AROHOSpeaks: Writer to Writer

Harvesting insights and practical writing ideas presented, generated, and shared between women writers at AROHO's 2011 Retreat

Writer to Writer: Interview with Elana Bell

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Photo by Jamie Clifford

It takes less than five minutes in conversation with Elana Bell to get a sense of her warmth and joie de vivre. I was lucky to have a chance to spend an afternoon hiking with Elana and a group of women in the New Mexico desert during the 2011 AROHO retreat. We caught up with each other again in Chicago at the 2012 AWP conference. Elana’s new book, Eyes, Stones, will be published this spring. Her book launch party in Brooklyn on May 3, 2012 (details at http://www.elanabell.com/event/), will be a multimedia event, including a performance piece based on her book, with two dancers and a musician who plays glass; there will also be an auction of original art by ten artists, proceeds to benefit the peace organization Just Vision. Elana’s travels have brought her wisdom, poetry, and awards. Here she reflects on her work as a poet.—Barbara Ann Yoder

The evening you received the 2011 Walt Whitman Award for your first collection of poems, Eyes, Stones, you said that one of the questions you were exploring in these poems is “How can two narratives live in one body?” The first narrative, you said, began with your grandmother, who survived Auschwitz. The second narrative came through the time you spent with Palestinians in the West Bank. Can you say a bit more about the two narratives and how they have influenced your work?

My grandmother has always said that the only reason she survived the Holocaust was because she had this burning hope to go to Israel, the place she imagined would be a haven for Jews, unlike Poland where she was born and suffered tremendously as a Jew. I was incredibly curious about how this place where she had never been was able to sustain her through such horrific conditions.

I first visited Israel as an adult on a Taglit-Birthright Israel trip and fell totally in love with the land. I came back feeling passionate about my “homeland” and buying into the standard Jewish narrative about the formation of the state of Israel.

But when I started speaking to my left leaning poetry and political activist community in New York, and hearing the work of Palestinian poets like Suheir Hammad, it was clear that there was another narrative thread that I had not explored. I knew I had to go back. I traveled to the West Bank several times, got to know many Palestinians, stayed in their homes, developed relationships with them, heard their stories, and saw how they struggled with oppression. The book gave me a way to continue exploring these narratives and the tension they created inside of me.

How did you approach the development of these poems?

The poems began as a kind of conversation between my grandmother and the land of Israel—not the nation-state, but the physical land. I began to explore how the idea of this place sustained her through the Holocaust and how her experience of it changed once she actually got there. Israel was full of difficulties and complications, and after four years she and my grandfather had to leave. I also examined the relationship of historical and biblical figures to the land and interviewed contemporary Israelis and Palestinians who had a deep connection to the land. At the same time I examined my own relationship to the land and my hugely conflicted feelings about it. In addition to interviews and history, I used my personal experiences—journal entries, photographs, people’s stories collected during my travels—as the seeds for poems.

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You’ve often been asked, “Whose side are you on?” How have you come to answer that question?

The more time I spent in the West Bank, the more Palestinians and Israelis I spoke to, the more humbled I felt about voicing my opinion. I have never lost a son to war or a suicide attack. I have never had my house bulldozed or watched my child be shot by a soldier. As far as which side I am on, I believe that there is only one side—that what is good for Israel and the Israelis, in the long term, is what is good for Palestine and Palestinians.

This idea is messy and, I’ve been told, idealistic. But when I see the bravery of the people who live there, I am full of hope.

On one visit to the West Bank, I heard Sami Awad, who is the director of Holy Land Trust, a Palestinian organization committed to nonviolent resistance, speak about his trip to Auschwitz. “I went because I wanted to understand the fear of annihilation that permeates the core psyche of the Jewish people, no matter how powerful their current army is,” he said. “Being there, meditating on the floor of the death camps, I realized that until we include that awareness in the work that we are doing, our cause will not succeed.”

Elana Rozenman, who founded Trust Emun, an interfaith peace building organization, said that after her son survived a suicide bomb attack on Ben Yehuda Street, “It was clear to me that God was sending me a wake up call, that I could no longer live in my safe Orthodox bubble, and that I needed to meet Palestinian women, mothers who have also lost their children and husbands to the violence. The idea that the leaders would just take care of everything was clearly not working.” 

I am on the side of these human beings. I am on the side of the builders.

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What has changed for you since you won the Whitman Award for Eyes, Stones?

Even before publication of the book, winning the Whitman Award has provided opportunities. It has enabled me to connect with and have my work read by poets whom I greatly admire, for example, Naomi Shihab Nye. Additionally, I was recently asked to do a reading with Gerald Stern to celebrate the life and work of Emma Lazarus at the Jewish Heritage Museum. I am honored to read with a poet I have loved since I was in high school and to consider Emma Lazarus’ work more deeply. I also think that being able to list the award in my bio when I sent out some of the individual poems may have encouraged some editors to publish them (of course, this is speculation). 

But the most exciting aspect of winning the award so far is that it gave me the courage to realize a long-time artistic vision. Many of the poems in Eyes, Stones are persona poems, in the voices of contemporary and historical characters. Sometime during the process of creating this book, I knew that I wanted to create a performance version based on the text. When I found out that I’d won the award, I decided that I would create a performance piece with dancers and musicians addressing the question, “How can two narratives exist in one body?” The piece is now in rehearsal and will debut at the book release party. It is one of the most exciting creative experiences I have ever had.

Did the award have an effect on any decisions you made as a writer, on the path you chose to take in life, or in your work?

Winning the award was sort of like a steroid shot—it has given me courage to begin applying for college teaching positions, to create a website, and to take new artistic risks. I also have visions of the work I want to do as an educator, using creative writing as a tool for people from regions in conflict. Winning the award gives me a sense of confidence to begin to develop that curriculum and pedagogy.

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Elana teaching a creative writing workshop for women in the West Bank

For your work as a public school teacher who nurtures students in their writing, you received a Touching Lives Fellowship to attend the 2011 AROHO retreat. What did that experience give you?

It was a wonderful gift. I was given the opportunity to connect with many amazing women writers. I was given the chance to just follow my own mind’s wanderings with no imposed schedule or expectations. This came on the heels of a very challenging year in the classroom, so I was particularly grateful. I would not have been able to attend the retreat if I had not received the fellowship.

Can you tell us about a memorable idea or exercise from the AROHO retreat?

When Bhanu Kapil gave her amazing poetry talk and shared her process and the questions she used to develop The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers, and then had us answer those questions with each other—that was such a powerful reminder of the necessity to follow your instincts and obsessions as a writer. It’s as important as the actual sitting down at the desk.

Is there a specific woman writer who inspires you?

Carolyn Forché is a huge inspiration for me, both because of the urgency and risk taking in her subject matter—she often writes poetry that is deeply concerned with politics and social justice—and because she has allowed her style of writing to change. With each book she challenges herself to experiment with new and different forms.

How would you describe your typical writing day?

When I am in a GOOD rhythm and I have total freedom of time, my typical writing schedule is to wake up, do yoga or meditate, eat breakfast and then WRITE! I like to start with free writing or spillage (no censor, no plan) for thirty minutes. Then I like to do some sort of writing exercise; usually I’ll pull a line from a poem I love as a jumping off point and work with that. Then, I pull out poems I am working on; either I go back in my notebook and read through what I have written and find something I want to develop, or I pull out a piece that I have started and go back to work on it. 

What are you working on now?

Right now I am preparing for the book party, which will not only celebrate the release of Eyes, Stones, but also provide an opportunity for artists in multiple disciplines to engage in conversation, and give people a chance to learn about and support organizations that do grass roots peace building work in Israel and Palestine, organizations that manifest my deepest values and beliefs about the kind of world that is possible. 

