Sharon Olds came blazing onto the poetry scene in 1980 with her award-winning debut Satan Says, igniting a firestorm of controversy over everything from her line-breaks to her subject matter, which centered on years of sexual and mental abuse at the hands of family members.

Olds’ confessional style of poetry entranced a new generation of readers, who had missed out on predecessors like Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. Here was a woman unafraid to take the often staid world of poetry and rattle its cage. Last year, she created more controversy when she refused an invitation by First Lady Laura Bush to read at the White House in protest of the ongoing war in Iraq. The letter was printed around the world.

Now 64, Olds won many more awards – including a Guggenheim Fellowship and National Book Critics Circle Award – and produce collections including The Dead and the Living, The Gold Cell, The Father and, most recently, Strike Sparks: Selected Poems. Named New York Poet Laureate in 1998, she teaches creative writing at New York University and will visit Atlanta this month.

With the release of Strike Sparks, it seems to close a chapter in your writing and open the door for the next phase. How has your poetry and voice evolved since you began your career and where do you see it going as you continue to write?

I love that word “release” for books – as if a book has been in a cage and now it can fly free seeking its possible readers. I guess I wouldn’t feel it closes a chapter so much; I’m always far behind in gathering poems into a manuscript. I’m trying to polish (and in some cases roughen!) two manuscripts, one with poems written mostly in 2000 and the other mostly in 1997 to 1999.

The debate over “written poetry” and “performance poetry” is a hot button issue in Atlanta right now. What are your thoughts on this evolution in poetry and do you support it?

I love poems on the page and I love them by ear. When I teach writing workshops, we work only by ear – no Xeroxes. The music of each different voice is precious. I’m glad we don’t have to choose between spoken and written, but can serve both!

What poetry collections are on your nightstand?

Four poets who are always on my mind, as the song goes, are Muriel Rukeyser, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ruth Stone and Stanley Kunitz.

As an educator, what is your advice to teachers who are working to keep poetry alive in the classroom, and what would you say to high school students about the relevance of poetry today?

In a way, I think of myself as a student, so to my fellow high school student poets I would say: Take your vitamins. Dance and run. I believe the best poems are written cold sober – or is it hot sober? To do one’s best writing, I think one needs all one’s powers – unwarped and not falsely loosened or tightened. Please forgive my judgmental vocabulary...comes from my  warmonger Puritan heritage!

Sharon Olds will give a free reading at Woodward Academy in College Park on Thursday, March 23, at 7:30 p.m. For more information and directions, visit www.woodward.edu.