Background
Thursday, March 11, 2021 7:15 – 9:00 p.m.
Register for this on-line event at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bookwoman-2nd-thursday-poetry-reading-and-open-mic-with-d-ellis-phelps-tickets-138117614503
Contact bookwoman2ndthursdaypoetry@gmail.com for more information.
Feature d. ellis phelps is the author of two books of poetry: what she holds(Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press, 2020) & what holds her (Main Street Rag, 2019) and of the novel, Making Room for George (MSSP, 2016). Her poems, essays, and visual art have appeared widely online and in print, and she has edited more than a dozen anthologies.
On her blog, Formidable Woman Sanctuary, she writes about spiritual and emotional healing and the writing life among other topics while also publishing the work of other writers and artists. She is the founding and managing editor of Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press and of fws: international journal of literature & art. She has taught fine arts in various venues with students of all ages for decades and she currently facilitates The Art of Writing Workshop Series for the Patrick Heath Public Library in Boerne, Texas.
The Interview
CH: What is your first memory of poetry? When did you begin to think of yourself as a writer? As a poet?
dep: My first memory of poetry is listening to my mother recite nursery rhymes for me, how I loved to chime in, how much we laughed together over their various twists and turns, their sonorous interplay, their rhythms, and rhymes. From as early as second grade, I participated in University Interscholastic League events like storytelling and declamation, often winning a red or blue ribbon for my recitations, memorizing the esteemed lines of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in The Children’s Hour or The Creation by James Weldon Johnson. And I stood, for these contests, in the library stacks, sometimes for hours (and for years, as I competed through High School) reading one anthology after another, looking for these poems, as it was I who chose what I would memorize.
But my first memory of myself as a poet is as a fourth grader in Mrs. Anderson’s class. She asked us to create our own anthology from chosen, favorite poets. We were to copy the poems in our neatest handwriting and illustrate them then we were to compose a poem of our own. I remember illustrating Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening and that I included Invictus by William Ernest Henley, too. The only line I remember of the poem I wrote is this: and lightning refreshes the air in a poem about a thunderstorm. I’ll say Mrs. Anderson’s project has stuck with me.
I continued to write poems, mostly bad ones, having published my first piece in a High School literary journal, something about lonely teenage angst. But it wasn’t until the late 1980s when a San Antonio visual artist, Alberto Mijangos (now deceased), asked to read some of my poems and then invited me to collaborate with him, writing words to go alongside some of his paintings for a show that hung at the Blue Star, that I began to take myself seriously as a poet.
CH: In addition to being a writer, you’re also a visual artist. What do you see as the connection between these forms of expression? How do your experiences as a maker of visual art inform your poetry?
dep: It was, in fact, also Alberto Mijangos who noticed my art. When I brought my poems for him to read, he noticed the markings in the margins, all over the edges, inside and around my words and pointing to them he said, “What are these?” “Doodles,” I answered. He paused. “I think you may be an artist,” he said. Then he encouraged me to buy some art supplies and to begin. And so, I worked in much the same spirit as the dancer and choreographer Martha Graham did as she started to choreograph a new dance by saying “Begin!” I began. I followed the marks as they appeared on the page. I learned to ask or dialogue with the canvas, standing, sometimes for long minutes before making another mark, waiting for the mark or the color to make itself known to me. It was a kind of improvisational play I had never experienced, and it changed me. Thus, it also changed my writing, making it even more improvisational, helping me listen for what the poem wanted to say, helping me listen for what I wanted to say.
Every medium has its limitations and I think words may be the most limited medium. Becoming more fluent as a visual artist meant having a whole other language, it meant being able to show ideas, worlds even, that words somehow seemed unable to touch.
Both the written word and visual art are markings, ways to make marks, languages, movements. And whether I am writing or painting or writing and painting, as lately, I often do a kind of mixed-media working with words, color and form, I am mostly dialoging with Universe, realizing and expressing the interconnectedness of all things, observing the natural order, or as in what she holds, working to resolve an emotional conflict.
CH: You’ve published a novel as well as two collections of poetry. How would you describe your identity as a writer?
dep: First, I am happy to announce here that I have a new book of metered, rhymed poetry for children, words gone wild, forthcoming from Kelsay Book’s Daffydowndilly Press this summer!
