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Jeanann Verlee, Sandy Crimmins Poetry Prize Winner

How will you be celebrating National Poetry Month this year?

I am taking part in National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) 30 poems in 30 days challenge. This is my fifth year participating and I find it to be an excellent motivator. It pushes me to take ever-greater risks as the month progresses; I find myself trying new things, testing alternative entries into poems, discovering startling new voices. Additionally, on April 22nd at the Nuyorican Poets Café in New York City, photographer Jonathan Weiskopf and I (as editor) released the portrait and poem anthology, For Some Time Now: Performance Poets of New York City.

Your poem "Hereditary" just won the Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry. Please explain the creative process you went through in writing it, why you chose to submit it, and what inspired you to write it?

Yes, I’m thrilled about the prize.

In writing the piece, I wanted to show variable manifestations of manic rage, and to blur the lines between the I, we, and she, so that landing on the mother-daughter relationship would be amplified. Titling came last, though its concept clearly drove the poem. Formatting this piece on the page took substantially more work than is typical for me. Most of my poems settle in to their form during initial drafts, but "Hereditary" underwent many shapes prior to landing at Philadelphia Stories.

Friend and colleague, Syreeta McFadden, notified me about the contest but my newer work (I had just finished compiling my second full-length manuscript) was locked up in submissions. While I make it a rule to never simultaneously submit poems, Syreeta convinced me to do so expressly for this competition. When "Hereditary" won, I had to scramble to pull the piece from another publication. I’m incredibly excited, and still in a fair amount of shock.

A longstanding theme in my work is the shame behind manic rage within manic depression – particularly its manifestation in women. Women are not allotted much forgiveness in violence; often expected to show quieter emotions. As such, shame is a pervasive function of the illness. I wanted to try to explore feminine rage without apology.

In an interview for HTML Giant by Roxanne Gay, you wrote that you enjoy the fact that your writing is never finished. What are the creative steps to feeling like one of your poems is ready to be shared with other people?

I try to come at each piece with the same careful attention. From conception to first draft, I work and rework: omissions and rewrites, rearranging lines and words, pushing toward risk, fine-tuning. I talk myself through each line, focus on how the reader’s eye is guided. Once I’ve worked a piece to the point I can no longer see the poem clearly/objectively, I ask for feedback from close friends and editors. Then I might dip the poem’s toes at an open mic, then more editors, then submissions, etc. I come back to the poem at each interval, working and tightening, looking for every loose cog, missed opportunity. Even still, after publication, I invariably find things I’d like to change or rework. Thus the concept, "never finished."

What ranges of political engagement and modes of resistance does writing/reading poetry offer you?

As both a liberal and a feminist, there is often a social/political undercurrent in my own work – regardless of each poem’s content. However, much of my newer work addresses a limited set of social issues, and as such, speaks to a rather finite audience (e.g., women facing the close of childbearing years, or individuals with manic depression). In that, I don’t know if my work can be perceived as "politically relevant" as it may have previously been.

Still, I’ve often asserted that to some extent all poems are both love poems and political poems. Poetry allows more (artistically) political freedom than, say, journalism. Meaning, poets can address a given politician without the rigmarole of trying to schedule a dialogue, or arguing fact-checkers, or navigating backlash counter-reports from the "other" guys (though response poems are fairly popular). Further, poets are not bound to journalistic rules of truth. If I want to stir Rush Limbaugh into a pot of vegetable stew, I can. I can relieve tortured baby Afreen Farooq’s suffering by turning her into a field of daffodils. I can imagine my way through anything and still keep my job. This (to me) means a wider scope of engagement and more fierce modes of resistance. Even if they are untrue in real-world terms, consumers of poetry recognize the intent.

In your experience, what are the pros and cons of getting published online versus in print?

Online publications are increasingly more popular as a matter of immediate gratification. Writers can post links to their poetry on websites/social media sites and get instant reaction from readers. I imagine there is also greater readership online-if for no other reason than the internet is vast and free. Print, however, still holds a certain esteem. Somewhere in all of us, we long for acceptance to that one special journal we’ve always coveted. There is no denying the excitement and pride of such an acceptance-and the later joy holding the issue in our own hands.

What drew you to live in New York City and how has it shaped you as a poet /person?

I wanted to live in New York City after my first visit at 5 years old. I was in awe of the vibrancy-a city so wholly alive. I finally arrived years later, primarily in pursuit of theatre, which I eventually abandoned. Coming out of the dark side of a divorce, among other things, I landed back in the lap of poetry. Only then did I realize it had been nearly a decade since working on my own writing. I immersed myself in various writing communities across the city, participating in workshops and open mics, and (though I originally resisted the game) poetry slams. I’ve been lucky in my involvement with the poetry community in this city; I have access to a broad network of artists and am continually challenged by incredibly talented writers and editors. New York makes me work harder.

What was your favorite band in seventh grade?

GBH. (http://gbhuk.com)

Honeymoon

Memory is a cat.
It rarely does what it is told to do.
We can say, "Be a good Memory
And fetch past days
In unblemished detail
So I can feel the wind as it felt then,
See the morning light as it shone then,"
But Memory is not a dog.
It will not listen.

