CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT:
INTERVIEW WITH MARTHA SILANO
Rappahannock Review Poetry Editors: We’re compelled by how “I’m reminded of my mother’s chipped plate collection” and “On the Way to the Grocery Store” deal with different stages of grief following the death of a mother. How do you see these two poems interacting with each other?
Martha Silano: I don’t believe the first draft of “I’m reminded of my mother’s chipped plate collection,” included any of my mother’s less desirable personality traits. Those, along with the final sentence of the poem, were added months later, around the time I began writing “On the Way to the Grocery Store,” which enacts the stage in my grieving process when I fully believed my mother was rewarding me with bird and rainbow sightings for getting my ass out of bed. These two poems, and many others in the book I’m currently working on, attempt to create a composite portrait of my parents (my dad passed a year before my mom), their nurturing/supportive qualities as well as their ability to cause emotional pain.
RR: The final stanza of “I’m reminded of…” takes a turn from what might be expected, commenting on the complications of a mother/daughter relationship. How did you decide the poem would go in that direction?
MS: As with most of my poems, and especially their endings, I had no idea I would close this poem with the phrase “that a daughter must escape.” It was totally unpremeditated—a complete surprise. That said, I knew when I typed that line the poem was finished.
RR: We love the way “On the Way to the Grocery Store” opens and closes, with the hundred gulls in the field and then gone, almost as if they were never there. How did you land on that image as the frame for the poem?
MS: Often my poems begin while I am outside in nature. Who said “Don’t be a poet on whom anything is wasted”? When I had the luck of seeing all those gulls, how could I not write about them? How could I not pull out my notebook and begin to draft a poem? As for using the gulls as a frame, it seemed fitting that they should get the first and last word as they were the inspiration for the poem.
RR: You’ve been published in a wide range of journals, along with publishing five books of poetry. How does the process of creating a collection of poetry come together for you?
MS: I usually begin a new manuscript as soon as the previous book gets accepted—I don’t know how to take time off. Usually, there’s a new book project in my head I can’t put off. When my kids were little, it was my kids—the ups and downs of having and raising children. I love writing about astrophysics, so that keeps happening, and those poems get into books. When my parents died, I had to write about them, what it was like being their daughter. I have another manuscript in progress that addresses climate change and the natural world. I just plug away at shaping and honing, adding and subtracting, when I’m not teaching or hiking or paddle-boarding or watching Schitt’s Creek or reading physics books, or all the other things I love or have to do.
RR: We understand that you lead poetry workshops in classrooms from kindergarten through Ph.D. programs. How do you tailor your workshops for such a wide range of writers?
MS: Well, let’s see. I take the little ones outside to look closely at flowers, bark, bugs, and birds before they sit down to write haiku … but I do that with adult students too. I make fill-in-the-blank templates for the youngest poets, but come to think of it the newcomers to poetry who happen to be in their eighties appreciate those too. The PhDers need a little less guidance, but nonetheless I cram my weekly folders with writing prompts—pantoums, ghazals, sonnets, letter poems, short poems, etc. Most of them share that they love discovering forms they hadn’t come across. I feel strongly that successful teaching comes down to three main things: (1) engendering enthusiasm, (2) pushing students to experiment with language—to take risks; and (3) leading with positivity, openness, and a touch of rebellion. When I focus on these attributes, age/level of experience doesn’t end up making a whole lot of difference.
Martha Silano’s work in Issue 8.3:
“On the Way to the Grocery Store” and “I’m reminded of my mother’s chipped plate collection,”