Maureen's artistic principle is to create work that intensely engages our cognition, senses, and emotions. Her poetry is an attempt to delve deeper into commonplace experiences and situations, seeking the still moment where a small connection or realization can be made, often with poetic grace. She believes good art is urgent, passionate, and brilliant, as it wakes us up, opens us up, and makes us more aware.
A strong theme of journeys is threaded through Take the Compass. In a sense, every poem is itself a journey - through cities and their outskirts, to rivers, forests, and graveyards. They travel in time into the troubled present, across decades into childhood, and into our perilous collective futures, seeking guides for these explorations.