Recently I had the pleasure of interviewing poet Kelly Belmonte about her new volume of poetry, The Mother of All Words. It was a great conversation and covered more than would fit into one article, so here is part 2 of our conversation about poetry and faith. Enjoy!
Holly Ordway: How do people respond to poetry in our modern culture?
Kelly Belmonte: Once a year, I speak to a class of high school freshmen about poetry. It’s mainly me reading from my poetry and answering questions they have about publishing, poetry, writing, inspiration, and whatever other quirky things they throw my way. I usually do a brief writing exercise with them to give them a glimpse into my process, with an emphasis on this one takeaway: “While you’re writing, just write; don’t edit. You can rewrite/edit/play with your words later.” I think this is so important as a teenager, and I wish someone had taught me that back then.
I mentioned earlier that I meet with some friends to write once a month. I follow the same basic format for our time together: Here’s a prompt; now just write—don’t edit. I set the timer, and we write for a short block of time, then share if we feel like it. This format works every time, and no matter their age, people really seem to have fun with it. They often seem surprised by the things they end up writing, which can be deeply moving or seriously hilarious. For some, they find the process to be healing (healing from the prior stigma/trauma/label of “not a writer” or “writer’s block”), which is just humbling and amazing to me every single time.
As far as how people respond to poetry at this point in time, I think there’s an opportunity for poetry now that may be a unique historical moment. We live in a culture that is distracted and at the same time dialed in to anything that smells like authenticity. “Lived experience” trumps facts; story is believed before “news.” There are both good and bad things about this framework. But for poetry, it’s a potential field day! All the things that are of value within this moment are found within a good poem: concision, repetition, authenticity, lived experience, the feeling of a true story. It’s all there.
“While you’re writing, just write; don’t edit. You can rewrite/edit/play with your words later.”
Now if we can only get the world to value poetry as something more than a freebie on Instagram—ka-ching! Only joking (sorta . . .). But seriously, I have found in my little corner of the poetry world that people are receptive to poetry. But the people who follow me are often poets and/or artists themselves, so I’m not sure we’ve broken out yet into the potential that is there for a broader readership.
Since I run the Writing Community at the Word on Fire Institute (we even have an online journal, the Writer Showcase), I’m interested in having you tell us a bit about your writing process. How do you know when a poem is done?
For me, all writing is practice. The process of writing is one word, then another, then another, until there’s a sentence, a paragraph, a poem, whatever. Rinse and repeat! If I have a particular process or rule for writing, I guess it would be summed up as this: While writing, don’t edit. When you’re done writing, rewrite it until it’s ready for someone else to read it. Then get feedback from a trusted reader, and make whatever adjustments you can live with.
As to the question of when a poem is done . . . Does a poem ever have to be done? (How’s that for an answer?!)
Okay, but how do you know when a poem is done enough to submit for publication?
I’m blessed to have quite a few talented writer-poet friends in my life who will give me direct, honest, helpful feedback about my poetry. The older I get, the more I rely on these amazing artistic allies in determining if a piece is ready for “prime time.” I think having two or three as final test readers is good. Any more than that can be overwhelming and you can end up with confusing and contradictory inputs.
At the end of the day, though, it’s up to the poet to determine the go/no-go status of the poem. I would encourage those new to the process to hit “go” more often than not, especially if you’ve already done your due diligence with your faithful feedback posse. And the reason I say that is because publishing is often a volume business. You may have a perfect poem, but if it hits a journal after it met its quota of perfect poems, or it doesn’t fit the theme for that month, or the editor just doesn’t like the sound of your cover letter, etc., well, move on to the next one. Or say your poem’s not perfect, but it lands on an editor’s desk just when he or she needed whatever it is your poem had to say. They love it! Wow, you’re in! You will never know if it stays on your hard drive or in your desk drawer. Also, you’ll learn more from the process of submitting your poem to an editor’s review than by second-guessing your poem to death.
