CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT:
Interview with Alexis Barton

Rappahannock Review Poetry Editors: We were deeply moved by “The Unspoken Space Between Dusk and Darkness” from the very first line, “I pick up my childhood.” It does a fantastic job at setting the tone for the rest of the poem, so we wanted to ask what your process was like in creating that effective start?

Alexis Barton: When writing this piece, I went back and forth on what to call its subject, finally landing on the word “childhood.” I had no other way to describe her, and I thought that it encompassed the raw emotions I felt while writing it. If we were able to pick up an intangible concept, this would be the moment: my “childhood” in the poem was exactly that.

RR: The speaker and their “childhood” have a very compelling relationship throughout this poem, which is all told through a very strong voice. How did you approach the dynamic of the piece and its voice, and where did the inspiration for it come from?

AB: I wanted this piece to say everything and nothing at the same time, to say just enough to show the reader just how special and close their bond is. In the end, what worked was to tell a story within a story: the first half of the first stanza introduces an image, fades into more intimate moments and struggles, and brings the original image back in the last half of the last stanza. Through this, I was able to show so much more than any of my original drafts, which felt too surface-level. This method also allowed me to express how I felt in the situation. The piece was inspired by my last moments with my “childhood,” so I was able to convey how disjointed and difficult those struggles were by doing so.

RR: Are there themes you find yourself drawn to in your writing, and is there something about poetry that allows you to explore them?

AB: I often find myself writing on family, identity, and self. As someone with a complicated home life, poetry has allowed me to love even the worst of it. Everything I’ve experienced, good and bad, has shaped who I am; in the words of Meena Alexander, “What could I ever be but a mass of faults, a fault mass?” Instead of hiding those faults, I want to be able to showcase and explore them. My forthcoming and debut collection, Making Home Out of an Elegy, is a micro-chapbook published by Dipity Press on grief and “making home” out of it. Through poetry, I’ve been able to bring so much more out of my hardships. Through poetry, my grief isn’t just loss.

RR: What first inspired you to become a writer, and what gives you inspiration today?

AB: When I was younger, my dad let me read his faded, battered copy of Sylvia Plath’s Crossing the Water. I’d never read poetry like that before, and I was hooked. I started writing day and night, at school and at home. I wanted to be just as good as Plath, and that pushed me to keep working on it through middle school, high school, and now college. Today, I’m inspired by how far I’ve come and everything ahead of me. And I still have that same yellowed copy of Crossing the Water sitting on my desk to remind me.

RR: Did you have a childhood pet that inspired this poem?

AB: I did. She lived to seventeen years and eleven months old, and I’d had her since I was only a year old myself. I actually lost her a few days after writing this poem. She had been diagnosed with terminal intestinal cancer a month prior, and I knew I didn’t have very long left with her, so I was writing every night to capture those last moments. The evening after we had to put her down, I sat on the front porch and watched the sunset just like I said I would in this piece. Only this time, I couldn’t walk her back home.