by daithí

Over mid-December, I spent time drafting a handful of questions to ask Kim Ward concerning her poetry and a few more to offer insight to her as a writer. What follows below was gathered as I began a review of her book, Fire on a Circle:

Q1: When did you begin writing poetry? 

I first started writing my own poetry when I was 11. I used to write stories a lot. I wanted to be a fiction writer because I loved to read stories so much. However, I also read a lot of epic and longer form poetry, including Shakespeare’s plays, and decided I could try my hand at it. I began by writing poems about stories from novels I’d read. They were very long and odd. Then I started taking more poetry books out of the library at school and reading those and tried shorter, more readable poems. 

Q2: I noticed that you have a  background as well as training it theater. How does poetry compare to theater?

Theater to me IS poetry and vice versa. And really, the spoken word in particular is what drew me to poetry. Hearing it aloud is what often got my attention the most when younger (and still does). However, I’d say because in theater we have to live in the scene, be it action or words, every night, making it fresh and relevant, I find that translates so easily to each time you read a poem. It comes alive in the moment you read it, and examines the human condition in a very similar way that theater does. Its main focus is communicating that human condition. 

Also, while majoring in writing and minoring in dance at Johnson State (Now Northern Vermont University), I saw Maris Wolf dance to T.S. Eliot’s “The Still Point” and  realized, “Hey, you can dance to poems instead of music!?” That, coupled with reading “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide, When the Rainbow is Enuf” by Ntozake Shange changed my whole view of there being any separation between poetry and theater. 

Q3: Do you have any favorite poets that you like to read?

Oh, I have so many favorite poets! When I was in college, I discovered poets like Wallace Stevens, Ellen Bryan Voigt, Joy Harjo, and Anne Sexton. Wallace Stevens has such everyday language turned into poetry, such as in his “Two Figures in a Dense Violet Light,” which starts, “I had as lief be embraced by the porter at the hotel/As to get no more from the moonlight/Than your moist hand” (The Palm at the End of the Mind). Stevens has these imperative sentences in his work that I love. In that same poem, the next line is “Be the voice of night and Florida in my ear.” I remember reading that at age 20 and thinking, “What? I need to figure out how to do this, to tell my reader what I want them to do or think or feel…” In my poem “Recovering Wife Speaks.” I try my hand at that. I open the poem with, “Hurray/Close the gap between/Betrothal and denial/Between passion and/Understanding/Why my wings did not beat/Once in thirty years of living” (15).

With Anne Sexton, I found I really loved that she could talk about gritty, dirty, everyday things in her poetry, especially the topics of being a woman in a patriarchal straightjacket and of her mental health struggles. It was such a new experience for me. And Ellen Bryant Voigt’s work was rhythmically and imagistically so visceral! Once, many years ago, I discussed with Ellen an idea to perform her entire book Kyrie. I don’t know if you’ve read it, but it’s all blank verse sonnets about the Flanders Fever pandemic and there are characters she created to speak different poems. They represent people from a real town: a baker, a mother, a farmer, a child who survived the pandemic, etc. It lends itself very well to performance on stage. Some day I’ll produce that. 

Thanks for this great question. It has made me pull out so many books to revisit and fan them on the floor… 

Q4: What advice would you give to beginning poets? 

Read, read, read. Read poets you love and poets you hate, look at how they structure their work, consider what makes you feel alive. Remember Emily Dickinson’s insistence that “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” Then, try to imitate those poets to get your techniques down. Try to be “you” writing like “them” though, don’t try to be them. Also, read your work aloud. This is one of the only ways to really know if a poem works. You can hear the clunks and stutters, the oddities that need to be fixed that way. 

Q5: How has living in Vermont informed your voice?

Living in Vermont has informed my voice inside and out. I grew up in Chittenden county, in Milton, VT. We lived in a trailer park. Having a single mom with my grandparents around the corner informed my writing. Vermont is this odd combination of suburban and rural that really shows you this beautiful place where it is sometimes so hard to survive. It’s core to who I am and how I write. (See Vermont Calendar pg. 54.) Landscape is everything in writing. I believe it truly forges all writers. (See also Green Mountain Runes, pg. 36, and section three of my book: Fire). 

Q6: Where can I find and buy your book?

You can find my book directly from the publisher at https://www.rootstockpublishing.com or at Bear Pond Books in Montpelier. Last I checked there were a couple of copies on the shelf there. But, you can order it online from any independent or large bookseller, too.