CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT:
Interview with Savannah Cooper

Rappahannock Review Poetry Editors: We were struck at how succinctly you were able to portray all of the emotions linked to recent socio-political events in the United States. What was it like for you to capture so many intense feelings and fears and channel them into a single poem?

Savannah Cooper: This poem came from a deeply emotional place. Being a white cis woman married to a man, I have a lot of privilege in this country, but so many of the people I love are on much more dangerous and uncertain ground now. Just dealing with the news has been overwhelming, and it can be easy to feel desensitized to what these broad stories mean, especially if you’re not close to people who this administration is targeting. The feelings I captured in this poem were a reflection of the people in my community: conversations I’d had, things my friends had expressed, fears and anxieties. This poem came to me easily because it was just a matter of listening and empathizing.

RR: Something else that captured our attention was how you use punctuation in this piece. Could you talk about your stylistic choice with punctuation, or the lack thereof in “American Sonnet”?

SC: My inspiration for this poem came from the constant news alerts after the election, most of which read: “How Trump’s presidency will affect [fill in the blank].” I became so exhausted by these notifications popping up on my phone, a constant reminder of this fear for the future. I wrote the poem as a list of things that could fill in that blank that weren’t vague concepts like the economy, but were instead specific experiences and people around me. I chose not to include punctuation to emphasize that these phrasings were feelings and to heighten their urgency.

RR: Do you often find yourself inspired by current events?

SC: I often don’t know how to write about current events without coming across as preachy or hitting the nail a bit too hard on the head. My poetry tends to focus more on my own experiences, so writing about the world at large is generally too overwhelming for me. I value the specific in my work over the general, and I find that often those smaller, detailed moments are more relatable. Current events often just feel too big for me to face in my poetry.

RR: Does poetry offer you a release, or escapism, especially when handling emotions and events as intense as those explored in “American Sonnet”?

SC: Less escapism, more release for sure. Writing has always been my way of dealing with difficult feelings. I’ve often called it an exorcism because it allows me to release those emotions and stop them from spinning around in my head. I came back to poetry during a very difficult time in my life, and ever since it’s been a way of getting my feelings out.

RR: We saw that you have a collection of poems titled “Mother Viper” releasing soon, congratulations! Can you tell us more about that book?

SC: “Mother Viper” is my debut poetry collection, and it navigates the ghosts of childhood and adolescence, my departure from the Southern Baptist faith I was raised in, and the grief of losing a wanted child at twenty-two weeks. Almost all of these poems were written in the wake of that loss and follow my journey of rediscovering myself and who and what I truly wanted, outside of what I’d been raised to be. It’s an extremely personal collection, but I’m hoping it still resonates with people.