2 poems by Julie Dillemuth

Julie Dillemuth created “Aging with Scoliosis” (click here to read) and “Twelve Waves” (click here to read) from Louisa May Alcott’s Eight Cousins (1874-5).

These poems reflect our invitation to poets to use 12 (on the occasion of our twelfth volume) in some way. About the poems and the process of their composition, Julie Dillemuth writes:

When I saw the prompt for this volume, I got excited about what I might find in one of my favorite childhood novels, Eight Cousins, by Louisa May Alcott, an author I admire. Whenever I read it, I loved getting swept up in the idyllic world of lost, little Rose as she came of age through adventures among a supportive extended family.

I accessed a digitized version of an early edition of the book and searched for 12-related prompts, including where the word “twelve” appeared in the text. Of the six instances, two of those became the starting points for the poems here.

I love the creative process of erasure poems—starting with a set of words in fixed order, authored with purpose and meaning, and within that finding a poem that is new. The fun is in the delight of discovery and the ways the new poem is in conversation with the original text.