

Do you have any favorite writing habits or rituals?

I love to write at night, on a deadline. I have arranged my writing life so that my first readers are always waiting for a draft from me. It’s stressful, but works for me. I like to tell people that I don’t have a writing habit, I have panic room. That said, all day long, I jot down things I notice or stray thoughts on my iPhone “Notes.” So it’s easy to go to that to jumpstart a poem, once I sit down. 

Having readers always waiting for a draft from you sounds like a wonderful way to maintain accountability. How have you arranged this? In other words, do you have a regular schedule (e.g., weekly or monthly)? Are these for individual poems or longer works, etc.? How many first readers are there?

I think it is very important for writers to have trusted and smart first readers. It’s important that you are eager to read and discuss the other person's work, and that you find their critiques helpful to your own work. Often, you can connect with someone in a workshop—people always seem to be looking for trusted readers. I love a group that meets in person, but Zoom does make it easier to connect with writers who don’t live nearby. It is heartening to have people engaged in the same artistic endeavor—community makes everything easier.

I belong to several groups or individual writers with whom I exchange work. Mostly, we meet once or twice a month on a set day, for example, first Tuesday or third Monday. We send individual poems, sometimes two poems. For nearly a decade, the poet/micro-fiction writer, Sarah Freligh, and I sent each other a poem every week. That was wonderful. Four or five people is the max for me, so that there’s enough time for a thorough discussion of each poem.

What do you hope readers will take away from your writing? Do you have an overarching aesthetic, artist statement, or ethos?

I want to leave them with a sense of connection. Also, to offer compassion and an honest voice. I like the sense of communicating directly with a reader. I believe a poem is created anew each time someone reads it; it’s not the same poem that it was for me, because the reader brings their whole self to the poem, their stories and their own the emotional responses. When I write a poem, yes, it is written by me, but it also takes up residence in the reader. They can claim it, too. 

What are you currently working on?

Currently I am working on a chapbook about healing from a major ocean accident I was in, so that is more of a ‘project’ approach to a book. I do have another full-length collection in the works, but it is too soon to really talk about it. 

Do you have any advice for young writers?

The young can be so vulnerable. I would tell them to remember that they have a story only they can offer. And I would wish for them to hold on to their unique story, and not worry too much about people not valuing their stories and language. If it’s of them, it is of great value. 

Do you have any life advice in general?
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This question makes me feel pretty modest, but here goes: Be kind. Stay strong. Pay attention. And, oh yeah, have fun!

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A San Francisco Bay Area poet, Veronica Kornberg is a recipient of the Morton Marcus Poetry Prize, and the Wandering Aengus Book Award in Poetry. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, New Ohio Review, Poet Lore, Catamaran, Indiana Review, Plume, Calyx, and Beloit Poetry Journal. Veronica co-founded a long-running poetry reading club on the Peninsula, and is a Peer Reviewer for Whale Road Review. At her home in Pescadero, you can find her exploring the tidepools or on her knees in the dirt, tending her habitat garden of coastal scrub. Her full-length poetry collection, Strange Gift, was published in April 2026. ​

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