To make money, she has worked as a secretary at the Oxford University Press, a reference librarian at the Audubon Society, and a freelance editor. Her first poem was published by The New Yorker in 1978. Before that, Clampitt had difficulty getting published, especially by the small press. I guess I just don't write in a style that little magazines are used to accepting. Not getting published, which is hard enough for a younger writer, is especially difficult for the older writer.
Time runs out.
But I guess I found satisfaction in writing even though I couldn't get in print. It was simply because I was a new poet. That was a thoughtless assumption on their part. But the assumption amused her, and in some ways she perpetuated the myth, supplying no photograph of herself at first. She doesn't know how an editor would know the age of a writer.