Since Eyes, Stones was accepted for publication, it has been a challenge for me to find a focus for my writing, especially since Eyes, Stones is such a theme-specific project. Right now I am just diving into the vast ocean of my conscious/subconscious mind, swimming in it, keeping up a daily writing practice, seeing what happens. I am writing a lot about my relationship to my mother and her depression and my questions about how hereditary it is, how it travels through my DNA, what she carried from being the daughter of Holocaust survivors. This work is very different than the poetry in Eyes, Stones. We’ll see where it takes me.

Elana Bell is a poet, performer, and educator. Her first collection of poetry, Eyes, Stones, (Louisiana State University Press, April 2012) was selected by Fanny Howe as the winner of the 2011 Walt Whitman Award. Elana is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Jerome Foundation, the Edward Albee Foundation, the AROHO Foundation, and the Drisha Institute. Her work has recently appeared in Harvard Review, Massachusetts Review, CALYX Journal, and elsewhere. Elana has led creative writing workshops for women in prison, for educators, for high school students in Israel and Palestine and throughout the five boroughs of New York City, as well as for the pioneering peace building and leadership organization, Seeds of Peace. She currently serves as the writer-in-residence for the Bronx Academy of Letters and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Writer to Writer: Interview with Jan La Roche

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 We’re honored to offer yet another glimpse into a talented mind and heart present last summer at AROHO’s 2011 retreat for women writers. What a pleasure to correspond with Jan La Roche leading up to the interview (her emails read like poetry, which I confess, seems—fortunately--to be the plight of the emails shuttling back and forth between the poets of AROHO so far).  Jan’s poet’s eye view of photography and how its processes mirror and inspire her writing (as well as her insights on watercolor painting, collaboration and the retreat) follows:

Can you describe for us what you’re currently working on?

 For the past four years I have been working on a manuscript titled, Vernacular. It is a title with two meanings. Most people first think of this word associated with language currently being spoken in a region of the world. Being a photographer who has studied art history and photo history as an undergraduate and as a graduate student, I first learned the term vernacular as a turn of the twentieth century reference.

Kodak introduced the Kodak #1 camera in 1888 with a 100 exposure roll of film inside it. Americans went wild shooting snap shots of everyone and everything around them. Simple everyday moments of life in pictures were done for the pure joy of something new without restrictions of art trends, commerce or advertising. Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe’s husband, started the Photo Succession and Pictorialist movements in rebellion to the random pictures of the masses. As an advocate of the aesthetic, he made photography into an art form.

My poems are written for the pleasure of discovery. I never know how they will turn out until written on the page. My spiral notebook is a playground where all ideas run free. Margins have more points and additions scribbled in. The surface of the page is covered with possibilities. It all hangs out there until transcribed on the laptop into stanzas. The process is similar to pre-digital photography because back then I knew what I was trying to capture, but didn’t know if the picture was successful until printed and scrutinized for detail.

Over the years I have added more poems to Vernacular that pertain to different aspects of the photographic process such as when I managed a one-hour lab in the ‘80’s, “loads of film piled up/on my left like linguini.” When I described using a camera that “memoirs light” and “sees what is invisible,” I transformed a technical object into a magical art form. In the darkroom tray “an idea floats on water” and those pictures “outlive their biological cameras.” Another poem talked about conducting light as if it were music in an orchestra. The photographic poems emerge when the muse develops another idea. I cannot rush this collection, it would show. As it continues to grow, each poem is a nuance of photography that was, or is, a part of my life.

How did you come up with your Desert Delight for AROHO’s 2011 Retreat? Can you talk about your relationship to words and art/photography/images and how they dovetail for you?

When I first attended the AROHO Retreat in 2009, I brought my watercolor set and camera. Over-stimulated by the environment of stunning red rock, I had trouble putting down my paintbrushes or shutting off my camera to attend a workshop or a mentoring session. I could roam in the car for hours or hike endlessly, fueled by those sights around me. Watercolor is my favorite spontaneous, colorful way to paint a feeling or idea, or render a landscape.

My Desert Delight class for AROHO’s 2011 Retreat came about because I wanted to teach basic watercolor skills to others so they could illustrate their writings. Different techniques that I demonstrated led to different thoughts on how to approach “making” a painting. My joy was in sharing what I knew from my experience with this medium.

Is there one specific moment or event at the retreat that sparked an insight or shift in how you perceive either your work or yourself as a writer?

For several years I have come across the language poets in Poetry or in books published by the Academy of American Poets. I’ve wondered why these were published because nothing seemed memorable. Then I wondered what was wrong with my memory. What was I missing? Marilynn Robinson said two statements in her keynote speech: “Don’t follow trends, follow your own mind” and “To be original—consult deeply with yourself,” really struck a note in me.

She is a keen observer crafting words so readers are right there in her vision. She confirmed and validated I am who I am as a visual artist, writing poetry through imagery. 

I ask myself internal questions and listen patiently for my consciousness to answer. Scenes and people fill my dreams, and I often think of those dreams throughout the day. Surreal ones have inspired poems, (in a recent dream I drove through a flaming fuel oil truck on a rural, heavily wooded road on my way to pick up a Chinese take-out order), and I use all the senses to enhance the images in every stanza.

This is what I do, and stay true to it and myself. To use an analogy of hairstyles, I’ve had short hair for thirty-one years, varying the length of bangs, the length in the back, or the sides. I modify fashion to fit my kind of style, so that what is in fashion is what looks best on me. As with my poetry, I’ll sprinkle in a new, rhyming form, restrict my words with haiku, or inhabit the world of a discovered persona from history. But the way I write, is always mine.

Please tell us about your book that pairs gestural drawings and poems, 25 years  poems & drawings, (Tide Mill Press 2007), that you co-authored with your husband. Which came first, the poems or the drawings? Did that work lead to your website and can you tell us more about it?

The book, 25 years  poems & drawings, came about as a tribute to our twenty five years of marriage and was given to all of our guests at a party we held in our home. My husband, Jef, has always been a figurative artist using charcoal pencil to render the anatomy of his models. About ten years ago his work became abstract, using somewhere between seven to thirteen bold lines to capture the gesture. For the book I spent a few months gathering and editing twenty-five of my best poems.

We enjoyed the pairing of figures to poems, like we enjoy the pairing of wine with food. Jef utilized his graphic design skills and did page layouts, designed the cover (using one of my painted photographs as the background) and formatted it. We had it printed on premium paper stock to enhance the appearance of the drawings and my writings. The books arrived a week before the party and we were delighted with the results.

Our individual work has since surpassed what is on those pages from 2007. Jef “draws” now on his iPad with bolder, blacker strokes and can be more spontaneous because he doesn’t have to worry about turning pages or sharpening (or breaking) the tips of his charcoal pencils. With my poetry, I have walked further into the landscape of my mind, where a stream of photographic aspects is starting to flow through more of my work.

As professional artist/photographers we have a website showing what we can offer to our clients, http://imagehouse25.com/. Our styles through the past twenty-five years have shifted from manual cameras shooting weddings and portraits, to a complete digital workflow between camera, scanner and computer. Old, damaged or faded pictures are restored back to their original appearance (if not better), digital collages constructed out of three dimensional objects, clippings, and handwritten notes are enhanced by adding shadows beneath them, among the photographs of a person’s life. Our favorite ones are tribute collages, showing a chronology of pictures and objects from a loved one’s history, telling a story to the viewer.

Digital painting is another aspect of our services where we can change a portrait we’ve shot, or a customer’s snapshot, into a finished painting with lush brush strokes on canvas. Many pet owners have requested this as well. This website was recently re-designed by Jef so that after people have looked at what we can offer, they can go to our on-line shops next to see our personal work on Etsy. Jef’s shop, NudeLines, has a collection of his gestural drawings made into fine art, giclee prints. My store, EarthGemDesign, has art jewelry made from natural gemstones.

