Lynda McKinney Lambert Interview Published on: 28, Oct 2024

I have lived in rural western Pennsylvania in the village, of Wurtemburg since my birth in august 1943. I grew up here surrounded by a large family who descended from people who originally settled here from the Wurtemburg area in Germany. They were palatines, thus, unwanted, and constantly displaced and persecuted in Europe.

The earliest family members arrived in Philadelphia, PA in America in 1730. They eventually moved west and settled here in this area. . Wurtemburg was first settled in 1796. My home is at the confluence where the Slippery Rock Creek flows into Connoquenessing Creek, in Perry Township. I have lived in my 1929 home along the river since 1967. My art studio is on the second floor of a large barn on the property. My fiber studio and writing studio are in my house.

I have traveled during my career to many different countries. Each summer, I took students to Austria where I taught a month-long course, Drawing and Writing in Salzburg.

Other academic courses were taught on location in Paris, London, Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Puerto Rico, and Italy during my career as professor of fine arts and humanities at Geneva College, Beaver Falls, PA. I love being in a variety of places where I can experience the landscape, music, art, and history.

As a young child, I spent summer days in my father’s gardens in our back yard. While he planted vegetables, I was busy planting seeds for flowers in unexpected places around his gardens and our home. Sometimes, he was not incredibly pleased when flowers began to grow, and it made the lawn mowing difficult for him.

Raising flowers and rare plants has been a passion all my life. From spring through late fall, I tend my flower gardens.

I began writing haiku and tanka poems about flowers and I posted them on my blog. ( http://www.lyndalambert.com .

I called the little poems, “Garden Songs.” Eventually, I had the idea that I might be able to create a book of such little poems with a focus on the plants and flowers.

Each Day Hold Some Small Joy- Poems, is the new book that was published this year. I authored poems about what I know best – gardening. My gardens are a little surprise to travelers who may be driving down River Road, towards the creek, some days. I have had many people pause to tell me how much they love my flower gardens. One woman expressed her surprise as she was driving down a country road towards the creek and there, she saw my flower garden.

Yes, I am always delighted to share my thoughts on merging poetry and art. As an artist, I am always making pictures that are shared with viewers in gallery or museum exhibitions. I wanted this book to have that same relaxed feeling as one has when walking into an art gallery and stepping into another world created by the artist.

In Each Day Holds Some Small Joy-Poems, I have created such a world that invites the reader to slow down, take your time, and begin to enjoy the visual journey through the book. Art and poetry are both about LOOKING. I present them together because they both want to be noticed and appreciated. They are complimentary to each other.

My new book is organized so that the reader sees only two or three poems on the right-page. The left-page is blank. In a few places, there are photos of a flower or a plant on the left page. I wanted the book to be like walking into an art gallery. The walls are white, and you move slowly from one place to another to view the artworks on the wall.

The book leads the reader slowly and peacefully through the poems and pictures. The blank pages are akin to the white gallery walls. We walk past those blank places, and meander to the next picture we want to spend time with. Nice and slow, take your time to view the picture I have presented on the wall.

I have a long history of making art and presenting my work in exhibitions. My work has appeared in the Osaka Triennale in Japan, and in the residence of the American Ambassador to Papua, New Guinea. And, in galleries across the US.

After working in the field of art and exhibitions for about ten years, I decided to enter a BFA program in Painting. At that time, I knew I wanted to become an art professor, and I knew that would also require working on an MFA degree after I completed the BFA. Meanwhile, I began reading poetry and was so much in love with modernist poetry that I also earned an MA degree following the first two degrees. I loved being a student. I could have been in a classroom forever. I loved writing and I loved making art – so for me, it is natural to work across disciplines. This combination of academic achievements opened the door for me to become a professor of fine arts and humanities at Geneva College, Beaver Falls, PA.

My hope is that from the first page the reader finds a bit of set-apart time to relax and to consider the beauty and joy of gardening through photographic images and intimate small poems.

The poems all have 3 to 5 lines, and there are a few longer free-form poems. I believe this book will be of interest to many people who may not read poetry because they think they cannot understand it. This helps to take away the fear of seeing because t the poems are short, and accessible to most readers. I want to give them an image that will linger in the mind long after the page has turned, and the book is closed. I want to give them some “eye candy” of imagery, which makes them take a second look.

Poetry can be so intimidating to many people, and I wanted to take away the fear and give them little moments of joy.

Each little poem and each photo stand alone. Each is strong enough in imagery and meaning, to hold the attention of a reader. I have always worked across disciplines, and I hold on to my belief that we can make art out of anything. I am like a dream weaver, working with materials, and I never know the outcome until I reach the end. I am always surprised where the journey has taken me – and it is always a wonderful surprise. This entire book is a journey through my gardens and through my thoughts and appreciation of the natural world and our place in this world for such a brief time. The pictures and poems capture the moment, just a little slice of the life that we see every day all around us. But we must stop and take that moment to experience the joy it can give us in return.

My challenge is always to stay focused and set deadlines for the various parts of the book. I give myself “assignments’ as I would give a student in my classroom. I laid out a plan for the book. I envision how it will look, and how it will feel when held by the reader or how it will sound by those listening to the poems. I put myself in the reader’s shoes, and I do my best to make my book a delightful experience that will bring happiness to each person.

