Jeannine Hall Gailey: Having Fun Being Bad, Persona Poems, and Villains of the Poetry World

Do you like Persona Poems? Do you like villains? Do you think powerful women are misunderstood or misrepresented in art? So does Jeannine Hall Gailey, author of Becoming the Villainess, X, Y, and Z. In this interview we discuss how female authors can use personas to speak up for themselves and others, and how writing from the persona of a villain can be liberating for the poet, the reader and the “character”. 

Rewrite Strategy: Show your poem to a workshop or a few friends. What feedback do they give you? What questions do they ask? Try incorporating feedback, criticism, and questions into the poem itself, or integrate your response to what you hear.