The Past is a bird
With see-through skin,
Entrails of sky and sun.
Memory pounces.
Feathers fly.
The Past
Escapes being mashed,
But there is some damage.
Nervous and disoriented,
Its song is fractured
And so a joyful time,
The Thruway south of Albany,
Your wife of 24 hours asleep
In the passenger seat,
Appears without low fuel
Or squinting in the sun.
Scott Thomas has a B.A. in Literature from Bard College, a M.S. in Library Science from Columbia University, and a M.A. in English from the University of Scranton and is currently employed as a librarian; specifically, Head of Information Technologies & Technical Services at the Scranton Public Library in Scranton, PA. He lives in Dunmore, PA with his wife Christina and his son Ethan. His poems have appeared in Mankato Poetry Review, The Kentucky Poetry Review, Sulphur River Literary Review, and other journals.

Paper Wings

Icarus, sometimes I think we got it all wrong.
You weren’t the son of Titans, but the kid
in the back of the class, orphan to a
bright burning star,sticking your paper
wings together with glue
and chewing gum.
Kathryn A. Kopple is a translator of Latin American poetry and prose. Her translations have appeared in numerous reviews and anthologies. She has also published original work in Danse Macabre, The Hummingbird Review, and 322 Review. She has a poem titled "Sloth" forthcoming in The Threepenny Review. She lives and writes with her family in Philadelphia.

Bread, Milk

Picture beauty:
it’s not what you think,
but a day like this one:
round, tarnished

with the sadness
that just is.
Just is and no need to fix it.

Hard to accept,
how that isn’t cause for grief,

or reason to ignore dandelions
flourishing in a margin of sun
or fail to linger over
the existential plight
of clothespins on an empty line.

You may suspect at times
that this is all a shirt with three sleeves,
and contort yourself,
thinking there’s some obstacle between you and you.

The trick is just to wait
for life to spend you on the sly,
like a foreign penny
at the corner store
on something necessary.
Jeanne Obbard received a Leeway Award for Emerging Artists in 2001. Her work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, Anderbo, and the anthology Prompted.

Numbers: 1965

Castor Avenue was Jewish then
delis, yarmulkes,
old bearded men, two by two
arguing in Yiddish
bearing wrinkled gray suits
and soiled white shirts
to the cleaners where I worked
in my Catholic school uniform.
Wives in faded housedresses bore
pin-striped pants and cigar-scented
vests. And sometimes
forearms tattooed with
black numbers would slide
heavy woolen overcoats
across the formica counter, but
those numbers meant no more
to me than the tiny black numbers
on tags I pinned to their garments.
Kathleen Shaw grew up in Northeast Philly during the 1960s. For twenty years,
she has taught English at Montgomery County Community College in Pottstown.

The Poet on the Bus

Cake-walking down the sidewalk, a zaftig young woman
witnessing to whatever lyric is surging through her headphones,
carrying her away beside Broad Street, its flow of sinfulness.
Music is a manifestation of something that can be believed in.
Revelation is something that’s hard to keep to yourself. She is filled.
Maybe she is singing, but I’ve been deafened by glass
and she blinded by early-morning ecstasy – her left hand raised
and pulled back, raised again, the fingers of that hand opening
then closing as if breathing, or as if stretched up to a closet shelf,
grasping for something unseen, something lost, something that
belongs to her.
Steve Burke lives in the Mt Airy section of the city with wife Giselle & daughter Mariah; has worked as a labor & delivery nurse for many years; has been wiriting poetry much longer than that; and has been published in PBQ, Schuykill Valley Journal, Apiary, Mad Poets Review.

Excerpt from Report from the road to eudamonia

Postcard unto a sense of tribelessness

But nothing so stable as form-designated hue (especially which is no
hue at all) will account for the sudden ruddiness, china-blue and, a few
months each year, light-wheat-toast. Not to mention constellated with
the fat moles of my father’s side. And something of Albion in me, and
Westphalia, and a French monarch, and a Russian princess. There is
heritage to trace, per se, and leads from the fleshy part of the Michigan
mitten back East to where my mother’s people maybe actually thought
they’d discovered something New, and back again across the months
of the Atlantic, beyond the Channel deep into the Continent, to where
Caesar’s conquests once convinced bellicose and patriotic tribes to shake
hands and not hatchets. But the brittle tree I stenciled in Ms. Rae’s fourth-
grade class is diffuse, and describes not a uniform fondue but a stew of
only partially assimilated ante-states and when I am still I stand in the
middle of them all, no allegiance to speak of, no religion or tongue or
flag to bind me, a picture brought to focus by chance alignment of many
reckless stars and libidos.

