Interview with Erin Malone

Erin Malone is the teacher and poet we all want to meet when we decide we tragically suck at writing poetry and need a few good words to keep us going. She confirms the difficult process of writing with a grace that makes us feel normal for wrestling with one word for three days. We especially like how cerebral and warmhearted her answers are in this interview. And if you happen to love good titles, she’s perfect for that, too, as her poem Sonnet Destroyed by Crows shows. –- Lori Huskey

Dark Sky Magazine: How did you come to live and write in Seattle? How would you describe Seattle’s literary scene, and furthermore, has geographical location played a role in your poetic life?

Erin Malone: I came from Colorado in ’94 to start grad school in the creative writing program at the University of Washington. When I finished in the summer of ’96, I left; not without regrets, but happy to be returning to a place I loved, where my family lives, and where there’s enough sun to keep me charged year-round. I found that I really missed Seattle’s lit scene, though, with opportunities to hear both new and well-known writers reading some place every night — Elliott Bay Books, Open Books, Richard Hugo House — I could go on. Seattle celebrates its artists. So I felt divided: when in Seattle, I missed Colorado, but in Colorado I longed for Seattle. Then I fell in love with someone from Seattle, and that sealed the deal. I moved back in ’99.

Location has been important to me yes because many of the poems in my book have to do with being geographically foreign — they take place in Italy, France, Germany. And then from that role as outsider, the idea of division becomes bigger, more psychological: the split of body/mind, mother/child, interior/exterior self.

DSM: You had a tremendous response to your writing while blogging for Beloit. The discussion was thoughtful, lively, inquisitive. You’ve questioned how a community affects our writing — what is your answer to that?

EM: Beloit gave me a great opportunity when they asked me to blog about some poems of mine. It completely intimidated me, though, because I’d never been online like that. I’d have a thought and write it down, press send — it was like watching a swimmer disappear in the water. Will she resurface? Will she respond to my watching? And magically, a comment would pop up on the screen, and I’d think, thank god.

As I become more familiar with the online poetry community, I see how it offers a certain grace. I have a sort of poetry pen pal in Japan, for example, and other friends I rely on to respond to drafts of poems. I appreciate the immediacy of that, and also being able to open my laptop everyday to websites like Verse Daily and Poetry Daily.

That said, nothing compares to community in the traditional sense. I’ve been working with a small group of writers for the past eight years. We meet every month or so to generate ideas for poems, and to talk about what we’re reading and admire, and which poets are reading where, when. Without their presence, encouragement and brilliance I’d feel a little lost. I’m a better writer because of them. These kinds of groups can bolster you, make you realize the worth of what you’re doing when you start to wonder. I always tell my students to try to get together this way, outside of the classroom.

One more specific thing about the Seattle community: I love walking into Open Books, one of the nation’s two poetry-only bookstores, and asking Christine Deavel and John Marshall, the owners, what they’re reading. I always come away with something great.

DSM: Talk about the frustration of not being able to write. You mentioned it on Beloit but that was over a year ago. I wonder if you have made any discoveries since then?

Pack Your Bags With Poetry

EM: Well, this happens in cycles. When I’m diligent, and lucky, I might get a few poems or drafts of poems in the span of a few weeks. But that’s rare. I’m not someone who can sit down every day and write. I get distracted too easily. If I go for quite a while without writing, though, the frustration can become overwhelming. A friend taught me a trick, and that’s to go spend time in a museum when I’m feeling stuck because I can find something in someone else’s art that will unlock an idea in me. Travel always inspires me, and teaching, and observing how my seven-year-old and his friends speak and learn.

DSM: What’s been the most critical part of your career so far?

EM: I guess the critical part has been learning patience, and persistence. I listen to other writers, read as much as I can, and try to challenge myself. When Concrete Wolf Press published my chapbook, What Sound Does It Make, it was a turning point for me. It gave me an extra shot of confidence.

DSM: How would you describe the speaker in your poems? Who is she?

EM: Oh, man, she struggles. Dealing with loss, and fear of loss in the context of new motherhood, she’s overwhelmed. Her mind is untrustworthy — it tells her she’s a bad mother, it pushes her. She’s angry over that, and that anger gives her a foothold. And that’s her way over, I think. She gets stronger.

DSM: You mention your vantage point as a mother in your poems. Can you think of any poems, ones that you have fallen in love with, that communicate the nuances of being a mother?

EM: This is so obvious, but Plath’s “Morning Song” comes immediately to mind. Also “Nick and the Candlestick”: “You are the one/ Solid the spaces lean on, envious.”

Donald Justice has a poem that I’ve always loved, from years and years before I became a parent, called “To Waken a Small Person.” I would quote the entire thing here if I could; it’s a small, quiet moment that’s both uplifting and heartbreaking in its loveliness.

DSM: I’ve heard that poetry is “getting something right in language.” Do you feel you’ve been able to do that in some poems more than others?

EM: Yes. I can’t count how many poems I’ve written that I scrap eventually. There might be a good idea in the draft, so I keep working on it, and then I realize after many attempts that it’s just not ever going to be the poem I want it to be. I think it’s good to make the poems carefully and not send them out the door too soon — but the danger in that is that you can edit too far, you can edge yourself out.

Read Erin Malone’s Poem, Sonnet Destroyed by Crows

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Erin Malone is the author of a chapbook, What Sound Does It Make. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Field, Beloit Poetry Journal, Pool, and online at Diagram and Verse Daily. She has taught writing at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs, Richard Hugo House in Seattle, and at the University of Washington Rome Center in Italy.