Jan La Roche is a poet and artist whose recent book 25 Years, Poems & Drawings, (Tide Mill Press 2007), was co-authored with her husband as a tribute to their enduring, collaborative marriage. It contains twenty-five of Jan’s poems mixed with twenty-five of his gestural drawings. Jan has also been published in Oberon (2005), Mobius (2008), and in the anthology, Paumanok: Poems and Pictures of Long Island (2009) where several of her poems and photographs appear. She has been the Managing Editor of Oberon Poetry magazine for the past five years.

Jan La Roche was interviewed by Tania Pryputniewicz.

Writer to Writer Interview with Ruth Thompson

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Ruth Thompson is interviewed by Lisa Rizzo:

When I think back to AROHO’s summer retreat, I remember Ruth as a quiet, gentle presence who made space at the table for me to sit at meals and led sessions in yoga.  While we had pleasant chats during our time at Ghost Ranch, I didn’t really get to know her.  Since returning to our “real lives,” I have gotten to know Ruth a little better through email – but it wasn’t until conducting this interview that I feel like I have better understanding of this wonderful woman.  As with all the AROHO interviews, what has surprised me the most has been finding so many similarities and connections between someone who appeared so different from myself.

            1) Thinking back to the 2011 AROHO retreat, can you tell us about an idea, exercise or

conversation that had either an identifiable impact upon your writing habits or became a finished piece of writing or one in process?  

 Recently I’ve become more and more involved in an intense, fast-moving (oh dear, here it comes) spiritual transformation, and finding it more and more difficult to write of my experiences in ways that were not platitudinous or fixative or [fill in blank]....

So I arrived at Ghost Ranch with the question: am I a poet or am I a person engaged in some kind of inner transformation? Are these two things compatible? Is it even possible to write about this stuff?

The first thing was a marvelously affirming conversation with Ruth Schwartz, who is both a shaman and a poet, and who said: yes, that’s a valid question. The problem is real. I don’t know the answer.

Then, at Bhanu Kapil’s Mind Stretch, one of the Twelve Questions was “What is the shape of your body?” When I read that I felt as though my whole field was restructuring around the question.

That night I had a dream in which “I” was a residue over the earth of Ghost Ranch – the shape of the valley, its walls and rocks and dry river beds. This dream became a poem, and eventually led to more poems.

I still haven’t an answer to my question, but at Ghost Ranch I began writing again, and maybe edging my way into a language I can work with – which seems to have to do with the shape of my body.

But I also want to add: What Esther said: The sky. The sky. The sky.

            2) Is there one specific moment or event at the retreat that sparked an insight or shift in how you perceive either your work or yourself as a writer?

The night I read at Ghost Ranch was an amazing experience for me. Suddenly I found myself welcomed, accepted by other writers whom I admired. There was a place for me in the community of writers! I can’t describe how important that has been. It was like being released from prison.

I’m even doing a reading tour for Woman with Crows! This is so astonishing to me -- me, the person who suffered from terror of public speaking most of her life! But somehow the poems speak themselves – “I” am not there any more. All I have to do is let go and let whatever it is come in.

Though I must confess that it took Sandra Hunter giving me a kick in the pants by setting up reading gigs for me in LA and saying, Just. Do. It.

So: another huge gift of AROHO: the Goddess Sandra.

            3) What’s the best advice you’ve received about writing?

Last year I took a workshop at Chautauqua from Frank X Gaspar, an extraordinary poet, incredibly brave, like no one else. (http://www.webdelsol.com/LITARTS/Alice_James_Books/Gaspar/gaspar_green.html 

and: http://www.frankgaspar.com/poems/pthousand_blossoms.html)

Here are five of what I call The Gaspar Mantras:

“Words are first of all sound.”

“Poetry is about making the body feel something.”

“A poem driven by something you want to say is bound to fail.”

“Start where you are. Write your mind.” 

“Your poems are teaching your soul something.”

            4) How would you describe your typical writing day?

 I usually meditate for half an hour or so in the morning. Then I journal for a while. Most of the journaling is pages of to-do lists, anxieties. In there somewhere, maybe, an image, a phrase. A dream. An idea.

Then I usually go for a long walk, a couple of hours. I carry a small digital recorder and download my thoughts, what I’m seeing, hearing.... I also carry on long conversations with myself that I don’t record. I might even cry, sing, shout. I walk on deserted roads or trails, so I haven’t been arrested yet.

When I get back, I listen to the recordings and write the journal stuff in the journal (and the shopping lists somewhere else). So this is another way of journaling.

When it comes to an actual writing day, if I’m not working on something already, I’ll go back through the journals and pull out an interesting image or idea, or phrase. And I’ll work with that, write and write, without editing, still in longhand, until the vein feels exhausted.

Then I start cutting. This might be days later. Eventually I transfer what remains onto the computer, and continue cutting, revising. Sometimes for years. And sometimes the poem is waiting in there, the face in the stone, or it might come in out of left field. Or not at all. Or it’s not worth saying.

But the truth is, I write most, write best, when I’m “on leave” – at a conference, retreat, some place where I can be irresponsible and solitary and just do what I feel like doing, write in the middle of the night if I want.... 

So why, since I am supposed to be retired, am I doing anything else?

            5) Can you describe for us what you’re currently working on?

In February I made myself stop revising Woman with Crows and sent it off to the publisher. So now I’m dry as a bone. I don’t know what will come in, or if anything will come in.

 In the meantime ... the amazing dancer Shizuno Nasu (who also lives part of the time on the Big Island) suggested we do a collaborative performance – dance, poetry, and drumming – of the poems in my chapbook, Here Along Cazenovia Creek.

 It was a terrifying and wonderful experience, to move outside the protections of the lectern, the notes, the known rituals of “giving a reading,” to speak the poems as part of a larger context of improvised movement and sound. No rehearsal, basically.

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I read very poorly -- I was distracted, worrying about where I was supposed to be standing, what I was supposed to be doing – but Shizuno was just wonderful. And the listeners who were not readers of poetry were really caught up in the experience, so in that sense it was a way of connecting with people who (think they) don’t like poetry. 

On the other hand, the listeners who were readers of poetry felt that the impact of the poems was lost, that they became part of the musical accompaniment to the dance. Several said they would like a separate audio, with just a reading or reading with drumming. So that’s interesting.

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6) Is there a specific question you’d have liked us to ask and if so, could you answer it? Yes: How did you come to start a small press?

I was in my mid-sixties, let’s just say with a lot of history, before I started submitting Woman with Crows to publishers. After two years – often a semifinalist, even a finalist, but always in the end a rejection – I decided, to hell with this, I’ll publish my books myself.

I had freed myself from an abusive marriage and I could smell that old smell on my skin, and I thought, No. Never again. I am not going to sit at anyone’s gate with my begging bowl. I took my authority back and I’m not giving it away now.

I’m old. I’m crabbed. I’m the shape I’m in. I’m interested in old wrinkled people sex and forgetfulness and birds, I’m interested in how blue the sky is and levitation. My voice is my voice, for better or worse. If my poetry is not to the liking of the gatekeepers, so be it. I am who I am. I can’t now write like anyone else, even if I wanted to. And what I really want is to write more and more like myself, and see where that goes.

 Another Gaspar Mantra: “Never bother to write a poem someone else could write.”Within days, literally, of cutting that cord, I got an email saying that my book had been accepted for publication. Wham.

I went ahead and started Saddle Road Press anyway, because it represented empowerment. So far I’ve published my own chapbook, Here Along Cazenovia Creek, and a book of poems by Perry Nicholas, What the World Sees. Next is a chapbook by a young poet, Caiden Feldmiller, and then a book of essays by a New Zealand writer. Then we’ll see. I’m broke. But it’s been worth it.

