Devika Brandt 

The book Harriet the Spy had a profound effect on me when I read it at 10 years old—I knew then that I wanted to be a writer. I loved how Harriet walked around noticing things and describing them through her own particular lens in her notebook. Since that time I’ve kept my own notebook, writing down what I notice and what my mind is concerned with. 

 

I attended The University of California, Irvine where I earned a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature. I later earned my MFA from Pacific University in Oregon, where I was fortunate to be able to work with and learn from many talented poets: Ellen Bass, Dorianne Laux, Joseph Millar, and Marvin Bell. I have taught Language Arts and Poetry to children from elementary school through high school and won a Teacher of the Year award in 2004 from River of Words® (ROW), a program of The Center for Environmental Literacy and a part of the Kalmanovitz School of Education. 

 

My work has appeared or is forthcoming in Catamaran Literary Reader, Poetry International, Nimrod International Journal, Rattle, B O D Y, Sequestrum, Gyroscope Review, and kerning, among others, as well as named a finalist for the Rattle Poetry Prize and a semi-finalist for The Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize. 

 

Language continues to delight me in all its possible ways to communicate—manipulation of words for heightened sound and sense, the creation of metaphors to illuminate a picture, a feeling, a sound. Writing a poem allows me to auger down into ideas and feelings of which I may be only dimly, if at all, aware. I write to investigate those findings.

 

I currently live, write, and teach poetry to children in Northern California.