Much of your poetry is in the style called “free verse.” A lot of readers tend mistakenly to assume this means “anything goes.” Can you tell us a bit about how you shape or structure your free-verse poetry?
For me, each line has to make sense as a unit. Each line is a step on the ladder that makes up the poem. It doesn’t mean there’s no room for enjambment—breaking the line mid-phrase or mid-sentence. But each line has to carry its weight. In some of my micro-poems, a line is a single word. But in one of my longest and largest poems, the line length goes across the page for every line. In each case, the choice serves the content. How expansive does this need to be? Is this a snapshot or a symphony?
What are “micro-poems” and what’s your inspiration for them?
Most of my micro-poems are three or five lines—very much like a haiku, senryu, or tanka, etc. I’ve even labeled them that at times. But to be candid, I find the “rules” for haiku and other Americanized versions of Japanese poetry forms quite mysterious. In grade-school, a haiku is a three-line poem about nature with a structure of five-seven-five syllables per line. But the more I’ve learned about haiku, I’ve realized it’s so much more—and different—than that.
We live in a culture that is distracted and at the same time dialed in to anything that smells like authenticity.
The Definitions Committee of the Haiku Society of America had this to say about the definition of haiku:
The definition of haiku has been made more difficult by the fact that many uninformed persons have considered it to be a “form” like a sonnet or triolet (17 syllables divided 5, 7, and 5). That it is not simply a “form” is amply demonstrated by the fact that the Japanese differentiate haiku from senryu──a type of verse (or poem) that has exactly the same “form” as haiku but differs in content from it. Actually, there is no rigid “form” for Japanese haiku. Seventeen Japanese onji (sound-symbols) is the norm, but some 5% of “classical” haiku depart from it, and so do a still greater percentage of “modern” Japanese haiku. To the Japanese and to American haiku poets, it is the content and not the form alone that makes a haiku.
Oi! So confusing (to me, anyway). To avoid noncompliance or offending purists in any particular poetry camp, I just go with a more generic term. That said, the English translations of the great haiku masters (e.g., Bashō and Issa) continue to be a great inspiration to me. Kobayashi Issa is my favorite, probably because I find his haiku very funny and quirky. Like this one:
Little snail,
slowly, slowly,
climbs Mount Fuji.
Sure, I suppose it’s meant on one level to be inspirational. Like, “you go, snail, you got this!” But it’s a snail. Climbing Mount Fuji. Very Far Side! I love it.
You’ve also published a chapbook called Transit in collaboration with a photographer. Tell us about that.
Transit was a very fun collaboration with uber-talented photographer Tom Darin Liskey. The way it worked was this: Tommy sent me a link to a Google Drive with about twenty photographs from his travels. I started with the first image, looked at it for a few minutes, then started writing. I did some polishing over time, but that’s pretty much the process through all of the images in the book, and they ended up in Transit in that very order.
Many of the poems explicitly address faith themes mainly due to two facts: (1) Many of the images Tommy chose to share were of cathedrals (inside and out), which directed my thinking toward worship, faith, etc. (2) All the poems in Transit were written between March and June of 2020, when most of us were experiencing the early “shut-down” stages of the COVID pandemic. If that global crisis didn’t bring me to my knees (poetically and literally speaking), nothing would.
One of my favorite poems in Transit—and perhaps the most explicit in terms of Christian faith—was in response to a photograph of a bookshelf full of Bibles and Books of Common Prayer:
Ancient Words
Before pages
Before shelves
Before furniture
Before Gutenberg
thought of printing
Before pen and paper
Before trees
Before time even,
there was the Word
and conversation –
“Let there be” –
Archetype of common prayer:
Then Maker imaging makers
to bear words of witness
to the Word.
I love the first chapter of the book of Genesis—an often underappreciated poem itself—and the echo in the first lines of the Gospel of John. Tommy’s photograph—and then this poem—gave me the chance to explore the Beginning and the connection with words and the Word. I could happily live in this writing theme for the rest of my poetry life.