What was your process for creating this work? What is the significance of the form/genre you chose for this work? What is the significance of this work to you?

I love writing in response to art. For Vincent Asks What If in a Field of Spring Wheat at Sunrise I was responding to the painting which was shared in one of the online groups I belong to. I researched about this moment in Van Gogh’s life which was less than a year before he committed suicide, and I wanted that maniacal thinking to show in this poem. I am with him in so many ways. 

You Wake Up Early is a whole new type of poem for me, a whole new process. It began as an erasure poem from two consecutive pages in one of my favorite books. Now I think of it as a removal poem because I removed the words and phrases in the order I found them then added a collage of images to wrap the words in color, movement, and symbol. This was my first time using Photoshop, but the artist in me will not let it be my last.

Nancy Himel is a newly retired English teacher currently living in Tucson. She has been published in Prairie Schooner, Verse-Virtual, and Haiku Universe and has poems upcoming in Amethyst Review and One by Jacar Press. She loves owls and angels.