Meet Sheri Sherman
Updated: 47 minutes ago
Sheri Sherman & Ridge Anderson
Sheri Sherman earned her MFA at the Vermont College of Fine Arts She has worked as a copywriter and freelance journalist as well as a horse trader and appraiser for equine show jumping. Having lived in every region of the United States, she grew up in Virginia and now resides in San Diego. Her poetry has been published in Cutthroat, A Journal of the Arts, Poetry Miscellany, U-T Chattanooga. Her first short short story has recently appeared in On the Run. Sheri’s landscape photography and poetry feature the natural world and her interest in how time and space are experienced within the human consciousness.
Every Chautauqua issue has a theme. The theme for our upcoming edition is Intervals. Would you mind speaking just a little on how the idea of Intervals contributed to you choosing to submit your poetry?
My poems are all about the passage of time as well as our interpretation of space, the landscapes we humans find ourselves in: we need to make sense of our experiences which inevitably happen in intervals. As form follows content, I use little to no punctuation and manipulate white space in my poems to underscore the continuity, interrelatedness and near simultaneous nature of how we experience space, time, and thought while attempting to bring a focused attention to each interval in order to examine the elevated experience in the seemingly ordinary.
You create art through various mediums, using poetry, fiction, and photography to capture the world. How do you think these mediums speak to one another or show up in your work where you didn’t expect them?
When I look for a common denominator in these creative endeavors I find that each one is an attempt to halt time just long enough to examine what is really going on under the surface. Each medium gives me a unique tool to attempt to understand what I am thinking and trying to learn as I experience my existence. I have recently been combining them more and more creating a sort of collage.
Do you have any projects that are taking priority with your time right now or that you are particularly excited about?
Right now I am working on a hybrid memoir that combines prose poems, micro non-fiction, and photography. This type of mixed genre work is exciting for me.
What advice would you give someone who is just beginning to create art?
I would advise them to simply enjoy the process of creating and take pleasure in the materials that are necessary to do the work. Each medium has its special charms. Let yourself be seduced by them.