While looking at remembered bits and bobbles, neatly placed within my grandmother's home, I came across a few leaves of poetry tucked inside a stapled booklet. The stapled bit was my first chap book called "Tippy Ti Typing" and the poetry came from an anthology printed by Bemidji State University called "Rivers Meeting" in 2005. The poems are silly, and kind of cute, and potent, and strange, but I was really struck by my biography statement tucked in the back: "Lars Voltz says, 'There is enough of what we think we know to fuel what we never know, bringing us where we make things no one should know--that is how I like to write.'"
It's a goofy little statement in a lot of ways. I hear an almost ten-year younger Lars trying his damnedest to be clever and honest at the same time. I remember that was the same time I was beginning to pump clay through my veins. While excitement and enthusiasm for all things mud surged, there was nothing smart or clever about my early attempts at making form from non-form. As my levels of what-I-think-I-know were growing there was always plenty more to charge my curiosity. I think this is why I'm still attracted to this statement. I just earned my terminal degree and yet I'm excited to dig deeper into the things I think I know, to take me places I have yet to know, stringing together connections between familiars in a way that makes more curious unfamiliars.