Instructor Spotlight: Robert Whitehead

What do you like to write?

Liking to write is one of the hardest challenges I come up against as a writer! I mostly write poetry because I love to read poetry and to think about and study poetry. But writing—that's usually a fair distance from "liking" for me. Every new poem is an experiment, and like any experiment is full of frustrations and failures. Writing takes a high level of empathy, attention, and resilience, however—which are muscles I am forever grateful to poetry for teaching me. One of the most valuable things I have come to learn about the writing process is to embrace the failures, to seek meaning in the frustration, and to continually experiment with my sense of how poetry can look and sound.

Describe both your ideal and your actual writing routine.

Ideal: 75 degrees at the beach at night, with a slowly rolling fire.

Actual: on my phone or on the backs of receipts, usually in transit.

Who is currently one of your favorite writers?

My current favorite poet is my all-time favorite poet, Emily Dickinson, who also wrote on the backs of scrap paper.

What else do you do?

I work as a graphic designer and writer in Philadelphia. Hobbies have gone out the wayside with the pandemic, but while stuck at home I’ve developed a renewed interest in plants, cooking, baking, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.