Susan Rich sat down with Crab Creek Review to discuss her latest book Blue Atlas, the themes of the book, and her writing in general. Blue Atlas is a lyrical abortion narrative unlike any other. This one-of-a-kind collection follows a Jewish woman and her ghosts as they travel from West Africa to Europe, and finally, to the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco. The speaker searches repeatedly for a new outcome, seeking answers in a myriad of mediums such as an on-line questionnaire, a freshman composition essay, and a curriculum vitae. The raw, often far from idyllic experience of a global love affair which results in an unplanned pregnancy, is examined and meditated upon through a surreal prism. The Blue Atlas, a genus of the common cedar tree first found in the High Atlas of Morocco and known for its beauty and resilience, becomes a metaphor for the hardship and power of a fully engaged life.
Susan Rich will read from Blue Atlas (Red Hen Press) at 7 PM with poet January Gill O’Neil at the Elliott Bay Book Company , Monday, April 8th. You can order the book from Elliott Bay Book Company.
Susan Rich will read from Blue Atlas (Red Hen Press) at 7 PM with poet January Gill O’Neil at the Elliott Bay Book Company , Monday, April 8th. You can order the book from Elliott Bay Book Company.
1. What was the inspiration behind Blue Atlas? What brought this book to life?
The seed for this book was born when I was completing my MFA at the University of Oregon. In my last meeting with my advisor, poet Garrett Hongo, he urged me to write about this, the most traumatic time in my life. I remember trying to readjust my facial expression because I thought he'd gone insane and as his student, it seemed impolite to point this out. Why, oh why, would I write a book about the most disastrous event I'd ever lived through? At that time, in the mid 1990's, only a decade after my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer and my abortion, it still felt very fresh.
What Garrett said to me that day in his office has been lodged in my memory for more than two decades: you don't own your story; it isn't only yours.
The poems here span a ten-year period. I think one thing that allowed me to focus on the book was that I was no longer the twenty-something young woman who did the best she could without any support from her family or community. One of the great advantages to having lived a bit longer on this spinning blue planet is that one’s sense of shame or embarrassment fades away.
2. The book is about loss, but also history-finding and ghosts. What role do these themes play in the book and your work as a whole?
My work is filled with ghosts! Their actions and words show-up frequently, but most forcefully in “Pregnant with the Dead,” in Blue Atlas. This is where my ghosts really decide to take over. One of the many alchemical aspects of poetry that I love is that as poets we can compress time, we can speak to the dead and in fact, they can also speak to us—and they can be very, very bossy!
I also spoke at times directly to my ex-fiancé in this collection, in two or three of the poems. For years, his presence haunted my dreams, or should I say, my nightmares. One of the tangible gifts of writing this book is that I am no longer haunted by him.
3. You use form to shape a number of different poems in the book to explore the work's primary questions—what did using form allow you to do?
This is by far, the most difficult book I’ve written. To create the poems, I believe I had to become a better poet, or at least, a poet with a more expansive repertoire. Also, I’m afraid I agree with Elizabeth Bishop famous comment concerning “confessional” poetry, “You wished they’d keep some of these things to themselves.” Of course, the operative word here is “some.” I never consciously set out to experiment with form but I kept wanting another vantage point to tell the events that occurred. A questionnaire, a curriculum vitae, and a freshman comp essay to write a poem felt both strange and familiar. I didn’t want to be boring.
4. In addition to Blue Atlas, you have published five poetry books and two anthologies. How do you see this book sitting within the larger story of your work as a writer?
I’ve never been much of a planner. My first book of poems came out over 20 years ago, focusing on my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer and the subsequent death of both of my parents. My second book, Cures Include Travel, looked at the dichotomy of finding one’s essential self in travel and then finally making my own home in Seattle. My books of poems definitely reflect on my life. Blue Atlas takes on the most difficult moment I’ve ever lived through.