 

Ruth’s Bio:

Grew up in the Bay Area, went to Stanford, PhD Indiana; was an English professor, librarian, college dean in LA. Now live in Colden, NY and Hilo, Hawai’i with my long-lost college sweetheart. Teach writing, meditation, and yoga. Woman with Crows (tbp August) was a finalist for AROHO’s To The Lighthouse Prize. Here Along Cazenovia Creek was a “best chapbook[s] of 2011” in a couple of lists, became a performance with dancer Shizuno Nasu.

My website is http://ruththompson.net. There are some poems there, and at http://harpurpalate.blogspot.com/p/back-issues.html and http://newmillenniumwritings.com/Issue17/nmw17-poetry-RuthThompson.html

Here Along Cazenovia Creek is available at Amazon and there are reader reviews there.http://www.amazon.com/Here-Along-Cazenovia-Creek-Thompson/dp/0983307202/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1302214959&sr=8-1

 Woman with Crows should be listed on WordTech’s site by August. I hope. (http://www.wordtechcommunications.com/index.html)

Writer to Writer: Interview with Tracey Cravens Gras

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Photo by Jamie Clifford, 2011 AROHO Retreat

 

Like many other women writers, when I first stumbled on A Room of Her Own Foundation, I felt an immediate kinship, drawn by the promise and encouragement implicit in the metaphor the organization chose as its name—a promise the organization proceeds to keep, virtually and physically (via an array of supportive platforms, ongoing retreats and the Gift of Freedom Award).

 

Last fall, preparing to present for the Summer 2011 conference, I felt instantly welcomed, heard, and encouraged to step in to AROHO’s circle, where I experienced first hand the effects of their latest motto, “exponential change for all.” I quickly found my way to the heart of the organization, exchanging a rich volley of warm and creative emails from someone who spends a lot of time keeping that heart pulsing: Tracey Cravens Gras. We are honored to present her interview today.

 

 

In your AROHO Summer 2011 Retreat Bio, you mention savoring “the boundless creative opportunities and inspiration that working for AROHO offers:  dabbling in graphic and web design, problem-solving, collaborating, and most recently, working to make the 2011 Retreat unparalleled and uniquely AROHO.” I know it is safe to say, Tracey, that all of us attending the retreat were in awe of your role as Administrative Director. Can you talk to us about what was unique to this retreat in comparison to others? What you enjoyed most bringing to the table (besides boundless energy and a smile regardless of the dilemma at hand)? Most challenging aspect and its reward, if there was one?

 

I answered this first question last, because I’m a procrastinator at heart, not to mention deficient in attentiveness and a smidge rebellious.  Since the 2011 Retreat was only the second one I’ve been personally involved with, I don’t feel qualified to distinguish it from all the others that came before.  I can say, however, that I feel strongly that AROHO is a living, breathing organization which thrives on the energy of the women it supports.  Making the Retreat more reflective of and shaped by the community felt like the right direction for such a collective of talented and creative women. 

 

The most challenging aspect of the 2011 Retreat was without a doubt its biggest reward—inviting participants to more fully invest their passions and expertise into the week’s program was at once terrifying and powerful.  The women—yourself included—who dove in head-first made it all worthwhile.  The creative projects and collaborations that have grown out of the week could never have been planned, only encouraged.  It is fascinating to watch and gives me a great deal of pride to know that I helped create favorable conditions for such transformations to take place.

 

How do you balance your work in public as an administrator for AROHO, your work in private at home as a mother of two children, and your own writing?

 

Being an administrator of AROHO has been a pretty private occupation.  I work most frequently on the computer in my closet/office while my daughter chatters in my left ear and my son works on homework (or something else entirely) behind my back.  I’m reminded of Marilynne Robinson’s comment about writing a book: the only time I’m expected to come out and appear in public is every other year at the Retreat at Ghost Ranch, which we all know is far from glamorous and is almost always a shock to my isolated system. 

 

And how do I juggle the writing?  Right now I’m satisfied encouraging others to write.  The day will come when I figure out my preferred creative medium, whether it be art, poetry, nonfiction, collaboration, or all of the above… who knows?  I don’t yet.  And I’m okay with that. 

 

Thinking back to the 2011 AROHO retreat, can you tell us about an idea, exercise or conversation that had either an identifiable impact upon your writing habits or became a finished piece of writing or one in process?  

 

I am very interested in inspiration and the interconnectedness of all creative beings, particularly women.  I marveled at Bhanu Kapil’s pure approach, being so effortlessly led from one profound question to a collaborative body of work—The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers.  The more time I spend among women writers who respond willingly to the urgings of their muse the more I am convinced that what is necessary to literally and figuratively become a writer or an artist is to stop resisting it.  Do.

 

Bhanu’s whole bit about questions and answers really hooked me.  The afternoon of her MindStretch I wrote this:  Intuition is the nagging awareness that an answer, like an orphan child, remains unclaimed by a yet unformed question.  In other words, the answers to every question in the universe already exist.  As writers, we strive to elucidate the questions, creating the perfect partner for each nuanced answer hanging on the wind.  At least I like to think of it that way.

 

Is there one specific moment or event at the retreat that sparked an insight or shift in how you perceive either your work or yourself as a writer? 

 

There were too many to count… 

 

Again, thinking back to the 2011 retreat, is there a specific woman writer who inspires/d you? If so, can you tell us something about why?

 

Every single woman at the Retreat inspired me.  Their mere attendance demonstrated a courageous commitment to their work.  The breadth of work, life experience, passion, and variety of creative expression collected there reinforced the depth of the well we are all a part of.  We are far from the sum of creative women who exist, yet there is infinite room for us all.

 

What’s the best advice you’ve received about writing?

 

Read. 

 

How would you describe your typical writing day?

 

Emails, fundraising appeals, newsletters, emails, more emails, and maybe answering a pleasantly-worded interview question, or three or four, if I’m lucky.

 

 Is there a specific question you’d have liked us to ask and if so, could you answer it?

 

I wish you had asked what I am wearing right now. 

 

Right now, as I type,

I’m still wearing

my brown, quilted coat,

zipped and tied, because

it was cold when I took my dog outside

hours ago, and it’s cozy

and at the same time liberating

to wear a coat indoors.

 

Tracey Cravens Gras, Administrative Director of AROHO Retreats and a life-long lover of the written word, studied English at the University of Cincinnati and graduated with honors from the Ohio State University in 1997. After a miraculous decade raising two kids, and a family relocation to the desert southwest, she began working for A Room of Her Own as Darlene Chandler Bassett’s personal assistant in 2008. Author of thousands of emails and the rare and wildly-scrawled thank you note, she savors the boundless creative opportunities and inspiration that working for AROHO offers: dabbling in graphic and web design, problem-solving, collaborating, and most recently, working to make the 2011 Retreat unparalleled and uniquely AROHO.

 

Tracey Cravens Gras was interviewed by Tania Pryputniewicz.

 

Writer to Writer: Interview with Lisa Lutwyche

 

 

Lisa_lutwyche_headshot_image46
I continue to find my head and heart filled with inspiration due to the talent, across genres, assembled last summer at AROHO’s Summer 2011 Retreat. Each day’s retreat offerings bid us come out, come out and play, though our retreat organizers were careful to remind us to pace ourselves and take some quiet time too. I missed out on Lisa’s Desert Delight Workshop (when I finally heeded the advice to rest, to pace the inflowing surges of ideas about writing, hiding out for a few moments on the mesa that day). But I love that I get a mini-harvest here with her anyway as she describes the cross-over between painting and writing. I hope to get the chance to work with her at one of AROHO’s future retreats.

 

Looking back on your history teaching night creative writing and watercolor courses, did the two disciplines/genres ever cross-pollinate in your classroom? Do you teach both watercolor and creative writing in one class as well? Can you give those of us “closet painter/writers” an example of an exercise we might use?

