A glimpse at Cupertino poet laureate

She sat in seclusion with just a pen and paper in hand. After quieting her thoughts, she became completely immersed in the realm of limitless possibilities. This is how Amanda Williamsen shuts off the noise of the atmosphere to awaken her imagination.

Amanda Williamsen, 41, is a mother of two who has become Cupertino’s newest Poet Laureate in January.

Maw Shein Win, a longtime friend of Williamsen and poetry editor of the literary journal “Rivet” said she is impressed by Williamsen’s “ability to write poems with memorable and riveting images.”

Williamsen has plenty of goals she hopes to achieve during the next two years.

Starting this month, she plans to hold multiple workshops on how to compose a memoir. Williamsen believes that many writers underestimate their talent and are under the impression that writing a book is a difficult task. One of her goals is to help them gain confidence in their abilities and convince them that writing a book is within their reach.

Though born in Toledo, Ohio, Williamsen later moved out of the city to a rural area near the Maumee River. She smiled as she talked about her childhood memories and said she was lucky to moveto the country. Living in the rural area, she could experience the wandering in the woods, making campfires, playing in her treehouse and boating.

Williamsen’s earliest memory of writing dates back to second grade after her mother gave her a blank book. She didn’t revise anything she wrote and never took a page out; she simply “went forward in the book,” she said.

Initially, Williamsen aspired to be a band director after playing clarinet and saxophone in her high school’s marching band. But during her college education, her professor Sandra Johnson reignited her interest in writing.

Creativity was never a trait she had to develop, but rather a talent that gradually became easier to “recognize, honor, and use,” she said.

Williamsen wrote her first poem during adolescence, and it was about a kitten she was devastated to give away.

After moving to Cupertino, Williamsen taught English at Pinewood Elementary school. Her teaching experience helped her writing become “less instinctual, and more deliberate,” she said.

Living in Cupertino for the past 10 years and meeting people from different cultures broadened Williamsen’s perspective, she said.

“I’ve never been in a place as diverse and exciting, culturally, as this place,” she said.

Williamsen has already had five of her poems published in widely circulated journals and is working on more poetry she hopes to publish, as well as a book about growing up in rural Ohio.

She has always loved the aspect of writing that allows her to be in “an imaginative space” where the moment feels timeless and there are no distractions, she said.

Williamsen said she prefers writing about deep past as opposed to the present, and conveys her themes through symbols.

“I look at (memories) not only through the lens of memory, but also through the lens of art,” she said.

Writing is a solitary art, she said, but “when you share it, you touch other people. You speak to the common heart.”