In terms of the prose anthologies, I’ve co-edited, both emerged out of informal conversations with friends. The first, The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Writing Across Borders, began with Ilya Kaminsky in the aisles of Elliott Bay Book Company over a decade ago. I remember sitting on the floor of the old Pioneer Square location lamenting that young poets didn’t take time off before graduate school, that all of sudden (it seemed) graduate school was where you went to become a poet which seemed ludicrous then and even now. We both felt that international travel, working outside the country, living outside one’s comfort zone was most important to actually having something to say. Then we started thinking about poets we admired who had lived extended periods outside the United States: Kazim Ali, Elizabeth Bishop, Carolyn Forche, Yousef Komunyakaa, Naomi Shihab Nye, Brian Turner (who later came on as an editor) and many other poets. But it wasn’t until some years later, I received a note from Ilya that read, Remember that idea we had about an anthology of poets who lived outside the United States? He had just been hired as Program Director at the Poetry Foundation and he said they were interested in publishing such a collection. All of the editors were living in different parts of the country and our meetings took place on conference calls very late at night. I love how spontaneous conversations can end up in creative collaborations.
For De-Mystifying the Manuscript: Conversations and Essays on How to Create a Book of Poems, it was a road trip where inspiration struck! Kelli Russell Agodon and I were driving back from the Oregon Coast where we had just lead an early Poets on the Coast: A Writing Retreat for Women, which was another idea we had dreamt up together. “The book you hold in your hands is a vessel,” was a line we wrote together on that car ride and it’s that same line that begins the book. Again, it was nearly a decade between initial idea and published book. Both anthologies were projects we created to help other poets. The books we needed ourselves as younger writers.
So to answer your question, the books I’ve written or co-written during my career come out of my lived experience and the books that I most need to read. Writing books and living life are inextricably linked, at least for me.
5. Is there a particular piece of advice you received that you found yourself returning to as you've written over the years?
Write for yourself—your best self. Keep expanding the kinds of poems you write. Diane Seuss recently said that after writing Frank, Sonnets, she wanted to try writing in a much longer form, “to write past the ending,” and so to push into new realms.
6. In the same vein, what did the act of writing this book teach you about your own writing process?
I gave myself more time with this book than perhaps any other collection apart from The Cartographer’s Tongue: Poems of the World. First books usually include poems of over a decade of writing and mine was no exception.
For Blue Atlas, I needed large swaths of time over many years. I needed to sit with the poems, and most of all, I needed to write the poems that I didn’t want to write. For example, the poem, “The Decision” is one of the last poems written for the book. Finally, “The Abortion Question” came much later. I woke up one morning and the voice inside my head was yelling at me, “you need to make it very clear where you stand on abortion. Don’t let anyone twist your words!” This was soon after the Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade. I took out an abandoned draft of “The Abortion Question” and got to work. I feel very fortunate that Kate Gale, my editor at Red Hen Press let me know when she accepted the manuscript that she was very open to any changes I might want to make. The book she accepted and the final book that was just published are very different. About 1/3 of the poems were not in the original manuscript.
Another thing I learned about my own writing process is that not everything is best said in a poem, although poetry is most definitely my first language. Red Hen Press suggested that I write an accompanying prose piece for the collection---which seemed incredibly daunting. Last summer I worked and reworked a personal essay titled, “If I Knew Then What I Know Now: The Continuing History of My Abortion,” which will be published in Solstice: A Journal of Diverse Voices this month. Mostly, I wrote this piece so I could think something through that I had not yet articulated. I tell my students that essay means “to try” from the French “essai,” it’s an attempt, an effort (for me) to of thinking something through that you haven’t yet fully figured out.
7. What do you hope readers carry with them after reading your book?
I hope that readers will find themselves in the poems or find someone they love. The simple / not so simple answer to your question is: I want readers to see their own story in Blue Atlas. Most of all, I want them to be able to forgive their former selves.