 

Interestingly, the two genres did work with each other, although never as a class taught specifically combining the two.  I’ve often said that poetry is very much like watercolor in terms of brevity, commitment (you can’t really erase watercolor; it’s a staining process) and learning to love the “accident.”  When I sit down to write a poem, I often approach it as a watercolor “wash,” a quick brushstroke of words used to capture an impression, whether it’s a visual or an emotional impression (or both).  When I did the workshop at AROHO, I had the artists/writers look around and paint what they saw, then use the “watercolor words” to write a painterly piece of writing about it.  That might make a good exercise.  In fact, the first poem I ever wrote (that wasn’t for a school assignment) was a visual impression because I didn’t have my paints with me!

 

Still looking at cross-pollination, does your architecture and design life come to bear on your writing life?

 

My novel, The Keeping Room (as yet unpublished) is based around the renovation of a house.  But, aside from that, my art/architecture background probably informs more that I realize in my writing.  My writing is very visual, and a sense of place and setting are critical to my work. 

 

Thinking back to the 2011 AROHO retreat, can you tell us about an idea, exercise or conversation that had either an identifiable impact upon your writing habits or became a finished piece of writing or one in process?  

 

Absolutely.  I began a series of poems and memoir pieces about my family and childhood, partly from Bhanu’s contributions, and partly from Breena’s and many others.  Conversations?  They happened every day at AROHO; the readings, the little snatches of conversation in the dining area, on hikes, in workshops.  The inspiration just bombards us there!  And in Summer’s workshop I had some revelations about my novel which led to a total rewrite.

 

Is there one specific moment or event at the retreat that sparked an insight or shift in how you perceive either your work or yourself as a writer?

 

I was so lucky to have been allowed to attend AROHO for the second time in 2011.  In 2009, I took a workshop with Ellen McLaughlin that had an immeasurable impact on my life.  I have ended up writing plays, having them produced, and doing an MFA in creative writing at Goddard College, as a playwright! 

 

In 2011, I was able to have my worth as a writer reinforced to me and being with a gathering of so many accomplished woman writers, many of whom are my age or even older, has given me so much hope and a sense of belonging.  Sometimes, particularly in this economy, having lost my career as an architect, which used to define me, it would have been easy to be lost in the solitary struggle.  After AROHO, we are a part of something meaningful that carries us for a long time.

 

Again, thinking back to the 2011 retreat, is there a specific woman writer who inspires/d you? If so, can you tell us something about why?

 

It’s impossible to single one out.  Breena, Marilynne, Mary, and Bhanu particularly penetrated my muse, but everyone contributed.  There was a naked honesty to Bhanu’s question: who is responsible for the suffering of your mother?  I thought of my mother and I thought of my daughter and I was absolutely staggered.

 

What’s the best advice you’ve received about writing?

 

Read!!!! Listen to your heart, don’t ever edit yourself during your draft process, and keep your first draft.

 

How would you describe your typical writing day?

 

No two are ever alike… I have three jobs and I’m a grad student.  My life is too chaotic.

 

Can you describe for us what you’re currently working on?

 

I’m working on my poetry collection, a collection of my short stories, and trying to find a publisher for my novel, The Keeping Room, which is about a contemporary woman who finds a letter from a young woman that a woman in the 18th century wrote to her mother the night she thought she might die.  I’m also writing two full-length plays: one is a WWII play about GIs who traveled to war on the HMS Queen Mary and an African American GI who falls in love with a white British nurse, entitled Grey Ghost Queen; and a comedy called State of Being about a man who may or may not be dead who shows up in his living room when his wife returns from his funeral.

 

Lisa S. Lutwyche is a published poet and playwright.  She has taught creative writing and watercolor at community arts centers, elder care facilities, and at Cecil College in Maryland.  Lisa has a BFA in painting, a BA in Art History, and is currently working on her MFA in Creative Writing at Goddard College in Vermont.  Her poetry can be seen on the Web on the Wilmington, Delaware’s Second Saturday Poets site and, soon, on a War Poetry website in the UK.

 

Lisa Lutwyche was interviewed by Tania Pryputniewicz.

Writer to Writer Inteview with Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

Elizabeth_jarrett_andrew

Elizabeth was interviewed by Lisa Rizzo

I met Elizabeth during the Mind Stretch on the power of collaborating with other writers or artists led by Tania Pryputniewicz.  We happened to be sitting next to each other, so when Tania had us brainstorm and share lists of writers who had inspired us, Elizabeth and I paired up.  The first thing that struck me was how different we were.  While I characterize myself as someone firmly rooted in the physical here and now, in fact as someone who has an  uneasy relationship with the very idea of spirituality, Elizabeth focuses primarily on spirituality in her work.  However, we had a wonderful conversation. As so often happened during the AROHO retreat, I found myself moved just from talking to a woman so different and yet so similar to myself.  At the end of the Mind Stretch when Tania said she hoped that perhaps this exercise might be the beginning of a new collaboration between those who were paired by circumstances, I was sure that no such thing would result between Elizabeth and myself.  How wrong I was! When our interview team created our lists of future interviewees, I had to smile when I saw Elizabeth’s name on mine.  As I read her answers to my questions, I found myself connecting with so much of what she said even while others of her comments challenged me to think in new ways.  And that is the true spirit of AROHO.

Is there one specific moment or event at the retreat that sparked an insight or shift in how you perceive either your work or yourself as a writer?

When I first gathered with my small group—Writing as a Spiritual Practice—and we each introduced our interest in the topic, I felt huge relief:  I’m not alone!  I work with a lot of beginning writers who write, usually in a journal, as a way to grow personally.  But I rarely encounter writers who are serious about the craft and who already have established writing practices who still admit to this.  I suspect most writers wouldn’t write if the craft didn’t challenge them to learn and grow.  But for some reason (perhaps the extreme atheism of academia?) few writers talk openly about what happens to their inner being as they write.

The week at Ghost Ranch helped me know what I’d previously suspected:  That there are other writers in the country, especially women writers, who are interested in exploring the spiritual dimensions of writing.  When Darlene welcomed us that first morning and warned, “Expect to be changed by this retreat,” I thought, yeah, right.  But in fact I was very moved by the silence we shared, by Mind Stretch speakers’ invitations to listen to our bodies, by the ritual of making our words into flags and tying them up for the wind… The way the organizers orchestrated the week showed great respect for how the well-being of the writer and the quality of the writing are intertwined.  I came away reassured that, at least at AROHO, I will find soul mates who see continuity between their inner lives and the very public art we practice.

What’s the best advice you’ve received about writing?

When I was working on my memoir, I made a huge lifestyle change:  I quit my job teaching seventh grade, downsized, and moved into an intentional Christian community.  My first night living at the retreat center, a fire ripped through the barn and destroyed all my remaining possessions, including a lifetime of writing.  I was devastated.  Other than journal entries, I couldn’t write.  Finally Larry Sutin, my mentor in the Hamline University MFA program, took me by the shoulders and said, “You have material, woman.”  In other words, there’s no such thing as bad experiences for writers, only good material. 

This idea has really been formative—we humans can transform bad experiences by making them into art.  Writing is redemptive for me.  I get to participate in shaping my experience.  I get to make choices about how I understand myself and my story.  I love how writers create both text and their own lives.

Can you describe for us what you’re currently working on?

A bit ago I finished a novel that I’d been working on for six years.  While it’s seeking a publisher, I’m writing short personal essays about mothering my adopted daughter and churning out a book about revision.  I know, that sounds deadly!  But revision gets a bad rap.  Creativity just begins with a rough draft; it can get more playful, more insightful, and more powerful the more we revisit our work.  So I’m on a mission to teach people a lively, fun relationship with revision.  Carol Bly wrote that the holy work of making literature is in revision.  I believe this, too.  Revision is really deep, prolonged listening.  So I have a dual interest here—I want to read books with spiritual depth, so I figure I then have to help writers achieve this in their work.  And I firmly believe that we can use every stage of the writing process as a spiritual practice, if we approach the work with open hearts. 

Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew:

I use story to map the terrain of the human spirit, in both my writing and teaching.  I teach creative nonfiction at The Loft Literary Center, coach writers through book-length works, support individuals who write as a spiritual practice, and I offer spiritual direction.  I am the author of Swinging on the Garden Gate (Skinner House Books), Writing the Sacred Journey:  The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir (Skinner House Books), and On the Threshold (Westview Press).  www.spiritualmemoir.com

Writer to Writer - Interview with Terri Crane

Teri was interviewed by Marlene Samuels

 Late afternoon, my first hour at Ghost Ranch after an exceedingly long day;  a three hour drive to my first airport, two connecting flights, two buses from Albuquerque Airport to Ghost Ranch - the first one broke down so we stopped at a casino for some lunch and to await a “rescue” bus. 

I struggled up a steep path, perspiring with effort. Teri drove her car alongside me and stopped to offer a ride the rest of the way. I thanked her unconvincingly saying something insane like I needed exercise. As I arrived at the summit, I saw Teri pull her car into a space then haul two enormous suitcases from its back as though they were empty.  Now this, I thought, is serious writer - a woman who’s going to move mountains during her one week retreat. This is a real writer!

 Immediately, I was intimidated by Teri who, as it turned out, was also my Ghost Ranch next door neighbor. A nice coincidence but combined with her writing artistry, life wisdom and excellent humor, it was a wonderful one.

Frst impression: Teri's reserved, contemplative, and extremely serious. Actual view after a few hours at “the ranch” - how wrong first impressions often are! 

Teri Crane shared her views about her experiences during the week long AROHO Retreat and the insights she gained there.


 Is there one specific moment or event at the retreat that sparked an insight or shift in how you perceive either your work or yourself as a writer?

 So many ideas, exercises, conversations - all blended together, fortifying one another, speaking at levels known and unknown.  I listened to the wind. I listened to the table talk.  While I was at Ghost Ranch, I realized that I also was listening to my characters. By the time I returned home, I understood so much more about them.

Not being required to adhere to a specific schedule left me open to understanding many things.  The writing process includes enriching periods of fertile idleness and it’s this fertile idleness that’s become part of my writing habit. It leads to putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard but not feeling driven or compelled. Instead, it’s knowing I’m in process and that gives me the freedom to write.

While I sat with other members of our AROHO community - at meals, in small groups, during evenings listening to readings, or late at night outside talking and sharing where we’ve come from and where we are, I realized I was talking with writers. I realized I am a writer talking with other writers.  It wasn’t at all like talking with non-writers who ask, “What have you written?” That’s really synonymous with “What have you published?” It makes the writing process defined only as the end product. 

In talking with writers, questions about process are more active, such as “What do you write?’ or “What are you working on?” The writing is alive.  We write as we breathe.   By interacting with women at Ghost Ranch, I found my mirror.

 Women writers have inspired me since I read Silas Marner in ninth grade English and learned that George Eliot was a woman. Writing is difficult enough, but adding that layer - where acceptance is worked through a sieve of sexism and still attaining success is admirable.  Even though I appreciate writers of both genders because I appreciate great writing, I feel that women writers evoke an edge of sisterhood. We’re all bonded in common struggles.  I‘ve continued to follow works by Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker; I relish reading Alice Hoffman, Anne Tyler, and Annie Dillard’s focused prose.  I admire the way in which Selah Saterstrom weaves a tale with polished prose and was honored to have Selah as the 2nd reader for my MFA thesis book.

 What’s the best advice you’ve received about writing?

 The best advice I received was from my brother while I working on my doctoral dissertation.  He said, “Don’t worry about being brilliant, only about being finished.”  At the time I thought it was about finishing in a timely manner, that I could be brilliant at some other time. However, while a student at Goddard, I discovered the art of revision. Now I realize it means so much more.  Often I think of his advice and couple it with my current notion: once the story is told, it’s time to polish it up.

 How would you describe your typical writing day?Typical writing day?  What’s that?  My days are filled with writing, whether punctuated with Face Book status updates, e-mails, journal writing, working on my blog, or thinking about (and sometimes actually writing) my current project.  I always feel as though I’m in the writing process whether that means putting words together on paper or thinking about words and ideas.  I guess that’s my typical day---less structure than fluidity but always a connectedness to writing. 

 Can you describe for us what you’re currently working on?

 My current project is a book. It a fiction story about two women in the 1800’s traveling west with their respective families on a wagon train.  They leave their gentile Eastern lives, learning to exchange their roles for those critical on the westward trek under challenging conditions. They discover that even greater changes are demanded of them at their final destination. 

When I went to the AROHO retreat, somehow I knew that my women characters would travel the Santa Fe Trail but didn’t really know where they’d end up.  Serendipitously, while exploring one day, I discovered that the Old Spanish Trail went through Abiqui on its way to Los Angeles.  It was during that moment I knew my women would be on it!

Bio:

Dr. Teri Crane is a writer, retired teacher and marriage and family therapist.  After stepping aside from classroom teaching, she decided to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing at Goddard College where she wrote a memoir, We Never Used the ‘F’ Word, a story about growing up in her native Southern California and the impact of her father’s death when she was seven years old, which is still pre-published.  Currently she’s working on an historical fiction novel about two women going west by wagon train in the 1800’s, and moderating online classes for teachers through LA County Office of Education.  She is a certified “Journal to the Self Workshop” instructor. 

 

Writer to Writer: Interview with Catherine Shubert

Cathe_shubert_headshot

December finds us still delving into the cornucopia of gifts gathered at AROHO’s Summer 2011 Retreat at Ghost Ranch; here we are honored to speak with Catherine Shubert. As a fellow poet, I was especially excited to hear about the on-line poetry community Catherine has established for AROHO poets. I found myself moved by her desire to extend her talents beyond the retreat (as has been so often the case with AROHO women). 

 

We understand you attended Oxford University as a study abroad student—any desire to tell us about that experience and how it translated into your writing? Does your work teaching Spanish in the Teach For America program find its way into your writing as well?

 

At Oxford, I had 1-2 tutorials for an hour or two each week, which were conducted one-on-one with an advanced literary scholar.  I presented an 8-10 essay for each tutorial, and in the days leading up to the tutorial, I was meant to be reading, researching, and crafting my writing. I was on my own in the stacks, making sense of literature and ideas for myself.  This was vastly different from the lecture-group discussion experience at universities in the States, so it was a difficult but worthwhile adjustment.  All in all, it forced me to tackle the challenge of developing my own voice, thereby making me a better writer.  I think as a woman it was an especially strengthening experience for me, since Oxford has historically been a male-dominated institution. 

 

The best part of my experience was the one-on-one attention my writing received in tutorials.  My favorite experience was with John Ballam, who made me read each paper aloud at the start of each tutorial. It was the best way for me to self-edit, hearing the awkwardness my eyes were too lazy to see.  I have since read all my writing aloud to myself as part of the editing process. 

 

As for Teach for America (TFA), I know I eventually want to write more creatively about my experiences teaching Spanish in inner city Philadelphia, but for now those ideas are just fermenting.  I found it too difficult to write day-to-day while actually teaching my first two years, a regretful but accurate admission. I felt unprepared to teach Spanish. I had wanted to teach English, but that position was unavailable. 

 

I did, however, write my Master’s thesis on the journey I underwent learning to become a better Spanish teacher.  In my thesis, I distinguished between a “parrot” pedagogy and a pedagogy predicated upon active solicitation of my students’ creative voices.  I wrote about the difference between memorization and memory, between schooling and learning, between passive receptivity and active engagement/creation in the Spanish classroom. 

