Poet, novelist, and creative writing goddess—I mean, professor of English Laurel Peterson joins us on Saturday, March 28, to celebrate the launch of her new collection, The Sky Weeps with Us. After the reading and signing, Laurel will lead a workshop in prose poetry, Finding Language for Emotion. Donna caught up with Laurel recently to chat about finding language when emotion seems overpowering, how prose poetry helped her to channel the verses gracing her new book, and how she hopes to model the considerable personal forces her students need to adopt in today’s world.
Donna:
I read your recent Substack post, which starts with "I've got nothing," then waxes quite articulate about caring for your mother. I suspect The Sky Weeps with Us, your sixth collection, might have started with a similar feeling of overwhelm. And yet here are a full length collection and an informal essay that reach into big universal themes. What is the first inkling, for you, that "nothing" is actually something to write about?
Laurel:
I'm not sure I'd say that "nothing" is something to write about, although I bet there's a case to made; for me, there's never nothing, even when it feels as if there is. Sue Grafton, the mystery writer, once commented that she overcame a writing block by listening to the “Id” voice (as in Freud's Id, that dark part of us that wants to, say, eat the whole chocolate cake instead of one piece). Dan Masterson, my poetry teacher at Manhattanville, counseled that we should go really, really nice in our poetry, or really, really mean. Both of those, for me, were ways of encouraging honesty and saying what needs to be said, even when it's overwhelming. The “nothing” is generally disconnection, sometimes self protective, when there is so much going on emotionally that it's impossible to engage it all in the moment. Taking just a piece of it--one lost friend, one beautiful image--helps me to focus.
Donna:
Why prose poetry--why does the form help you express these themes?
Laurel:
Prose poetry felt natural in this collection because the poems were outpourings. There was no convenient breaking or breathing point. In a lot of cases, it didn't feel as if there was any breath at all, except for one inhale at the beginning of the poem and the final puff of air at the end. Some have storytelling elements that felt more appropriate in prose. Some came to me on walks and thus felt more conversational. Many, especially at the beginning of the collection, begin as if in the middle of a conversation, as if the auditor (one who listens) were listening to, rather than reading, a series of anecdotes about the losses and loved ones. Poetry is musical, it's very much about how it sounds aloud. I thought a lot about sound and phrasing as I wrote this. Which brings me back to the breath, and the breathless quality that comes moving from one loss to another . . . to another. We often don't breathe well when we're grieving; we're trying too hard to maintain control--or we've lost it completely. My intention was to reflect some of that in the work, and the prose poem seemed the best vehicle to do it.
Donna:
I also noticed from your Substack that you have a lot going on with the poetry community in Norwalk! We're so excited to be on your calendar. Yet these are extracurricular activities for you--you are a Professor of English at Norwalk Community College. To flip things around for a moment, what wisdom have your students imparted on you lately?
Laurel:
My students are profoundly stressed out. They are working, going to school, caring for family, dealing with the political situation (as many of them are from immigrant families), trying to make lives for themselves. They are trying to teach me (without knowing anything about it) to slow down in the classroom. We don't have to cover everything, maybe. Last semester, I spent a good portion of my Composition class talking about culturally enforced busyness and counteracting that with being in nature and meditation. Maybe I can slow down and do some more of that too. Maybe after I call my mother.
Laurel Peterson
. . . is the author of the chapbooks That's the Way the Music Sounds and Talking to the Mirror, the full-length poetry collections Do You Expect Your Art to Answer? and Daughter of Sky, and two mystery novels, Shadow Notes and The Fallen. Her latest release is The Sky Weeps with Us. She is a writing professor, serves on the Norwalk Public Library Board, and was Norwalk, Connecticut’s, Poet Laureate from April 2016 – April 2019. Find her at Substack and at laurelpeterson.com.