I was born to teach. In childhood, I was always the “teacher” and always the one in charge of everything. I made the rules, and I gave the challenges to my younger siblings. I was always a creative and imaginative child. I have noticeably clear memories from the time I was less than two years old. I have a memory that seldom forgets anyone or the image of anyone. I can recognize a person from extremely far away by the gestures they make. I am keenly aware of gestures in everything, people, nature, inanimate objects, weather, etc. I see gestures first and then I know where something is or what it is doing. Even after profound sight loss in 2007, I can still identify anything by a quick gesture or movement. Artists are born with abilities that are inherently embedded in our soul.

I was blessed to work in a Christian liberal arts college where the Humanities program was the core of the curriculum. Geneva College is a Reformed Presbyterian Liberal Arts College, where I flourished in the opportunities to create exciting courses in literature and studio art.

I created travel-study courses so that adventurous students could spend time learning on location, in various countries, too. I also created courses in literature, and in poetry. I took students to galleries and museums to learn from the actual art works.

My broad spectrum of learning experiences means that students were exposed to the connections of disciplines across History, Philosophy, Art, Literature, Psychology, Biology, Sociology, Engineering, etc. We looked at a variety of materials in many disciplines, in gaining an understanding of the world around us. I always considered myself as a learner, right beside my students.

It is because of my background in life-long learning across disciplines that sets my writing and art apart. I think it will take a lifetime to learn to see. And it is something that happens slowly and with intention. A student in art classes learns how to see. Our visual abilities grow with the years of practicing our craft and we bring it all to the table when we sit down and author our poems and stories. We have that inner vision, which takes us to the core of what we see all around us.

I like how it expands our appreciation of the various senses that are engaged when we view things in new ways. It is a more extensive world view. Personally, I am working from a Christian worldview in my art and writing. That is my core, and that I value the created world that we are living in.

I am a painter. I view everything through the lens of creating a painting. I organize a poem in the same way I organize the elements of a painting. Working through layers of imagery is my natural way of viewing the world because of my painting background. In art, everything begins with line. All students must learn to draw and make marks on a page. Art and writing are so similar in that they all begin with the understanding of the value of line.

I am so happy to provide you with a photo and the back story.

I have two haiku poems on the page across from this photo of a hanging basket of pink begonias on my wraparound porch.

*
full baskets blooming
suspend and hover across
lost decades of time

*
pre-dawn darkness hides
house wrens in pink begonia
garden songs commence

*

I am always working on multiple projects at any time.

I can give you three examples:
First, I have begun working on a book of personal non-fiction stories. This book will be a companion to my book, Walking by Inner Vision: Stories & Poems (2017). I will walk the reader through the book in short stories and poems, giving insight into the various experiences of my life over the years. I think that now the perfect time for me to do this project. I just turned 81 in August, and I have so many stories to share that will be inspiring and interesting for my readers. The book will have photos as well and will take the reader on an intimate journey through stories, photographs, and poems.
My working title for this book: Beneath the Blueberry Moon.

Second, I am assembling a new collection of poetry. I do not yet have a title, but I am just beginning the process of sifting through a large collection of poems. I have one anthology of poems that is published in_Star Signs: New and Selected Poems (2019) and one chapbook, first snow, published by Finishing Line Press. The imagery in first snow is winter-themed poems.

Third. I am doing a collaboration with artist, author, Carold Farnsworth, of Ada, Michigan.
We are both blind, and Carol is also hearing impaired.
We met through the group – Behind Our Eyes, an organization of writers with disabilities.
Carol approached me last year with an idea and asked me to partner with her.
Our project is that we author a short poem each day, Monday through Saturday, and we put it on a post card and send it to each other. I challenged her to take another step and suggested we might make an artwork on the post card, and on the side with the address, we would put our short poem.
So, each day, we get a post card, and we send a post card.
At the end of this year, we will have over 600 postcards. Beginning next January, we will begin the work of sifting through the artworks and poems, and we will compile a draft for a new book featuring our post card images and poems.
This was an enormous step for me to begin painting again. After I lost my sight in 2007, I worked diligently to be able to make pottery again, and to resume making mixed media fiber art. But I never tried during the 17 years to paint again. It was too deeply painful for me to think of trying. But, when Carol asked me to do this collaboration with her, I immediately visualized myself painting again. And, I am painting, like I never had the 17-year period of not painting. My body remembered how to paint and that is what I am doing. It is so exciting for me to return to my former life of painting, and I just entered my first juried exhibition for painting, this year. The small paintings I am doing on these postcards are archival and museum quality – I am so excited with this new aspect in my life currently.

I have had a couple of my books in the Monthly Book Cover Contest in the past. I have also followed other writers, and I get information on their new releases regularly.

I would like to enter this new book in the November contest – if that is an option.

My favorite aspect of AllAuthor is the Mock-up photos that you give us to help promote our books. They are wonderful, and I use them a lot in my promotions. I put them on my blog and always say “Courtesy of AllAuthor) beneath the photos. They are unique and they are attention grabbing presentation of our books. This is such a valuable service that you provide for your authors and so much appreciated.

I also appreciate the way you personally contact the authors, and this interview will help promote my book. It is an honor to do this with you!