Penelope Scambly Schott has two bits of advice on how to be a poet; “Read a lot of poetry and get a dog.”
The poet contends that when you walk with a dog you are not alone. “You have company but not interruption. The words come to you and put themselves together,” she notes. “All you have to do is listen and remember until you get home.”
Schott will be the featured writer at the First Draft Writers’ Series at the Pendleton Center for the Arts on Thursday, July 21. The free event begins at 7 p.m. Those interested can also attend via Zoom. The reading will be followed by an audience discussion, then Open Mic, where those in attendance in person and virtually will have an opportunity to read their own 3-5 minute pieces.
Schott is the author of a novel and several books of poetry and was awarded four New Jersey arts fellowships before moving to Oregon, where her verse biography, A is for Anne: Mistress Hutchinson Disturbs the Commonwealth, received an Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Several of her books and individual poems have won other prizes, and her individual poems have appeared in APR, Georgia Review, Nimrod, and elsewhere.
Professionally, she has sold cosmetics at Macy’s in Herald Square, made doughnuts at Scrumpy’s Cider Mill, taken care of the elderly as a certified home health aide, written scripts for software on career guidance, posed as an artist’s model, and — as she quips, “punishment for her Ph.D. in late medieval English literature” — spent years and years teaching college literature and creative writing courses.
In an interview for Combustus, Schott shared her thoughts on poetry. “It never occurred to me not to write poems. They seemed as matter-of-fact and daily as socks and shoes. When I am with non-poets, I always try to demystify poetry and bring it along as one of life’s satisfactions and treats. Since we all use words every day, using those words in a poem doesn’t need to seem hoity-toity or inaccessible.”
Schott lives in Portland and Dufur where she teaches an annual poetry workshop.
First Draft Writers’ Series at PCA is made possible through the generous support of Oregon Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Discussions with the invited authors and audience members provide a look into the creative process and the range of ways that writers approach their craft.