The seed for this book was born when I was completing my MFA at the University of Oregon. In my last meeting with my advisor, poet Garrett Hongo, he urged me to write about this, the most traumatic time in my life. I remember trying to readjust my facial expression because I thought he'd gone insane and as his student, it seemed impolite to point this out. Why, oh why, would I write a book about the most disastrous event I'd ever lived through? At that time, in the mid 1990's, only a decade after my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer and my abortion, it still felt very fresh.
What Garrett said to me that day in his office has been lodged in my memory for more than two decades: you don't own your story; it isn't only yours.
The poems here span a ten-year period. I think one thing that allowed me to focus on the book was that I was no longer the twenty-something young woman who did the best she could without any support from her family or community. One of the great advantages to having lived a bit longer on this spinning blue planet is that one’s sense of shame or embarrassment fades away.
2. The book is about loss, but also history-finding and ghosts. What role do these themes play in the book and your work as a whole?
My work is filled with ghosts! Their actions and words show-up frequently, but most forcefully in “Pregnant with the Dead,” in Blue Atlas. This is where my ghosts really decide to take over. One of the many alchemical aspects of poetry that I love is that as poets we can compress time, we can speak to the dead and in fact, they can also speak to us—and they can be very, very bossy!
I also spoke at times directly to my ex-fiancé in this collection, in two or three of the poems. For years, his presence haunted my dreams, or should I say, my nightmares. One of the tangible gifts of writing this book is that I am no longer haunted by him.
3. You use form to shape a number of different poems in the book to explore the work's primary questions—what did using form allow you to do?
This is by far, the most difficult book I’ve written. To create the poems, I believe I had to become a better poet, or at least, a poet with a more expansive repertoire. Also, I’m afraid I agree with Elizabeth Bishop famous comment concerning “confessional” poetry, “You wished they’d keep some of these things to themselves.” Of course, the operative word here is “some.” I never consciously set out to experiment with form but I kept wanting another vantage point to tell the events that occurred. A questionnaire, a curriculum vitae, and a freshman comp essay to write a poem felt both strange and familiar. I didn’t want to be boring.
4. In addition to Blue Atlas, you have published five poetry books and two anthologies. How do you see this book sitting within the larger story of your work as a writer?
I’ve never been much of a planner. My first book of poems came out over 20 years ago, focusing on my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer and the subsequent death of both of my parents. My second book, Cures Include Travel, looked at the dichotomy of finding one’s essential self in travel and then finally making my own home in Seattle. My books of poems definitely reflect on my life. Blue Atlas takes on the most difficult moment I’ve ever lived through.
In terms of the prose anthologies, I’ve co-edited, both emerged out of informal conversations with friends. The first, The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Writing Across Borders, began with Ilya Kaminsky in the aisles of Elliott Bay Book Company over a decade ago. I remember sitting on the floor of the old Pioneer Square location lamenting that young poets didn’t take time off before graduate school, that all of sudden (it seemed) graduate school was where you went to become a poet which seemed ludicrous then and even now. We both felt that international travel, working outside the country, living outside one’s comfort zone was most important to actually having something to say. Then we started thinking about poets we admired who had lived extended periods outside the United States: Kazim Ali, Elizabeth Bishop, Carolyn Forche, Yousef Komunyakaa, Naomi Shihab Nye, Brian Turner (who later came on as an editor) and many other poets. But it wasn’t until some years later, I received a note from Ilya that read, Remember that idea we had about an anthology of poets who lived outside the United States? He had just been hired as Program Director at the Poetry Foundation and he said they were interested in publishing such a collection. All of the editors were living in different parts of the country and our meetings took place on conference calls very late at night. I love how spontaneous conversations can end up in creative collaborations.
