Limestone College English professor Alex Richardson writes poems about love and family, about parenthood and adulthood in a messy world.

He writes about diapers, dogs and jazz. Richardson focuses on the disorderly nature of human interaction. There are no simple still lifes or static portraits in his new collection of poems, "Porch Nigh on Walnut Street." Short narratives of small moments in life added together make up life.

Life, Richardson seems to be saying, is like finally learning how to ride a bike and realizing that no one is going to tell you when to stop or turn.

At 7:30 p.m. Monday, Richardson will read his poems at The Showroom as part of the Hub City Writers' Project fall reading series.

In preparation for the event, Richardson talked about his work.

Question: Can you tell me a little bit about how you came to poetry?

Alex Richardson: As a freshman at the University of South Carolina, I luckily found myself in (now president of Wofford College) Bernie Dunlap's American literature class. I changed my major to English after the first day of class. I don't remember exactly what he did that day, but it was just his way, his charisma. His was a class I always looked forward to. His lectures usually included anecdotes connected to literature, but also connected to other things, to life in general. And there were so many anecdotes. I took about six or seven classes from Dr. Dunlap, and I don't think I ever heard the same story twice. I guess what I learned from his classes was that literature could inform life, that literature can give us a reference point - not just literature but all art. I find myself relating my own experiences to things that have happened to fictional characters very often, and in a sense, I guess you can learn from that, from things that never really happened. I think Oscar Wilde said something about seeing so many paintings of sunsets taught him how to see a real sunset.

A year later I met James Dickey and started taking his writing classes. The main thing Dickey did for me was show interest. I mean, I was a kid, an undergraduate, a more than usually immature undergraduate, and he let me into his graduate workshop. He just helped me along, helped me learn to edit, helped me generate subject matter. He just got me going, in the same way a coach might introduce a kid to a particular sport.

That's really how it started. In Dunlap's class I sort of discovered the magic of language, for lack of a better term, and then Dickey sort of showed me how to get started. That was

awhile back.

Q: Where does an individual poem start for you?

AR: Usually a poem starts with a phrase or a line that I like and can't shake. Then I just chase it as far as I can, let it play out. I generally write about experience, but I'm not really a documentarian. (Is that a word?) I'm not really trying to tell the truth in terms of facts; I'm just trying to make a poem, hopefully that will have some resonance, something that lingers or reverberates after the poem. Hopefully, the poems lead to further thought; they provoke something in the reader that lasts longer than the activity of reading (or hearing).

Q: It seems to me that anecdotes greatly inform your poems. There are often short, meaningful narratives within many of them.

AR: I do use anecdotes a lot, almost exclusively, to write poems. I generally try to write about things that seem meaningless, or at least common.

To read the entire interview, go to www.GoUpstate.com.

The vast majority of one's life is consumed by these kinds of moments, so I feel like there has to be something there, something to take away from our small experiences. I guess if you slow down and examine the little things, you may find there is some insight or humor to be found there, and sometimes both.

Q: Do you see any similarities between what you do in the classroom as the teacher and what you do in a poem as the poet?

AR: That's a tough one, but sure. In a writing class, I try to encourage them to write more like they talk, to use fresh language and not to write in a manner that "sounds" like poetry. Along the same lines, I try to tell them that they can write about anything. That anything is suitable as a subject, if it's handled properly. Of course I warn them that I may end up teaching them to write like me, and that is not necessarily what they should do. Still, I think it is generally good advice to limit phrases like "thou beautiful dove" or "o what a mysterious butterfly" from one's poems.

Q: Do you have any advice for people who think poetry is inaccessible?

AR: Maybe they are reading the wrong poems, or the wrong poems for them. One trap readers might fall into is the idea that they have to "get it," that there is something quite specific "to get" in a poem, like it's a riddle. It's better to simply try to get something, anything, from it. It's not like reading a manual or directions or even the newspaper. One doesn't read poetry for information, so to expect some clearly communicated fact to come through seems to me the wrong approach.