Jacob A. Bennett lives and works in Philadelphia, where he teaches rhetoric, poetry, and literature. Links to CV, other poems, and various well-intentioned screeds published at: antigloss.wordpress.com

the neighbors, from Russia with love

i.
i wasn’t allowed to go in their house.
but my mom let me play in the yard
with their daughter.
ii.
Anastasya was my age and once,
she snuck me in.
her basement looked like mine
but in reverse,
like some alternate universe,
fun-house mirror.
it was dingier though,
and smelled like mildew.
iii.
they had a cat named Stinky
who once
climbed up our magnolia tree.
my dad cajoled him down.
Stinky seemed unwilling to return
to his owners:
he squirmed in revolt as we handed him back
to our stern Russian neighbor.
i don’t remember what he looked like.
the neighbor man, that is.
the cat was a Calico.
iv.
the Russian neighbors had chickens, once.
they plodded around in a small gated area of their backyard.
and one day,
the Russian man hung up dead fish on the clothing line,
like soaking wet pillowcases.
v.
Ruth, the Jewish old woman next door,
knocked on their door and said,
"the chickens and the dead fish? we don’t do that here in America."
Julia Perch is an editorial assistant by day, writer by night, and a literary geek at all times. She earned her B.A. in English from Drexel University, and currently lives and works in West Philly.

Light Against the Dark of the Café Windows

In the opposite corner – across the empty tables – is, I think,
Max, the young neighbor-man who when he was about two,
at our first block party after moving in, toddled away, and
was found at street’s end, where yellow tape kept traffic
from turning, by then-teenage Sherwood, dead six weeks after
arriving in Iraq, some five years past. Max is sitting on a bench
leaning over his laptop, maybe writing of why he ran away,
or of hearing adults recount it. Or maybe explaining why
Sherwood died. Explaining then deleting it. Behind the counter
barista Layney washes the evening cups and saucers in the steel sink;
night snug as the water on her forearms about this old brick station,
and no explanation, no explanation for anything at all.

Steve Burke lives in the Mt Airy section of the city with wife Giselle & daughter Mariah, has worked as a labor & delivery nurse for many years, has been writing poetry much longer than that, and has been published in PBQ, Schuykill Valley Journal, Apiary, Mad Poets Review.

Genre Crossing

This past spring, I signed up for a poetry class, and I did so with serious trepidation. As a fiction writer, I haven’t spent much time in the realm of poetry, though I did hang out with a few poets in grad school. As a lot, they were puzzling, prone to short outbursts of sudden conversational insight, as well as to leaving their thoughts half-finished–giving the listener the sense that what they said contained ellipses at the end…Overall, I found them to be, well, flakey. I figured that they perhaps had less stamina than fiction writers–that the best they could do was scribble one page of writing before being exhausted and intellectually spent–they were the sprinters, whereas fiction writers could go the distance, run the marathon.  After taking the poetry class and seeing the work required to create a successful poem, I had a new sense of respect and awe for poets.

Also, let’s be honest, I didn’t “get” poetry; didn’t understand the mechanics of it, how a person came up with an idea, how to scan a line, what to do about rhyming (pro or con?). My brush with poetry was limited to high school English class and Walk Whitman’s "I Sing the Body Electric," which made me squirm with embarrassment, or Emily Dickinson’s one about the cracked cup, which seemed sad and totally like something a spinster would write. Aw, poor Emily! I thought. It wasn’t until I read e.e. cummings and Auden that I started to wonder if maybe I had been too dismissive of poetry. The only poem I’d ever written was in first grade for Mother’s Day:

Mom’s are neat

Mom’s are sweat (actual spelling error and/or sophisticated slant rhyme?)

Mom’s are nice

Mom’s are afraid of little white mice.

When I started this poetry class, I was terrified. Mostly, I feared appearing stupid during critiques. What if I accidentally faulted a poem for having sixteen lines or missed a pristine example of enjambment (I still don’t know what this word means)?

As in any good class, we began first by reading collections of poetry. To my relief, I discovered that some poets write in quick snapshot scenes, not unlike a highly condensed short story. They showed me it was okay to write a prose poem, focusing in on one particular thing and telling that story in a shorter form. I also rediscovered the importance of finding the right word. Since poetry is a concise, there’s less room to mess around. Every word, every image, every metaphor carries ten times more weight than it does in fiction. Nothing can be wasted.

I also found a sense of play in poetry that I’d lost in fiction and learned that the sound of words mattered too; they should go trippingly off the tongue. And then my favorite thing about writing a poem was the sense of satisfaction I received in being able to have a whole draft of something in one sitting. Even though I knew I would have to go back over it again and again,

I also discovered that there is poetry in everyday life. Contrary to my beliefs, I didn’t need to find something profound to say about life or death. Instead, I was encouraged to focus on the particular, what it feels like to sit in the chair at the dentist’s office, how I can best describe the splash of light coloring the morning sidewalk, the most apt simile to capture how the cat looks watching a daddy long legs crawl up the bedroom wall. Poetry reminded me that all of it matters.  Realizing anew the importance of being exact has helped me improve my fiction writing on both a sentence level and overall. 

So, whether you are a poet, an essayist, or a short story writer, consider venturing out of your genre and experimenting with a different form. You might find more than just a renewed appreciation of your fellow artist; you might also uncover a new way to enter into your own work.

           

 

 

 

 

Aimee LaBrie is an award-winning author and teaches a fiction workshop for Philadelphia Stories.