CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT:
Interview with Ray Carey

Rappahannock Review Interview Editor: “Between Pegs” is a poem about coping with mental turmoil through performing day-to-day house tasks. Why does this memory of your mother stand out to you specifically?

Ray Carey: Yes, while the poem is about the beauty of ordinary things and quiet lives like those of my mother and father, it’s more about poetry than washing and the emotional support you need to survive.

RR: There is beautiful imagery of your mother kissing the sheets before blowing away the leftover dust. Was this included to juxtapose the harsh imagery of your father and his intimidating spikes?

RC: My father’s decision to place the spikes in the wall wasn’t too different from my decision to begin the poem in that way. But spikes are a hard sound and a hard image, so I see it as my job to resolve that. There has to be contrast in any artistic work. A positive tension.

RR: You reflect in the poem that “you hadn’t been hurt enough to know the answer back then.” How much time has passed from when your mother asked you this and when you wrote this poem?

RC: Many years. The yard at the center of the poem is a narrow space on one side of a high wall. Still there. Although decades have passed, I can see the same red valerian growing from the wall. It was in that yard that my imagination began. In a tent made from two sweeping brushes and a blanket.

RR: Your bio mentions that you are a poet and a composer. Is there a lot of overlap between these two forms of art, or do you find the processes very different?

RC: I feel the two processes are very dependent on each other. It was only when I understood how closely linked the processes are that the material started to improve and look right to me. It is much easier in music and in the visual arts to disappear in the material, as they are essentially abstract forms. With words, you have to work a bit harder to overcome assumptions, but the requirement to get the tone right is the same challenge.

RR: Who is a poet you read for inspiration?

RC: Yeats and the great poetic dramatists such as Synge and O’Casey. It may seem like a strange answer, but it’s my brief personal encounters with writers that have had the greatest impact on me. I always remember Brian Friel asking me, “How do you know you’ll like it?” at a preview before his latest play. I loved his vulnerability. I thought I was the one who should be nervous about approaching him for an autograph.

I’m very grateful to all those who have encouraged me. The novelist Clark Brown and the poet Paul Durcan, in particular, and the Rappahannock Review for this opportunity. Encouragement is definitely the best inspiration of all, and it costs nothing. However, two good sweeping brushes and a blanket can help, too.

RR: You seem to have an incredible understanding of the technicality of writing. What tips would you give to beginner writers?

RC: Well, the overarching tip has to be not to waste time like I did searching for a fail-safe method. I spent two summers working on a short poem, thinking that if I could work out the correct approach, everything would be much easier from that point on. In my view the only tip you need as a writer is to know exactly where you are in relation to yourself. You can’t be artificial or too much in control. So a notebook of some kind tells you where you are. I used to use hardback red science notebooks because I liked the idea that writing was a science. And that it might help someone I didn’t know or couldn’t know.