 

Ultimately, my thesis was about my discovery as a young teacher that content does not have to dictate pedagogy. Rather, my personal pedagogy can instead shape how I present the content.  In order to reach that point, I had to make an important shift in my consideration of just what “successful” teaching and learning mean across content areas.  The writing of that thesis allowed me an important re-engagement with teaching, and my original inspiration came from the time I spent at the AROHO retreat Marsha Pincus and Liz Bedell organized for women teacher-writers in the Philadelphia area (which is of course where I first found out about AROHO!). 

 

How does your poetry affect your non-fiction, and vice versa? How do they complement one another?

 

I think for me they are inherently connected in terms of process, though obviously different in terms of product.  I believe the two are more connected to each other in that way than either would be to fiction.  Most of my poetry is pretty personal, and most of my non-fiction employs many poetic devices.  When editing, I try to go over my poems with a non-fiction eye and over my non-fiction with a poetic eye.  There have been many times when I have taken a particularly artistic phrase in one of my non-fiction pieces and turned it into a poem and vice versa.  I try to infuse my non-fiction with a poetic spirit and my poetry with the clarity of my non-fiction.   

 

Thinking back to the 2011 AROHO retreat, can you tell us about an idea, exercise or conversation that had either an identifiable impact upon your writing habits or became a finished piece of writing or one in process?  

 

Barb Johnson helped me specifically target my writer’s block.  She challenged me to consider how to make reading and writing poetry a part of my every day life.  In that way, she channeled in our conversation what Kate Gale later said about how ludicrous it is that we can schedule in trips to the gym but not time for our writing.  Since that conversation, I’ve been much more productive as a writer than I have been since I was a student taking writing workshops for credit.

 

Is there one specific moment or event at the retreat that sparked an insight or shift in how you perceive either your work or yourself as a writer?

 

There are so many moments I could point to—Barb Johnson telling us to go for what we want, not what we think is allowed, or Kate Gale urging us to be less passive and to be our own Juliet and just walk into that garden already.  But the one that most affected my own conception of myself as a writer was with fellow teacher Regina Hastings.  She was admiring my experiences, and I was doing that typical female modest thing and blushing and brushing it off.  She told me fiercely that as women we needed to stop shying away from pride and confidence in our own accomplishments. 

 

We need to own them, Regina said, otherwise we are being irresponsible.  I realized in that moment I needed to fully actualize my identity as a female writer, artist, and scholar.  To be that authoritative, active and unapologetic about my identity is the only way for me to actually become an author.  I just loved her phrasing, too: that as women we are irresponsible if we do not own our talents, especially given what so many before us have gone through in order to be taken seriously as artists, writers, and scholars. 

 

 What’s the best advice you’ve received about writing?

 

Real writing is re-writing!

 

Can you describe for us what you’re currently working on?

 

I am currently and actively working on a blog, which details my adventures teaching ESL through a Fulbright Scholarship in Andorra, a tiny principality located in the Pyrenees Mountains.  I hope someday to compile or use the stories I record there in a more polished collection.  One of my friends had the idea of creating a book about teaching ESL abroad, about which I am entirely enthusiastic.  I also started an online poetry community for AROHO women seeking to find a space to share their writing with likeminded, generous fellow writers (interested women should email me for further information at cshoes@gmail.com!).

 

What’s the last dream you remember having? 

 

The other day I vividly dreamed I was in labor and giving birth on the side of mountain with only my mother present to help me.  The labor came on suddenly and unexpectedly while we were walking.  The pain was intense, the process dangerous in the remote mountainside with no modern medical help.  But the experience was over relatively quickly and smoothly, and my panic and pain melted as I cradled the tiny, premature infant that was nonetheless bright-eyed, beautiful, and calm. 

 

When I woke up, I vividly recalled the details, which is strange, since normally I forget dreams the minute I wake up.  At first I was unnerved by the dream—at 24, I am nowhere near the position were I am ready or willing to have a child.  But then I considered the message of the dream: that I am finally at a point where I am capable and able to birth new writing projects and bring them fully to term.  I don’t need to make excuses or give in to fear and doubt.

 

After earning her Master’s in Education from the University of Pennsylvania, Catherine Shubert is currently working as an English teacher/lector in Andorra through a Fulbright grant. She enjoys living abroad immersed in the intersection of Catalan, Spanish, and French cultures, as well as having time to write at andorranadventures.wordpress.com.

 

Catherine Shubert was interviewed by Tania Pryputniewicz.

 

Writer to Writer: Interview with Maura MacNeil

Maura_macneil
Maura and I knew of each other’s work through our association with the New Hampshire Writers’ Project. When I moved back to the West Coast, I lost touch with the New Hampshire literary community. It was fun to spend time with Maura at the retreat. We had some great talks, and we plan to keep our coast-to-coast connection strong in years to come.—Barbara Ann Yoder

 

What’s the best advice you’ve received about writing?

 

The best advice is the most obvious: we need to sit down and write in order to be writers! Another piece of really important advice is to surround ourselves with writers who will help us become better at what we do and who do not engage in the practice of envy. The late Don Sheehan, who was director of The Frost Place summer writing retreats in Franconia, NH, used to say that “envy is the fear that someone else’s success will somehow take away from our own.” He asked those of us who took part in the retreats, as I did for a number of years, to fight off envy if it creeps into our writing lives by allowing ourselves to fall in love with the work of others around us and to articulate our gratitude and love for that work. I have carried that advice into the workshops I’ve taught over the years, and it sets an important tone that includes mindfulness and generosity. We must nurture our creative lives through the practice of generosity because it is through the generosity to others’ work that we attract authentic and honest feedback to our own writing.

 

Is there one specific moment or event at the retreat that sparked an insight or shift in how you perceive either your work or yourself as a writer?

 

During the retreat I recognized that the fear I carried with me as a woman writer in the context of tackling difficult subject matter, or fearing judgment from others—all that baggage that we tend to carry around as writers that keeps us from writing what we are meant to write—is part of what Marilynne Robinson spoke of as a categorical way we are taught to think. While I listened to her words I suddenly understood that I had the power to break that spell. The “deeper experience hidden from the categorical ways we are taught to think” that Marilynne spoke to was a space I suddenly felt the courage to enter because I was surrounded by women who understood those words just as I did.

 

I arrived at the retreat having just lost my husband who died quite suddenly in June, so I was raw with grief. But at the same time I was in an emotional space where I was completely open to the authentic creative energy of AROHO women and to the possibility that I might be able to frame a new perspective on my writing life in this foreign land of widowhood where all that was “familiar” was suddenly erased.

 

Over the past decade or so, even though I was writing and publishing and editing, I felt as though my life had become increasingly compartmentalized into my “life as writer” and my “other life” that was filled with obligations that constantly tugged me away from being present in my creative life. I was increasingly distracted. When Marilynne told us that we should make ourselves into someone we might enjoy being with, that we should give ourselves a creative life that as writers we want to live, her words were like an alarm going off, and I knew that something very important was happening to my sense of myself as a woman writer.

 

Since arriving home to New Hampshire I’m keenly aware of the ways my creative life makes me the best of who I am in the world, and I’m much more protective of my creative space. I gained courage at the retreat to say “No” to what keeps me away from moving closer to my truths as a writer and consequently more deeply into the life of the writer that I want to live.

 

What a beautiful story! You have a lot of courage to come to a retreat in the wilderness during a time of loss and grief. I’m so glad that you found wisdom and support there. Could you say a bit more about the writing life you’re moving into? What helps you live that life? What are you saying “yes” to?