So my first book of poems, what holds her, is ecstatic verse. My second book of poems, what she holds, is transformational, deeply personal, reconciliation work. And my third book of poems, words gone wild, is light and fun and full of fantasy. My novel, Making Room for George, is a highly embellished (fictionalized) memoir based on a true story, also a work of reconciliation. I am currently shopping a fourth book of poems that are all social justice work.
Maybe it’s fair to say my work is transformational, deeply personal, even ecstatic work that celebrates the natural world and relationship in all its forms, a work that takes itself to the playground and knows how to whoop and holler, too!
CH: Tell us a little about your first book of poetry, what holds her (Main Street Rag, 2019). How did this collection come about?
dep: This book came to me as I processed the grief I was experiencing over the death of both of my parents within twenty-nine days of one another in 2009. Prior to their fleshly departures and after, the grief was so deeply overwhelming that I would lie on my deck, spread out on my grandmother’s quilt in the shade of the redbud, mourning. I almost always have a journal and pen nearby, so then there would be words, phrases floating into my consciousness between bouts of sobbing. The words were in a foreign syntax, and very different from what I then considered my style of writing. But the words and phrases were persistent day after day, so I began to record them. Often, a few words or a line would arrive but nothing else would come until I had recorded the words given.
The poems for what holds her came often simultaneously with the poems that would become the collection I title what she holds, as I struggled to process the fact that as my father left his fleshly body, my chances of reconciling my difficult relationship with him were ending.
The poems in both collections proved me wrong.
I think the first collection came first as a collection as a teaching from the ether, from the Universe, from my Soul Pod (the one that includes my parents) to shore me up and ready me to really have the space and spiritual substance to process the trauma, experiences and revelations that were to come to me with my father’s discarnate self. We had unfinished business. That’s what the writing of many of the poems in what she holds addresses.
CH: Your new collection of poetry, what she holds (Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press, 2020), has followed quickly after what holds her. What was different for you in the process of creating and releasing this second collection? What effects did the pandemic have on the release of this book?
dep: In 2014, a good five years after my father’s passing, I began to break down emotionally. As I describe in the afterword of what she holds, I had night terrors, there were psychic attacks of the most brutal kind, I was an emotional wreck, still in the throes of a relationship that clearly still needed to reconcile. I took up my pen and my paint. I prayed and sang and chanted. I sought counseling. I saw a spiritual guide. I joined a dream group. I recorded my dreams. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I spoke out loud to my father. I saw a shaman. I cried. I reasoned. I pleaded. I commanded. And I returned, again and again, to the words, to the paint. It took months, but Allelujah! Healing happened. what she holds is the product of that transformational process.
What was different in the writing process was that in writing what holds her I felt as though I was taking dictation from the Spirit World. In the writing of what she holds, I was actively working the memories, recording and working the dreams, both exhuming and laying to rest all that I was holding with the tools I use to do such transformational work: my pen and my brush.
Because of the way our world has been turned inward during this year, the releases of what she holds and of what holds her have been soft and silent, almost as if that is just as it should be. The readings I had scheduled for what holds her were cancelled and this is the first opportunity I’ve had to read from what she holds. I don’t think though, that I could have done a reading of it maybe until now for every time I read it, it touches me so that I cry and cannot keep reading.
CH: How do what she holds and what holds her speak to each other? Are there ‘through lines’ between your poetry collections and your novel, Making Room for George (Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press, 2016)?
dep: what she holds is a memoir: what happened, how it felt and what I did with it. It is “of this world.” what holds her is not of this world. It is beyond what happened. It is like Mooji Baba, a Buddhist guru I follow says: there is living as a person, taking everything personally, holding on to or being attached to things, happenings, circumstances, feelings and so on and then there is becoming aware of the True Self, letting go of the tangible world, living more in the timeless realm, recognizing who You really are and living out of a more neutral state, more connected to Pure Consciousness. what she holds is a record of living more identified with the personal state of being. It is samsara or suffering. But what holds her is sutra, the Truth of Being, the way of being more identified with Pure Consciousness. I think I had to have that knowing, its teaching in order to do the “of this world” healing my soul needed to do.
