Paula Marafino Bernett

Drawing inspiration from a range of psychological landscapes, my work reflects a deep curiosity about the mind’s cognitive forays into language and association, and its adventurous departures from rational, orderly thought.

My poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Anemone Sidecar, California Quarterly (CQ), Caveat Lector, The Chaffin Journal, Clackamas Literary Review, Eclectica Magazine, Eclipse, The Hiss Quarterly, ken*again, Margie, Milk Money, Rattle, Salamander, Sierra Nevada College Review, and Tar River Poetry.

I am a former member of the editorial board of Global City Review. I was awarded the Resident Writer’s Award from the 2009 Taos Summer Writer’s Conference sponsored by UNM, and was one of three first-prize winners in WordHustler’s 2009 Summer Poetry Contest. I am also the winner of St. John’s College 2011 Essay Prize, and have participated in conferences, workshops, and fellowships nationwide. I hold an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.

In answer to our question of why she writes, Paula responded:

“For each of the millions of reasons not to write there is an equal and opposite reason to write, and every day the relative weights shift, sometimes radically, sometimes just a bit. (There’s an exhilarating tip around an axis of equilibrium in all of this.) The shift toward write means I must always supply an answer to the question: why? (Often it’s a matter of grasping at straws, which often prove to be made of gold.) The nagging, niggling why? is always at the heart of every poem I write, and it’s then the work of the poem to respond. Of course, the answer—because there are a million answers—always produces a new and fascinating pairing of question and answer. When I’m writing well, that pairing is deeply satisfying and always astonishing.”

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