 

I'm focusing my energy on nurturing relationships that inspire and support my writing life because it’s through these relationships that I’m finding possibilities in my writing. Recently seven AROHO women gathered for a morning of silent writing and reading at Mary Johnson’s house and then topped it off with a three-hour lunch. I came home full and happy! I find it interesting that I chose to work that morning on a very difficult narrative—one that I've been avoiding for months and months—as I felt protected in that space. Just as Mary noted that during her writing of Unquenchable Thirst she would often go to public spaces in order to write the most difficult parts of the story, I felt great comfort being in that house with those women and I muscled my way through it.

As I write, I’m carrying in me the spirit of the AROHO women who are walking the labyrinth that is the writing life—women who are committed to listening to the heartbeat that guides us to our center so we can tell the truth of our stories. Telling the truth of our stories is something that was talked about quite often during the retreat. As I’m currently working on memoir, the notion of truth is something I’m examining both emotionally and intellectually not only through my own lens, but through the lens of others in my life who will also claim ownership to certain events of my memoir’s narrative. 

Can you say a bit more about what you’re currently working on, and about the difference between writing poetry and writing memoir?

I’m always writing and revising poems. My current poetry manuscript titled Lost Houses is going through another round of revisions before I send it out to the world again, but my primary focus is a memoir project that examines my family’s clan/tribal-based dynamics in relationship to the chronic illness of my oldest sister. It’s been a difficult project due to the complexities of naming my emotional truths within a protective family culture, and it has also shape-shifted  and moved into unexpected directions a couple of times over the past two years that I’ve been working on it.

Memoir is a very different animal from poetry.  As a poet I visualize the poem’s form, whether open or closed, as a frame that contains the piece; as a memoir writer I find the use of physical time and sequence of events, not to mention the need to maintain the integrity of voices other than my own, quite daunting. But, as Mary Johnson said in one of her presentations at the retreat, paraphrasing St. John of the Cross: “If you want to go to a place that you don’t know, you need to go in a way you don’t know.”  So, on I go with the amazingly gifted and generous AROHO community surrounding me as I navigate the terrain of the unknown.

Maura MacNeil is the author of A History of Water (Finishing Line Press 2007). Her poetry and prose have been published in numerous literary journals over the past thirty years, and her poetry has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize. She is a cofounder and editor of Entelechy International: A Journal of Contemporary Ideas and recently served as a poetry editor for the anthology Shadow and Light: An Anthology on Memory (Monadnock Writers Group 2011). She is a professor of writing at New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire.

Learn more about Maura and read “This Last Place,” the poem she read at the AROHO retreat, at this link: http://www.nh.gov/nharts/artsandartists/poetshowcase/poetlaureate44.html

An Interview with writer Martha Andrews Donovan

AROHO Speaks: Writer to Writer with Martha Andrews Donovan             

Interview prepared by Marlene Samuels of the AROHO Speaks:Writer to Collaboration Project.

I interviewed Martha Donovan about her AROHO Retreat experience although, at first, I wasn’t entirely sure I’d actually spoken with her during our week at Ghost Ranch. After going back to the retreat website to find Martha’s photograph, I was thrilled to discover that she and I had, in fact, exchanged numerous conversations during meals, while having coffee or during various “mind stretch” presentations.
During the retreat, we all had so much to share with one another about ourselves - as writers and women, as mothers and wives, as teachers and students. Yet, our most unifying issues revolved around the incredible challenges we face that are totally unique to women writers. Martha is one of the many women who inspired me. I hope you’ll find the same inspiration in her words as I do! 



Is there one specific moment or event at the retreat that sparked an insight or shift in how you perceive either your work or yourself as a writer?

I’ve never been good at daily habits beyond teeth brushing. So I was relieved to hear Marilynne Robinson and others at AROHO’s retreat admit that they don’t always write every day, that there are times when they’re feeding their writing in other ways:

Breena Clarke spoke of getting to know her characters best while naked in the shower; Mary Johnson about the value of vegetable chopping and apple picking; Marilynne Robinson about “a room of one’s own” as fine and good but that it makes sense to get out of that room occasionally.
I loved how “fertile idleness” was built into the retreat schedule. It reminded me of Tillie Olsen’s reflection in “Silences” that the creative act requires “time for renewal, lying fallow, gestation” –  something that women writers might consider since we are often conditioned to believe that unless we have a product to show for our efforts then we’ve failed. And yet the work of writing demands “natural silences.”

I think of the delightfully subversive A Room of One’s Own that inspired Darlene Chandler Bassett to take a leap of faith with her own vision so, I must say, “thank you, thank you, Darlene and Mary! I’m grateful to A Dream of Our Own: Women Writing New, Women Writing Truefor inspiring me to be idle, to draw and to dream.

What’s the best advice you've received about writing?    
When I studied at Bread Loaf School of English many years ago, I took a play-writing course with Corinne Jacker and really struggled to get something written. Sitting in Adirondack chairs across from one another, Corrine asked me to describe my daily schedule. She wondered whether I was independently wealthy. After I assured her I was not, she said,       

“Well, then the need to work for a living is always going to intrude on your writing life. You have to make time to write. I can see you’re very busy – it doesn’t sound like you waste time so I guess you’re just going to have to give up sleeping and eating.”  Her parting words: “You have to shit or get off the pot.” I mark that as the day my writing life began.

Another oft-quoted piece of advice I first heard from the late Donald Murray:When you hit writer’s block, lower your standards.  That one’s especially helpful to me because I struggle with “the knife of the perfectionist attitude in art and life.”(Louise Bogan’s term.)


How would you describe your typical writing day?

I wish I had a typical writing day but in truth, my writing habits seem linked to my academic schedule - most writing relegated to summer when I enjoy uninterrupted time. I struggle to find balance between my teaching life and my writing life. That said, I’m currently enjoying my own “gift of freedom” in the form of a sabbatical. I’m writing every day, deeply grateful for this blessed gift of time.

I’m eager to claim every minute of it so now, instead of trying to make time to write, I’m trying to make sure I don’t get blood clots or eye strain from sitting at my computer for too long. I set a timer - my reminder to get up occasionally and step away from the work. When I resume teaching next semester, I’m planning to set a timer as a way of making sure I write for at least thirty minutes each day. It’s not ideal but it’s better than no writing time. 

A particularly important one of my habits is that I write first drafts in pen then hop onto the computer.  When teaching, I ask my students to join me in a focused “free write” at the start of each class. It’s an important daily ritual there and one I also use at home. Kate Gale asked - during her Mind Stretch session, “How do we get inside the writing space?” And her answer: We have to get rid of the “monkey mind”/internal chatter/noise of our culture that disrupts our ability to play as writers. Wisely, she recommended that we schedule time for writing as we might for Yoga.
Can you describe for us what you’re currently working on?

My current project is Dangerous Archaeology: A Daughter’s Search for Her Mother (and Others) – a memoir in fragments. It’s a mixed-genre memoir that explores the central question Bhanu Kapil articulated so well: “Who was responsible for the suffering of your mother?” This project is comprised of many layers, including working with a photographer who’s a recent graduate of New England College where I teach, and who’s taking photographs of artifacts from my mother’s childhood in rural South India, the daughter and granddaughter of missionaries.

Inspired by Tania Pryputniewicz’s Mind Stretch Photo-Poem Montage: The Micro-Movie, I’m developing a documentary “film” and also designing broadsides as part of this project. Finally, I’m reading as many memoirs and books on life writing as I can, including Mary Johnson’s An Unquenchable Thirst and Mira Bartók’s The Memory Palace. Both are amazingly beautiful and show the power of AROHO women. Oh, and of course, times of “fertile idleness.”

Bio note:
Martha Andrews Donovan lives, writes, teaches, and enjoys moments of “fertile idleness” in Henniker, New Hampshire, a world away from the India of her mother’s youth. Her chapbookDress Her in Silk (Finishing Line Press, 2009) was nominated for a PEN New England Literary Award the year after it was published.


Link:
To re-read “Her Story” which Martha read at Ghost Ranch this summer, go to: