A Virtual Interview with Nicole Brogdon

Background

Juliana Maldonado and Nicole Brogdon will be our features Thursday, May 14, 2020  7:15 – 9:00 p.m. Contact bookwoman2ndthursdaypoetry@gmail.com for information on how to join this virtual event.

Nicole Brogdon is a therapist and a writer living in Austin Texas. She graduated from Rice University with honors and earned an MA in creative writing from the University of Houston on a Barthelme writing fellowship. For fifteen years she worked as a writer in the schools, as adjunct English faculty at Houston Community College, and as a free-lance editor and writer.

Later she acquired a Masters in counseling from St Edward’s University. Currently she
works as a psychotherapist (a Licensed Professional Counselor, as well as a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist), specializing in trauma, attachment, creativity, and multicultural issues. She has worked with all kinds of admirable strugglers, from torture survivors to musicians to couples.

Married for 28 years to an Iranian doctor, the two have a grown daughter. Nicole likes poetry, sudden fiction, live music, and making objects with her hands. Nicole believes that her lifelong work has been connected under the umbrella of helping
people to tell their stories. As one of her favorite poets, William Matthews, wrote:

There’s no truth about your childhood,
though there’s a story, yours to tend,
like a fire or garden. Make it a good one,
since you’ll have to live it out, and all
its revisions, so long as you all shall live....

The Interview

CH: What is your first memory of poetry? When did you first become interested in writing?

NB: My mother used to read to me from big hard back used books, nursery rhymes, poetry, fairy tales, and Greek myths, when I was a little kid, before bed each night. Read aloud with Mom then read aloud to yourself, and you would get to stay up a little later —like, until 8:30 PM. Or don’t read, lose out, and just go to bed earlier—like, 8 pm! Ingenious of my mother. Later on, my mom went back to school and became an English teacher, then a school principal, always interested in books. She also used to pay my brother and I and a quarter each to write a fairytale. I still love dark fairytale elements, in poems, stories, movies.

CH: When did you start thinking of yourself as a writer? Do you have a primary identity as a writer?

NB: In my heart, I am always a writer. Even when I have pursued other work, like therapy work since I was 40, I really do feel like I am helping people to tell their stories. Perspective, questions about whether this is a reliable narrator, show don’t tell, savor sensations, mindfulness, the somatic felt sense of things…. all of those concepts show up in work as a therapist, as well as in literature and writing (my background). I feel that I think in stories, I respond to stories, as many people do. In that sense, in my best brain, I am a reader and a writer.

CH: What inspired you to pursue an MA in poetry from the University of Houston? How did that experience shape your writing?

NB: I graduated from college with an English degree. I didn’t care much about money, as I was always working hard and getting jobs, waiting tables and doing freelance work proofreading, and so on. Probably, I would have benefited to care a little bit more about money, and personal stability, back then. Anyway, after college, I wanted more of the English major experience. I thought, apparently I’m going to be a poor English major type anyway —resourceful and hardworking, yes— but medium poor, anyway. So I might as well just keep looking at what I love, stories and poems, paper writing. And so I applied to graduate school in Houston and was accepted. I then spent a few years focusing on books and language —time and education which has been useful in every paid job that I’ve ever had since.

CH: Tell us a little about your work as a writer in the schools. What did that experience teach you?

NB: My experience working for Writers in the Schools in Houston taught me that, children have such innate and fearless imaginations; unsquashed unschooled imaginations. And so many of the great writers and artists throughout time have tried to get back to that child-like sensibility, in their own refined adult work. We civilized adults tend to educate that right-brain surrealist imagination right out of our kids, in most school situations. Anyone trying to write or make art can work to remember, what creative people like Picasso have known: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist, once he grows up.”

CH: How did your writing life shift when you entered the field of psychotherapy?

NB: When I became a therapist, I consciously thought that I left my identity as a writer for a while. All the while though, unconsciously, when I was doing therapy, I was using a deep down story lens, perspective and narrative sensibility that I had learned from literature, as well as psychological and character sense that I had learned from reading poetry, and novels by the great Russians. I began to realize that often, doing therapy, I was traipsing around in a similar part of my head that I had lived in before, while reading and writing fiction and poetry. Making metaphors with people, for example. There ended up being lots of connections between my therapist work and my past writer-editor-English teacher work, a similar mindset.

CH: How do you make room for writing? What do you do to nurture yourself as a writer?

NB: Nowadays, after many years of experimenting with when and how to write, I am a little wiser and more organized. I’ve learned enough common sense skills to enable me to plan ahead the night before, to write every next morning early, even if it’s just for an hour (or occasionally, for a couple hours). I wrestled with this for years —when and how to write, nighttime or morning, how much sleep to get, how to balance paid work and writing work, and later, trying to balance parenting with some personal writing. I am glad that I never fully turned my back on my writing for too long though.

Now, I’m a big believer in sitting up, with a half-asleep concrete dream image, and just trusting that image imaginatively and starting to write from that early morning dream space. I like to start writing before my logical brain gets too wide awake and picky to have fun and be creative.

