{an interview with pushcart prize-nominated poet renee emerson, whose first book, KEEPING ME STILL, is now available for purchase}
when you picture someone reading your poetry, how do you see them? what do they think about, wear, and do? or, maybe a better way to say it: who do you write for? and how do you see your writing nourishing others?
I picture my great-great-great granddaughter coming upon my dusty, well-worn poetry book in a box in the attic. Taking it down and thumbing through it while the babies are napping. Smudging it with greasy fingers because she’s reading while cooking dinner. Reading it as she would a diary or a long letter. I know it is a little romantic for this to be my ideal reader, her hair in a loose ponytail and wearing yesterday’s T-shirt, but she’s there behind every poem I write—this future daughter, who will never know me, reading my work and connecting with me through that long echo. I hope to write something worth telling her.
I hope too that my poetry will nourish my readers in the way that I find poetry nourishing in my life—poetry as a way of pausing in the flurry of things, stopping to take notice, to approach what cannot be said in any other way.
how do you use poetry as a practice for spiritual exploration, discipline, or growth? can you offer any practical advice or surefire practices for folks interested in allowing writing to inform their spiritual discipline?
For me, writing poetry is inescapably spiritual. I use it to help me process questions of faith, ideas I wrestle with at times.
I don’t know if anything is ever surefire, but if you are interested in writing as a spiritual discipline, I recommend writing in a prayer journal every day for a month. I’ve done this occasionally, and these prayers, crystallized to a page, have been invaluable to me in seeing God’s goodness and love in what He has and has not allowed in my life.
when you approach your desk, journal, computer—wherever it is you tend to create—what are some of the processes you use? what’s going through your mind? tell us about your habits of writing, no matter how quirky, mundane, strange, or small.
My habits are few—I don’t have time to mess around! I read some poetry, sometimes a favorite poet, but usually something new, just in from the interlibrary loan, and I take notes as I read. I like to handwrite first and second drafts. Since I have a two-year-old and nine-month-old, most often I am thinking, Okay, you only have fifteen minutes, maybe, so—go!
when you go to revise work, how do you typically go about it? are there best practices you follow? give some wise instruction for those of us ready to get cracking on revision!
I typically revise in waves. I learned this from Molly Spencer’s blog, the stanza, where she does a series on revision (a must-read!). To me, revising feels less daunting when I do it a bit at a time. Plus, I get better ideas on it when I let my subconscious mull it over for a few weeks or months.
A few favorite strategies:
- Get there quicker. Are you dawdling? Can you take us to the heart of the poem in fewer lines?
- Take out all of the lineation, then have another poet-friend read through it and add their own lineation. See how they break the lines differently or the same, then re-lineate your poem.
- Don’t slack off on the title—use it as another opportunity. It’s really the first line of the poem.
- Don’t be afraid to rearrange your poem. What happens when you start with your last stanza?
- Replace vague terms with specifics. (Not “tree”—oak. Not “bird”—blue jay.)
- Replace vague emotions with concrete images. (Not “I feel sad”—The sky was gray.)
what’s the best advice you can give to a person just beginning to write, struggling to write, or feeling stuck? what’s something you wish someone had told you starting out?
Read, read, read. Then: write, write, write. You need that more than creative writing classes, workshops, MFAs, anything. The more you read and imitate poets you love, the more you’ll find yourself improving. Be patient with yourself—it takes time to learn to write well.
would you like to share a poem you’re working on or have recently finished and comment on how it was written in light of the comments above? if so, please do so below…
THE BABY KEEPS MY PLACE
While eating again in the deep
confusion of what should be
sleeping hours, she uses
her free hand to casually
tear apart the onion-thin
pages of our family Bible,
right at the part where
God saves whom He will.
This is a poem about my daughter, June. For six months, this chubby dictator ruled my life with an iron fist. She would only sleep in two- and three-hour stretches–if I was holding her the entire time. She couldn’t have cared less about the existence of any other person—only Mommy. It was difficult. So, with all of this cloistering, constant June-care, I would sometimes try to read a little bit while feeding her. Some lonely three a.m. in November, I wrote this poem in one sitting, feeding her with one hand and writing with the other. My sad attempt to be a little bit of who I am aside from the constant role of Mommy—it ended in torn pages. And another time, I likely would have just cried about this. This time I laughed, because I found it fitting, how, as orderly and perfect and carefully kept as I want to keep my life, God gives such very beautiful things to mess up the parts of my life that I thought were so beautiful.
+++++
Renee Emerson is the author of the poetry collection Keeping Me Still (Winter Goose Publishing, April 2014). She received her MFA from Boston University, where she was awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize in 2009. Previous publications include three chapbooks: Something Like Flight (Sargent Press), The Whitest Sheets (Maverick Duck Press), and Where Nothing Can Grow (Batcat Press). Her poetry has been published in Christianity and Literature, Boxcar Poetry Review, Indiana Review, Rock and Sling, 32 Poems, and others, and she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2010. Emerson teaches creative writing and composition at Shorter University in Rome, Georgia, where she lives with her husband and their two daughters. Keeping Me Still is available on Amazon, BN.com, and WinterGoosePublishing.com.