Making Room for George is also samara or suffering. It was also written as a transformational process, working through difficult relationships with the men in my life, dealing with sexual ambiguity, discerning direction and purpose in my life, all of this done under the guise of the main character, Bet. I was still very angry during the writing of George and I simply needed a place to put all of that angst. I needed a record of what was happening to my life. Writing it all down became my way out like hacking a path through a jungle. I am grateful to the book and to George, himself, for giving me that path. You’ve made me curious about “through lines.” Of course, the themes are interwoven. It seems my soul work during this incarnation is to learn how to live in harmonious relationships, especially with men, to learn to forgive, and to do this and not give up being true to myself, to do this and to identify with my True Self, to do this as a graceful, peaceful, yet empowered, formidable woman. Now I have to go read my books and find whether there are actual repetitions of lines in them. I’ll bet there are!
CH: You’ve founded two literary enterprises: fws: international journal of literature & art and Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press. How has your work in the publishing sphere influenced your life as a writer?
dep: Mainly, my work as an editor has used a great deal of my writing time, but it has afforded me the opportunity to read a lot of contemporary work, a process that is educative and worthy. I also follow the lead of many of the writers whose work I publish, finding new journals and submission opportunities, making connections and even friendships. That’s fun! Sometimes, when I’m publishing an anthology or collection, I contribute, having been inspired by the theme of the call. I especially liked writing the lines I contributed to the Renga Edition of fws last spring. That was such a joy to see unfold as it did. Further, Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press has published two of my books that may have taken much longer to see in print had I opted to use a more traditional publisher. In this respect, being a publisher has given me much freedom and I am certain, opened space for more work to come because, you know, rejection and the burdensome slowness of traditional publishing can be debilitating to a writer’s morale. MSSP gave me speed and now and next. I am very grateful for that!
CH: You’ve taught fine arts for decades, and currently facilitate The Art of Writing Workshop Series for the Patrick Heath Public Library in Boerne, Texas. What has your experience as a teacher brought to your writing life? Please also tell us a little about The Art of Writing Workshop Series.
dep:
Ah! When I teach, I bloom! I always work the prompts I am using to teach a concept or technique and the result is new work of my own, of course! It is said that if one wants to know a subject, one should teach it. I find that I learn so much by trying to explain writing as craft to someone else. In my preparation, I read many poems I would otherwise perhaps not have read. I read commentary by other writers and teachers of writing on the subject I’m approaching. And of course, I hear what the writers who attend my workshops write as a result of the prompts we are working and that is always so interesting and sometimes quite wonderful!
In The Art of Writing workshop series we have approached writing prose poems, memoir, the blessing, the epistle, form poems, poems of praise, rhyming poems, point of view poems, the personal essay, making metaphor, how poems move, and much more. We do a writing warm-up, read some sample poems, try our hand at writing to a prompt or two, share and give soft feedback in every session. We are an intimate group of twelve or less (on zoom for now) and we meet the second Saturday of each month from 1-3P through April, 2021. Beginning in May through September of 2021, I will be continuing the series with a set of five workshops on the writing of memoir also on the second Saturday from 1-3P CST. Workshops are free and open to the public. Please join us! RSVP with interest to stauber@boernelibrary.org
CH: Who are some of your favorite poets, contemporary or otherwise? If you could sit down for an afternoon with a poet from history, who would you choose?
dep: Emily Dickenson, Rumi, Kahlil Gibran, TS Eliot, Whitman, Mary Oliver, Joy Harjo, Alfred K. LaMotte…I tend to like certain poems, those that stay with me, rather than certain poets or entire books, except Rumi and Eliot and Whitman and Oliver. Those I can read again and again. I love the work of my contemporary Robert Okaji. I love your work, Cindy, especially that poem about the Red Admiral I heard you read in Boerne last year and the two we published in Through Layered Limestone: Praise for a Splintered Birdhouse and Nut Sedge. I also very much enjoy the new book by my contemporary Lucy Griffith, We Make A Tiny Herd.
I’d like to sit down with Rumi or Kahlil Gibran.
CH: What is the most recent book of poetry you’ve read?
dep: I am reading Mary Oliver’s What Do We Know.
cindyhuyser 