Every Tuesday in April, Trident Booksellers and Cafe is featuring a local poet for National Poetry Month. Each poet has chosen a prompt (just for fun); all poetry is welcome, unless it’s racist, sexist, ableist, et cetera. Then gtfo. Sign ups start at 8 p.m.
This week, Allison Adair will take the mic with the theme of “morning.” Adair studied poetry at Brown University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is currently a faculty member in the English department at Boston College. Her poems and translations have appeared in the Globe, in the anthology Hacks, and as part of a braille-photography installation “Twice Seen.”
How old were you when you started writing poetry?
I wrote stories and little verses as a kid, but I started taking my writing more seriously in college.
What is your favorite word and why? Least favorite?
That’s a tough one—it’s all in how a word is used. I tend to respond more to sounds than to actual words. Like I appreciate guttural sounds and the draggy “th” or “r” sounds for moments of confusion, and hard consonants—k, p, t—for moments that startle, that profess to offer an answer or directive, et cetera. But I like this question, so here goes: I love the words “give” and “clock,” for their sounds and for the flexibility of their usage. I often borrow Robert Frost’s usage of “something.” Less exciting for me are “thigh” and “belie.” “Thigh” I find too residual—like it’s hard to use it in an unexpected way, and that feels a little lazy to me. “Belie” is so explanatory—and helpful in that sense—but that’s also why I dislike it: It’s too of the mind. I also get annoyed at the construction “like so many,” as in “such-and-such pricked my hand like so many needles.” I think that’s Swift. But it still bugs me. Then again, a great writer can make any of these words sing.
What activity or scene gets you in the mood to write?
Pretty much everything does, these days. Striking images always do, especially when things are just slightly out of place, or out of joint, like a drawer that shuts—but off its track. Night-time does. Extreme weather gets me going in a big way. Things that defy nature, like helicopters—I could go on and on.
How has your poetry changed, grown, expanded since you started writing?
Music has begun to serve meaning, instead of overpowering it. At least, I hope it has.
When you write a poem, do you think about how it will sound, or does that come later? Do you say poems as your write them?
Definitely. Sound is huge, huge, huge for me—and poems share a history with songs. If I’m deciding whether or not to use a word or a certain construction, sound almost always trumps denotative meaning. It’s all about being expressive. And as readers, I believe we often get it before we get it: We understand things viscerally before we ever understand them intellectually. That’s important to me when I’m writing. Keats said, “Great poetry proves itself upon the pulses,” and that seems right to me. I’ll use punctuation and line breaks to dictate certain rhythms and emphases, too—but I also like that you can’t ever really control how a reader will hear your words.
How do you celebrate poetry on a day to day basis? How do you incorporate it into your life?
Well, teaching helps me do that. My students are my best education, when it comes to thinking about poems in new ways. And trying to remain – I don’t know – counterintuitive in everything I do. In the way I think about things. If something is easy, or obvious, or definitive, then I try to muck it up, and quick – to generate new ideas, and to tease out specifics. That approach is something I really associate with poetry.
How do you know a poem is finished?
That question is easy: it never is. But you have to stop sometime, right? I just realized I wrote an essay on this very question once:
https://grubstreet.org/grub-daily/finishing-is-it-even-possible/
Anything else you’d like to add about your experiences or about National Poetry Month?
Just that poetry belongs to the people. I hope that everyone who feels excluded or intimidated, or even just unfamiliar, uses this month to reclaim what’s theirs.
[TRIDENT OPEN MIC POETRY SERIES. TRIDENT BOOKSELLERS AND CAFE, 338 NEWBURY ST., BOSTON. OPENS TUE 4.1, RUNS WEEKLY THROUGH 4.29. FREE & ALL AGES. TRIDENTBOOKSCAFE.COM/EVENTS]