 |
Douglas Ray |
With funding from the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, Douglas Ray visited Madrid, Spain, to learn about Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca.
“Essentially, I went to Spain with the idea that living broadly enables one to write boldly and that one writes best what one knows,” Ray said. “To write well about Lorca and his influence on me compelled me to go to the place where, when he was exactly my age, he lived and wrote. My travels and poems that stemmed from them hopefully have given my voice greater authority to speak. Traveling in Spain was a way of grounding my poetry in a sensory experience—in images and rhythms that are uniquely tied to my own experience of that place.”