For De-Mystifying the Manuscript: Conversations and Essays on How to Create a Book of Poems, it was a road trip where inspiration struck! Kelli Russell Agodon and I were driving back from the Oregon Coast where we had just lead an early Poets on the Coast: A Writing Retreat for Women, which was another idea we had dreamt up together. “The book you hold in your hands is a vessel,” was a line we wrote together on that car ride and it’s that same line that begins the book. Again, it was nearly a decade between initial idea and published book. Both anthologies were projects we created to help other poets. The books we needed ourselves as younger writers.
So to answer your question, the books I’ve written or co-written during my career come out of my lived experience and the books that I most need to read. Writing books and living life are inextricably linked, at least for me.
5. Is there a particular piece of advice you received that you found yourself returning to as you've written over the years?
Write for yourself—your best self. Keep expanding the kinds of poems you write. Diane Seuss recently said that after writing Frank, Sonnets, she wanted to try writing in a much longer form, “to write past the ending,” and so to push into new realms.
6. In the same vein, what did the act of writing this book teach you about your own writing process?
I gave myself more time with this book than perhaps any other collection apart from The Cartographer’s Tongue: Poems of the World. First books usually include poems of over a decade of writing and mine was no exception.
For Blue Atlas, I needed large swaths of time over many years. I needed to sit with the poems, and most of all, I needed to write the poems that I didn’t want to write. For example, the poem, “The Decision” is one of the last poems written for the book. Finally, “The Abortion Question” came much later. I woke up one morning and the voice inside my head was yelling at me, “you need to make it very clear where you stand on abortion. Don’t let anyone twist your words!” This was soon after the Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade. I took out an abandoned draft of “The Abortion Question” and got to work. I feel very fortunate that Kate Gale, my editor at Red Hen Press let me know when she accepted the manuscript that she was very open to any changes I might want to make. The book she accepted and the final book that was just published are very different. About 1/3 of the poems were not in the original manuscript.
Another thing I learned about my own writing process is that not everything is best said in a poem, although poetry is most definitely my first language. Red Hen Press suggested that I write an accompanying prose piece for the collection---which seemed incredibly daunting. Last summer I worked and reworked a personal essay titled, “If I Knew Then What I Know Now: The Continuing History of My Abortion,” which will be published in Solstice: A Journal of Diverse Voices this month. Mostly, I wrote this piece so I could think something through that I had not yet articulated. I tell my students that essay means “to try” from the French “essai,” it’s an attempt, an effort (for me) to of thinking something through that you haven’t yet fully figured out.
7. What do you hope readers carry with them after reading your book?
I hope that readers will find themselves in the poems or find someone they love. The simple / not so simple answer to your question is: I want readers to see their own story in Blue Atlas. Most of all, I want them to be able to forgive their former selves.
Susan Rich is the author of eight books, including Gallery of Postcards and
Maps: New and Selected Poems, as well as Cloud Pharmacy, The Alchemist’s
Kitchen, Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer’s Tongue: Poems of the
World. Her poetry has earned her awards from the Fulbright Foundation,
PEN USA, and the Times Literary Supplement (London). Individual poems
appear in the Harvard Review, New England Review, O Magazine, and Poetry
Ireland, among other places. Susan is coeditor with Kelli Russell Agodon
of Demystifying the Manuscript: Creating a Book of Poems. She teaches
at Highline College and directs Poets on the Coast: A Writing Retreat for
Women from Seattle, Washington.
Maps: New and Selected Poems, as well as Cloud Pharmacy, The Alchemist’s
Kitchen, Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer’s Tongue: Poems of the
World. Her poetry has earned her awards from the Fulbright Foundation,
PEN USA, and the Times Literary Supplement (London). Individual poems
appear in the Harvard Review, New England Review, O Magazine, and Poetry
Ireland, among other places. Susan is coeditor with Kelli Russell Agodon
of Demystifying the Manuscript: Creating a Book of Poems. She teaches
at Highline College and directs Poets on the Coast: A Writing Retreat for
Women from Seattle, Washington.