CH: Who are some poets whose work has influenced yours?

NB: Charles Simic, early Russell Edson, Mark Strand, Sylvia Plath for her darkness, and often, Latin American and Eastern European poets, for their surrealist fantastical bent. Also, Marge Piercy, and Lucille Clifton, for their writings from the body. Lately, the emotional honesty of Dorianne Laux’s poems, and the straightforward poems and poetry writing books by Kim Addonizio, are influencing me.

CH: If you could have an hour with any contemporary poet, who would you choose and why?

NB: I’ve so admired the last few books I’ve read by Dorianne Laux —her raw wisdom, her ability to talk about specific, possibly autobiographical trauma scenes. I’d like to sit down and talk with her about emotional bravery and language.

CH: What are you reading now?

I’m reading the poet Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights. Poetic mini essays about objects and sensual experiences that delight him. With my mother, a year and a half ago, I heard the engaging poet Ross Gay read aloud from this manuscript at a college in Vermont. My mother sent me his book for my birthday just recently.

A Virtual Interview with Huston-Tillotson University’s Katherine D. Oldmixon Garza, Jennine “DOC” Wright, Ryan Sharp, and Mike Hart

Background

Katherine D. Oldmixon Garza, Jennine “DOC” Wright, Ryan Sharp and Mike Hart will be the featured readers Thursday, October 12, 2017 from 7:15 – 9:00 p.m. at BookWoman (5501 N. Lamar #A-105, Austin, TX),

Katherine Durham Oldmixon is Professor and Chair of English at Huston-Tillotson University, and the author of a chapbook, Water Signs; she also co-directs the Poetry at Round Top Festival and is a senior poetry editor for Tupelo Quarterly. Jennine “DOC” Wright holds four Slam titles, and is an MFA student at Spalding University. Ryan Sharp is the Coordinator of Huston-Tillotson University’s Writers’ Studio, and editor of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review; he is also the author of the chapbook my imaginary old man: poems (Finishing Line Press, 2017). Fiction writer Mike Hart is an Assistant Professor of English/Communications at Huston-Tillotson University. His work has appeared in a number of publications, including Southwestern Review, The Southern Review, The Southern Anthology, and The Greensboro Review.

The Interview

CH: When did you first start thinking of yourself as a writer? What inspired you to become a writer?

KDOG: I must have been about eleven when I began writing about a long essay on Queen Esther (she from the Old Testament), and another about the ghost named Timothy who sat on my bedroom window and sometimes followed me outside in our wooded yard. I thought of myself as a writer then, and then in high school, I began writing poems, which were more like letters to myself. For a long time, I mostly wrote letters.  I also draw, and sometimes when I didn’t think in words, I would draw.  I didn’t think of myself as a visual artist, though.

RS: I remember, back before Netflix and DVR, flipping through the cable channels and happening upon Saul Williams’s Slam. The 90s were an interesting time for poetry in mainstream pop culture. There was the continued development Hip Hop in general, often sporting poetic interludes and skits in-between tracks and in intros and outros. Tupac and Janet Jackson had starred in Poetic Justice about five years before Slam, and Mos Def started hosting HBO’s Def Poetry Jam about five years after. All were incredibly impactful for me. Yet, nothing struck me quite like seeing Saul spit “Amethyst Rocks” in the jail yard, literally rhyming his way out of a butt-whoopin’. I saw that and thought I want to do that (except maybe not while confined within prison walls or under the threat of violence).

Still, I am a little insecure about claiming the title of “poet.” I am no doubt a person who loves to read and write poetry, but I am not sure if I have a clear idea of what criteria is necessary when distinguishing between a poet and a person who writes poetry, or if even such a distinction is necessary. I am also working on my dissertation right now, so I guess I am also sharpening my craft as a scholar. And, while I am excited by the prospects of my project, I am cautious to make too large of claims there as well. That being said, it was a pretty great feeling to get a box full of my imaginary old man chapbooks from Finishing Line Press recently. That felt like a moment that made me feel a bit like I was becoming a poet.

JDW: It really wasn’t until this year that I even thought about it. Before, I just thought of myself as a poet, and even that title took time to accept. I was so much in awe of other poets to include my mother that I never acknowledged my own work on that level. It wasn’t until I started competing in slams that I took myself seriously as a poet. This year I wrote a children’s book and finished writing a musical so it took venturing out of poetry to consider myself a writer.

MH: I have written since I was little. Even, perhaps, before I had the discipline to hand-write or type prose, I was “writing” stories I imagined: stories about my childhood, toys I had, people in my life, dreams I had. I would re-write real conversations, sometimes as they happened, to make them fit narratives in my head. As I got to my teens, I would occasionally write actual works of fiction, maybe for an assignment, maybe because I had to get those internal narratives out. Then, in college, I finally started to focus on craft, on the discipline and focus it usually takes to become a writer. Even then, though, I don’t think I really understood either craft or dedication to it. Maybe I began to understand those things in grad-school. Maybe that’s when I started to imagine that I could be a writer.

CH: How has your career as an educator influenced your growth as a writer? What is one thing you’ve learned from a student (or from teaching) that you carry into your writing life?

MH: When I talk to students about writing, we usually build from the ground up: terminology associated with craft, fundamental principles of writing a story (character, desire, conflict, danger, crisis, denoument, etc.). I find that revisiting those principles with my students, helping them wrestle with how best to apply them to their own writing, makes me reconsider how I’m able to use them in my own writing. From my students, I’m often reminded that good story rarely starts out as a grand idea, a “statement” perhaps about human experience, whatever that is. Instead, story starts with the basics. With an image of a character or a situation or an event. Story is built from tiny parts, from the ground up.

KDOG: Reading literature (and reading a lot of literature) so as to teach and thinking about writing so as to teach writing must be the most significant influence from my profession on my growth as a writer.   Preparing to teach requires deep learning (which is why I require my students to teach in every course.)  One thing I’ve learned from students and from teaching (and from everyone in my life): listen.  Listen before you speak (write); listen more than you speak (write.)

RS: The first thing that comes to mind is the old teaching adage: “The best way to learn is to teach.” Having to not only have thoughts and ideas, but be able to teach thoughts and ideas to has forced me to be a more critical thinker and communicator. Having to present knowledge in interesting and innovative lectures and discussions forces me to reevaluate content in a way that further deepens and strengthens my own knowledge. Furthermore, no matter how many times I have read Their Eyes Were Watching God, or any text for that matter, I find that I am still surprised, and in awe of, the unique readings and perspectives students are able to bring to the text(s). The same goes for poetic forms. I have sat and wrote haikus with students and have been struck by how their fresh approach to the form and their use of language inspires me. All of that colors my reading and writing life, which, in turn, impacts my poetry.CH: Katherine, how did you go about writing and constructing your chapbook, Water Signs?

I imagined the concept of the three linked sonnet crowns, each set in the season of one of the water signs of the western zodiac. Simultaneously with conceiving the braid, I began in Scorpio, which is my sun sign, on a day in my garden, cutting basil flowers. (That crown would move to the center of the three crowns.  So in a way, I worked inside out to the edges.)  I went into a meditative trance, as crazy as that may sound to people, each time I would write, drawing on, weaving together personal, lived memory and present moments, global and intimate. I held the rhythm in my head and let the rhymes and other music come.  I shifted the voice slightly in each crown, as each is a different season in my life, as well, like turning a crystal prism in my palm.  As I write this, I am reminded of my students asking me when we are analyzing a poem or a passage in prose: “Do writers really think of these things when they’re writing?” Yes, yes, I do – but it isn’t calculating.  It’s listening.

JDW: I think I look at it in the opposite. It is my writing that influences me as an educator. I write about social justice issues and identity and tend to incorporate those ideas into my teaching. I often perform poems for my students to introduce topics or to introduce myself in new classes. I also think my poetry presents my passion for my subject so it helps to have an instructor invested in the content. No one wants the coach forced to teach a science course so they just pass out worksheets while they dream about being on the field. Practice what you preach! It wasn’t until I was teaching a unit on poetry and had a student share a poem she wrote about her grandmother that had recently passed to realize it. She cried and the whole class got up and surrounded her. It took bravery. After that I wrote about losing my mother, a poem that I had put off for so long.

CH: Ryan, what was your process in writing and constructing your recently-released chapbook, my imaginary old man?

RS: Patricia Smith was a visiting faculty member during my final semester at Pacific University’s low-residency MFA program, and I was blessed to get to hang out with her quite a bit. She mentioned to me that she had become interested in exploring the formal elements of poetry and talked about how furthering her knowledge of meter and rhyme has enhanced and expanded her poetic tool set.  She had been recommended I check out Stephen Fry’s The Ode Less Travelled. After graduating, I sat down and started going through a section describing all of the ways that masterful sonnet writers are able to signify on the form. During one of the book’s iambic pentameter exercises, it dawned on me that, if I were to write ten-syllable—or decasyllabic—lines without much regard for rhythm or poetic feet, I might be able to write lines that seem like really creative iambic pentameter; folks might give me credit for an acrobatic use of a spondee or a dramatic weak ending, when I was actually just writing ten syllables under the guidance of the natural rhythm of American English. The first line I wrote was something like “My imaginary old man is dead.” I thought that was an interesting idea. I am really into giving myself constraints, so I started building a form: decasyllabic lines, no punctuation or capitalization, ambiguous phrases that could be read as parts of different clauses. I had worked with Marvin Bell while at Pacific, so his Dead Man poems started to influence my imaginary old man in how he and his narrative are not static. The form gave me an interesting entry point through which to explore my own complicated paternal relationships and how I was, and still am, processing my childhood. I was obsessed with my imaginary old man for a few years. Some of the poems began to get published. I was invited to do some readings, and people seemed to receive them well.  That encouraged me to start grouping them together, and, luckily, Finishing Line Press liked them enough to give me a chapbook.

CH: Doc, what was your process for writing and constructing you chapbook, A Long Time Coming?

JDK: The title kind of says it all. I put the chapbook together because every time I would feature at a venue, people would come up and ask for copies of poems or ask if I had merch. I chose the poems based on what was being requested as well as including poems that weren’t typical 3-minute slam poems. It took years to even think I could put something like that together on my own. Onc you surround yourself with creatives you know you can really do anything.

CH: As professionals working for a university, how do you make room for your creative endeavors during the busy academic year? What advice would you give someone struggling to find that work / creativity balance?

JDW: I really have no idea. I guess I incorporate poetry/writing into my classes so it is just part of my life now. I still perform on weekends and write in my free time or along with my students when I give them writing prompts. I guess my advice is to love what you do and do what you love so it never feels like work. I am a mother, wife, writer, student, and activist, and all of those require creativity.

KDOG: This is a hard one for me.  I have to think back to before my life ruptured [Garza’s husband and life partner, musician Arturo Lomas Garza, passed away suddenly and unexpectedly in May 2016].  In the past seventeen months, I have written very few poems or toward poems, although I have written a lot of memories, meditations, letters (to myself and others.)  A very few poems.  I did begin another sonnet crown, and made it to the seventh poem, and then I put it down.  I’ve made more with my hands, visual arts, non-linguistic.

Well, when I was an active poet, I wrote mostly in the summer and between semesters, or, rather, I drafted all year, but I worked on poems and the manuscript (another kind of composition) in the interims between teaching.  My writing circles, poet friends who met (meet?) regularly, helped me to keep writing during busy times.  They helped me hold myself accountable, or keep my writer self from disappearing, I guess you would say.

RS: With all I am balancing right now, I have struggled to carve out time to dedicate to writing poems. However, I tend to be of the opinion that there is not such a great distance between the academic and the creative—for me, they seem to be working the same muscle. I am lucky that my work—teacher, editor, PhD candidate, husband, and father—is all about the creative, so I don’t feel like I am all work and no play. My struggle is more with time. I don’t have a lot of it these days. Pursuing my PhD has all but consumed the time I used to dedicate to writing poetry, and I do miss that quite a lot. I have had to try to be slick about how I sneak poetry into my day. One thing I do is that, Instead of listening to music in the car or while mowing the lawn or at the gym or so on, I try to listen to poetry podcasts. My favorites are the Poetry Magazine Podcast and VS, which is a new podcast hosted by Danez Smith and Franny Choi. I have downloaded a few of the Yale Open Courses, and I listen to them as well. When I am at a stop sign or at one of my kids’ soccer games, I use my phone to record bits and pieces of poems that, when I have a moment, I try to sit down and work on or I squirrel away for when I will have the time. I follow my favorite poets on Facebook, and read the poems they post when I can. Also, editing keeps me very engaged in poetry. Sticking with my muscle metaphor, while I am not writing as much as I would like, I still feel like I am exercising my poetry muscle, so, when I do have more time, I feel will be ready to get back to work.

MH: I don’t. Frankly, because of how I write, I find it almost impossible to sit and write during the school semester. I might try to take a little time here or there – between work or parenting or being a person involved with the world – to some prose, but it’s nearly impossible. My advice for someone struggling to find some balance is to wake up earlier. Go to bed later. Carve out time to separate yourself from your real life so that you can live inside constructed narratives for a while. If you can’t carve that time out, be patient. The job will slow down. Kids grow up. Story will always be there, so you’ll have time to create later.

CH: Who are some writers that changed the way you looked at language and writing?

RS: There are so many! I already mentioned Saul Williams and Marvin Bell. My teachers: Kwame Dawes, Dorianne Laux, and Joseph Millar. Being a student of Dorianne and Joe’s and having been raised in Portland, the Dickman twins’ poetry have been incredibly influential to me. I’m a big Lucille Clifton fan. Ted Berrigan’s The Sonnets is an important book in my development as a poet. Yet, Terrance Hayes will forever be one of my favorite poets. He is my poetry role model—the way he plays with form and words and rhythm. He does everything that I hope to one do be able to do.

JDW: People that I look up to are mostly other spoken word artists and rappers. The ability to tell a story and bend metaphors like putty is an art that I will forever try to master. Dr. Kat at HT [Katherine Durham Oldmixon Garza] and other English instructors made me feel like my ideas were valid regardless of how the words came out and they made me trust in my own voice.

KDOG: Joy Harjo, for certain, and a small group of poets/memoirists with whom I was present in her master class at Taos one summer.  Jane Hirshfield, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Gregory Orr, as well, for spirit.  Derek Walcott, John Donne, Pablo Neruda, for language.  But those are only a few, the few who happened into my mind tonight.

One of the exercises that Joy had us do was to trace our poetic ancestors, those we read who have influenced us.  My list is long, as I am old, and a life-long reader and literary scholar, but I recognize some among all the writers whose work I’ve read entered my ear and moved into my hands.

MH: Flannery O’Conner, Yusef Komunyakaa, Barry Hannah, Fay Weldon, Richard Ford, Margaret Atwood, George Saunders, Adam Johnson.

CH: What has your literary citizenship given you as a writer?

KDOG: Co-directing Poetry at Round Top and editing Tupelo Quarterly (and several other literary magazines) have given me very different things, but in both I am grateful for the opportunities to commune with others, to read and listen. P@RT is a listening experience for me.

Editing has given me awareness of, well, editors, what editors see, hear, look for.  Has this helped me as a writer?  I’m not sure.  One would think I would be more rhetorically astute in submitting, but I am not regular about submitting, especially now.  I really don’t think editing particularly helps me as a writer. It helps me as a teacher.

RS: This dovetails off the previous work-creative balance question. My literary citizenship has given me community. My work at Borderlands not only allows me to be immersed in poetry, but has also afforded me the opportunity to get to meet and talk with so many fantastic poets. Same with Poetry at Round Top. I mentioned Terrance Hayes as my poetic role model. Two years ago I got to eat meals and talk about poetry and fatherhood with him for a whole weekend! I think that “citizenship” implies that I am giving something, which may be true, but I get way more than I give.

JDW: More than anything it has been a way to pass on to youth and minorities that their voices matter [Wright mentors writers in communities]. I have a better grasp on being able to leave the world to future generations if they feel confident to speak up and speak out for change.

CH: What are you working on now?

JDW: I am finishing up my MFA program so I am starting my creative thesis. It will be a collection called “a’SKIN for Trouble.” The collection will look at the intersections of race, gender, and identity. I am also working on the music composition for my musical, which is a fusion of medieval hip hop. It has Morgan Lefay as its protagonists and includes the knights of Camelot, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and some Chaucer’s Tales.

RS: My dissertation takes up the majority of my writing energy in this current stage of my life. In short, I am crafting an argument around how contemporary Black American poets are employing personae to redress and complicate archival representations of Blackness. I also have a related, but separate, project that I am trying to launch that consists of a collection of interviews I have conducted, or aspire to conduct, with contemporary Black American poets. Yet, I have been slowly working away on a newer group of poems that I call my 3 brothers poems. Similar to the my imaginary old man poems, they operate under a series of constraints. Also, similar to the my imaginary old man poems, they are another angle through which I am exploring my family history. The dream is that, once I finish my dissertation, I might take some time to focus on poetry, maybe even apply for a workshop or two, and develop the 3 brothers poems into its own collection.

MH: Now, when I work on stuff, it most frequently leans towards what can be characterized as speculative fiction. Maybe as magical realism. I’m interested in how the impossible interacts with the everyday. However, I live in the everyday, and it’s not something I’m very interested in writing about. I have a collection that I’ve considered sending out, but I haven’t yet done it.

KDOG: I have a medicinal garden.  I’m learning how to make tinctures and salves. Sometimes I give fragrant leaves as gifts.  I walk in the garden and touch our plants. I’m listening to my husband’s music.

A Virtual Interview with Martha K. Grant

Poet Martha K. Grant will be the featured reader on Thursday, May 11 from 7:15 to 9:00 at BookWoman (5501 N. Lamar) for May’s 2nd Thursday Poetry Reading and Open Mic.

Background

Martha K. Grant is the author of A Curse on the Fairest Joys (Aldrich Press), poetry that explores the wounds of childhood and the grace of healing. Her work has been published in Borderlands, New Texas, Earth’s Daughters, The Yes! Book, the anthologies Red Sky: Poems about the Global Epidemic of Violence Against Women and Unruly Catholic Women Writers, and nine editions of the Texas Poetry Calendar . She has a Pushcart nomination and received an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University. A visual artist and a sixth generation Texan, she has a home and studio in the Hill Country northwest of San Antonio.

The Interview

CH: How did you become interested in poetry? What is your first memory of poetry?

MKG: I have to laugh when I think of this: Casey at the Bat, Ernest Thayer’s 1888 poem. The last stanza still gives me a frisson of memory of my dad at the radio listening to baseball games. I was around 10 or 11. The poem’s baseball story line was most familiar and the energy, drama and imagery captivated me at this early age.  Oh, somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout / but there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has struck out. I still get goosebumps.

The story of Casey and his Mudville team was in an anthology on the family bookshelf, The Best Loved Poems of the American People . I would thumb through it often for poems with a particular cadence or rhythm, but primarily ones with an engaging narrative. Another favorite from that volume was about a red balloon, but I am startled to find now that the poem, written by Jill Spargur, was actually titled Tragedy.  I always wanted a red balloon, / It only cost a dime / But Ma said it was risky / They broke so quickly / And beside, she didn’t have time. . . . I got a little money saved now / I got a lot of time / I got no one to tell me how to spend my dime / Plenty of balloons—but somehow / There’s something died inside of me / And I don’t want one now.  The wistfulness, the melancholy, hooked me and spoke for me in ways I couldn’t. I can’t say it inspired me to write poetry, but it impressed on me that you can find your own story in someone else’s writing.

CH: When did you first begin to write poetry? When did you start to think of yourself as a poet?

MKG: It must have been high school and the fork in the road of choosing an elective in 11^th grade. Even though I had taken oil painting lessons since the age of 12 ,  I signed up for journalism rather than art—the first evidence of competition between my creative muses, the visual and the literary arts. Writing came easy to me and  I liked the various formats for  news articles. As editor of the school paper my senior year, the creative visual challenge of collaging blocks of copy into specified space was like an art project in disguise. A harbinger of later combinations of the two fields.

I wrote exactly one poem in school, accepted for a  local contest that is still active today—Young Pegasus—and not another poem until the late ’80s when I discovered the poetry of Naomi Shihab Nye. Exposure to her very accessible, thoughtful personal narratives was a defining AHA moment in my earliest of poetry inclinations. Its deceptive simplicity redefined poetry for me as entirely possible. Though I would soon  learn that it was way harder than I thought!

CH: I understand that in addition to being a writer, you are both a fiber artist and a calligrapher. What role have your other artistic interests played in your development as a poet?

MKG: Between that first and only poem and the Naomi “epiphany” that inspired actual writing were decades of visual arts, primarily intense calligraphy study, professional lettering contracts and exhibiting “word painting” combinations layering abstract imagery and text. I worked at first on paper and canvas, then silk screening and dyeing art fabrics.

It coincided with a time inner shifting, searching and questioning. The meaningful  passages I rendered were a reflection of my own quest. The authors of these became my teachers along the way. Notably Thomas Merton, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rumi, Carl Jung and others. I soon understood that I was living a ‘footnoted life’, that the personal credos I publicly professed in my calligraphy broadsides were actually declared by others and I was just hitching a ride. I wanted to make art out of my own words. But first I had to write them! This is where Naomi entered the picture, along with writing classes at Gemini Ink in San Antonio, open mics around town, and publication in an anthology of women’s voices, A Garland of Poems and Short Stories, edited by Michael Moore.

CH: I understand you’ve recently finished your MFA. What inspired you to enter that path? How has it changed your work as a writer?

MKG: Epiphany again. I put off an MFA for years. Time. Money. Nerve. Age. Distance. In  2012 I was at a workshop with Ellen Bass and Dorianne Laux who are on the poetry faculty at Pacific University and they spoke of the low-residency MFA format. It dawned on me: if I lived as long as my mother was (98)  and didn’t challenge myself with further study,  I would be disappointed at the end of my own life. The MFA gave me of course better writing skills, a wider appreciation of the lineage and legacy of poets, and great confidence and satisfaction in having pursued the adventure at this age. And thanks to the encouragement of my faculty mentors, I was able to dig deeper into old memories and release them into poetry.

CH: Please tell us a little about your book, A Curse on the Fairest Joys. What was its inspiration?

MKG: The title is taken from William Blake’s Proverbs of Hell: “As the butterfly chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.” The collection is a poetry memoir, an effort to bring to light the ghosts of  childhood and the extraordinary power of hope and healing.  It helped me reframe and claim my life and find in the writing new ground to stand on.

CH: How did you go about finding a publisher for the book? What was it like to work with Aldrich Press? 

MKG: A poet friend  they had published recommended me to them. I made an inquiry and they accepted my manuscript. It was that simple! I had previously turned down the opportunity to publish a chapbook with another press, taking a chance and holding out for the larger manuscript. The gamble paid off. I followed the layout/formula of other poetry books from this press and it was a good fit for my work. The basic structure of the book is my MFA thesis manuscript.

CH: How do you identify as a writer? Is poetry your primary writing interest? 

MKG: After completing my degree and publishing my book,  I moved into memoir and nonfiction because there were many more stories and episodes that seemed to beg for  a larger format, a more conversational exploration than poetry allowed me. I pursued post-grad work with several nonfiction mentors. Of late I’ve been on a prose poem bender. I find even more “permission” in prose poetry to loosen up in subject matter and voice.  Rose Metal Press’s Field Guide to Prose Poetry is one of the best of the genre. In David Shields’ work on literary collage I’ve found a home for the varied subjects and genres I seem to come up with.

CH: I understand your family goes back generations in Texas. How does place figure in your work?

MKG: We live in the Hill Country northwest of San Antonio and our live oak-and-cedar landscape with its variety of critters is an ongoing conversation with nature. The Texas Poetry Calendar has been a terrific catalyst for encouragement to “write Texas” and become as rooted in the landscape as I am in my genealogy.  I’m delighted to have been included in 10 editions of the calendar.

CH: Who are some of your favorite poets? Were there poets you discovered as part of your MFA who have become especially influential in your work?

MKG: Gregory Orr’s writing about the accidental shooting of his brother taught me a lot about dealing with childhood trauma, and  his personal encouragement not to run from my memory of a young friend’s murder helped me write through that old but lingering anguish. Jane Hirshfield’s very zen poetry is work I turn to again and again. So are Coleman Barks’s translations of Rumi. Stephen Dunn, Dorianne Laux, Tony Hoagland are ongoing favorites.

CH: What was the last book of poetry you’ve read?   

MKG: I always have a book of poetry within arm’s reach. I have been facilitating a memoir class for seniors this year. Not surprisingly, narrative poetry with its depth, honesty, lyricism and concision provides many provocative examples and inroads into personal stories. I offer my students selections from Barbara Ras, Ted Kooser, Phillip Levine, Jane Kenyon, Naomi Shihab Nye to help trigger memories and a lyrical approach.

My latest creative form is a blend of the visual and the literary: a series of panels,  15” x 15” hand-dyed and screen printed art fabrics on which I am lettering my poems in brush calligraphy and embellishing with embroidery. My muses collaborating at last!

A Virtual Interview with Susan Rooke

Poet Susan Rooke will be the featured reader on Thursday, May 14, 2015 from 7:15 to 9:00 at BookWoman (5501 N. Lamar) for May’s 2nd Thursday Poetry Reading and Open Mic.

Background

Susan Rooke writes poetry and fiction, and has had dozens of mainstream and fantasy poems published in both print and online publications.  Most recently her work has appeared in Concho River Review, Naugatuck River Review, Red Weather, Kentucky Review, The Avalon Literary Review, inkscrawl, and the anthologies Pushing the Envelope: Epistolary Poems (ed. Jonas Zdanys, Lamar University Press 2015), and Twice Upon a Time (Kind of a Hurricane Press 2015).

A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and a Best of the Net nominee, her poem “All Hallows” (which first appeared in Melancholy Hyperbole) was featured for Halloween on “Freshly Pressed” (WordPress.com). Her writing career began much longer ago than she would care to admit with a contest-winning fantasy short story in The Twilight Zone Magazine. She hopes to publish her fantasy novel The Space Between in the coming year.

The Interview

CH: What was your first inspiration to write poetry? When did you first begin to think of yourself as a writer?

SR: My older brother Bob induced me to read Shakespeare’s Macbeth when I was pretty young—7 or 8.  He thought I would enjoy all the paranormal aspects, especially the three witches.  Reading that play was huge for me.  There was great rhythm and rhyme plus deliciously creepy atmosphere.  I learned all the witches’ lines by heart and chanted them in portentous tones at odd moments.  I took to wearing a black hooded cloak with black plastic toads stitched to it and skulked from room to room, peering around doorframes.  Around this time I read Poe’s “The Raven” too.  I began writing poetry, and also wrote my first short story.  Unsurprisingly, it was a spooky-house-at-the-end-of-the-lane type of story.  But actually thinking of myself as a writer?  Believing in that identity?  That didn’t happen until a couple of years ago.  Despite a lucky publication history it’s taken me a long time to own it.

CH: It has been said that the work of each poet is infused with that poet’s obsessions and preoccupations. What are the obsessions of your work? What themes or images do you find yourself frequently exploring?

SR: I guess the fear of darkness, both literal and metaphorical, is at the heart of much of my work.  But that fear manifests in lots of ways.  My obsession with it ranges from death/illness to what I hear in the night to observing what happens as my husband and I grow older together.  For me, perhaps the most frightening darkness of all is represented by the question “What lies ahead?”

CH: In your bio, you mention that your writing career began with a contest-winning fantasy short story in The Twilight Zone Magazine, and that you have a fantasy novel, The Space Between, that you hope to publish soon. How does your poetry relate to your interest in fantasy?

SR: I think my interest in fantasy was the genesis of all of my writing, whether fiction or poetry.  The poetry I write falls into several broad categories.  Speculative/fantasy, memoir (whether real or imagined) and observations of nature are the primary ones.  But there is plenty of overlap.  I think somewhere at the foundation of each of my poems is a brick of speculation.  At least one.  Sometimes quite a lot more.  And sometimes a poem is just out-and-out fantasy.  For instance, one that’s coming out soon (in an anthology from Kind of a Hurricane Press) is called “The Queen’s Confiteor.”  It’s Snow White’s story told from the POV of her mother (the woman who in later versions of the tale morphed into her stepmother).

CH: How would you describe yourself as a writer? Do you see yourself primarily as a fiction writer or poet? Do either of those labels fit?

SR: I’ve never been able to decide the answer to that.  It seems to depend on what I’m working on at the moment, and how well or badly it’s going.  If fiction, and it’s going well, I give myself a congratulatory pat on the back for being such an awesome writer of fiction.  (Please note this is vastly different from being “a writer of awesome fiction.”)  If it’s going badly I ask myself why I’m attempting fiction when I’m really a poet.  And of course the same things happen when I transition to writing poetry.  Until I get my novel published it’s probably easier for me to see myself as a poet because I have more recent publication successes with that.  It’s the discipline that’s done more for me lately.

CH: I have long admired the craft of your poetry, and your Pushcart Prize nominations and Best of the Net designation bear witness to its strength. How would you describe your journey to deepen your craft as a poet?

SR: Thank you for those kind words, Cindy!  The journey to deepen my craft just boils down to this:  I get older; I write.  Practice is important for cultivating any skill, and writing is no different.  Aging is important for the cultivation of experience.  Between the writing and the aging, I make the occasional observation that serves my work

CH: Who are your literary influences in poetry and fiction? Your favorite writers/books?

SR: This may sound odd, but aside from early influences I’ve already mentioned, some of my most valued ones for fiction have been cartoons and comic books.  I still turn to them today, because I can always rely on them to take me somewhere magical, which is my preferred state of being.  My mother had several books of Charles Addams cartoons when I was a child.  Now that she’s gone, I have them.  I discovered Edward Gorey back in the early 1960s and he remains a huge favorite!  Also there are the fantastical and marvelous Carl Barks Scrooge McDuck comic books, Hugh Lofting’s Doctor Dolittle books, E. Nesbit’s Bastable children series, The Chronicles of Narnia from C.S. Lewis . . . I could go on and on.  Turning from my childhood favorites there’s Susanna Clarke’s amazing Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.  It’s her first novel, for heaven’s sake, which is very annoying of her.  Neil Gaiman can write great spec fiction all day long with one hand tied behind his back.  J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, which I first read in high school, is still very important to me.  And Ray Harryhausen’s special-effects monsters in the movies will always occupy a special place in my heart!

My taste in poetry is maybe a little more mature (I hope!).  In no real order I take particular pleasure in reading Jane Kenyon, Bruce Bond, Sharon Olds, Billy Collins, Ted Kooser, Tomas Tranströmer, Seamus Heaney, Naomi Shihab Nye and Louis Jenkins (his prose poems are so wonderful, the very definition of prose poetry for me).  I turn to collections and anthologies most often because I like to sample the work of lots of different poets.  The Best American Poetry series is an especially good way for me to keep abreast of what’s current here, even though the poems bear zero resemblance to what I’m writing.  My favorite anthology of the past several years, though, has been Staying Alive, edited by Neil Astley of Bloodaxe Books.  It’s perfect for repeated readings, and many of the poems in it serve as triggers for my own.

CH: What similarities do you see (if any) in the poems that have been Pushcart-nominated?

SR: You know, my first impulse was to say I don’t really see any similarities among them.  Two of them arose from experiences in West Texas, one from what goes on in a suburban back yard.  Two are stylistically more elaborate, one has what I’d like to believe is a deceptive simplicity.  But now I realize they do share something fundamental in common.  They’re written from the viewpoint of someone observing the natural world through a dark lens.

CH: What projects are you working on now? What do you see on the horizon after The Space Between?

SR: I see a lot of confusion and inner struggle.  The first draft of the sequel to The Space Between is already on paper.  I started revising it earlier this year, with an eye to having it completed when TSB eventually gets the nod from a publisher.  And there will be at least a third book in the series.  The problem with long fiction is that, even though I love writing it, it gobbles up so much of my time when I’m working on it.  The characters take over my waking and sleeping hours, insisting that their stories be told.  It may sound a little crazy, but they are very real to me, and I would be letting them down if I didn’t do this for them.  However, at some point I have to strike a balance between fiction and poetry, because I want very badly to publish a book of poetry.  Unfortunately the work that requires will take many, many hours that I just don’t have at the moment.  But I feel a pressure to get it done, because:

1. I’m not getting any younger, and
2. If I don’t do it, there is certainly no one else to do it for me.

CH: What’s the most recent book of poetry you’ve read?

SR: I tend to read from several books of poetry at once, but the one I’ve finished most recently is Stag’s Leap, from Sharon Olds.  All of her stuff just amazes the heck out of me, but she won the Pulitzer Prize for this one.

CH: What advice would you give to an aspiring poet or fiction writer?

SR: Read, read, read.  I think this is especially important for poets.  It’s astonishing how many people who think they write poetry don’t read it.  Seriously?  They have no clue what’s new, or even what poetry is.  Personally, I can’t begin to define poetry, but if I didn’t read it every day I wouldn’t throw as much of my own into the trash as I write it.  Thereby performing a very small service for humankind.

Practice, practice, practice.  I love good books on craft.  For poetry my favorites are the Dos Gatos Press Wingbeats books.  Also recommended are The Poet’s Companion by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux, and Diane Lockward’s The Crafty Poet.  Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft is very worthwhile for writers of fiction.

Group critiques can help.  If a number of people pick up on the same issues in a poem, you know they might be on to something.

And here’s a tip that works especially well for me:  Before I attempt to write something, I’ll spend 15 or 20 minutes reading work I admire/envy in the genre I’m tackling that day.  It primes the pump..