Adrienne Lewis is the publisher/creator of The Rooftop chaplet series. She has authored two previous chapbooks of poetry: Coming Clean (Mayapple Press) and Compared to This (Finishing Line Press). Lewis has also had work published in numerous print and online literary venues. She currently teaches English at Kirtland Community College in Roscommon, Michigan and serves as the poetry editor for both the school's national literary journal Controlled Burn and her own zine Paradidomi. A brief chapbook of her prose titled Past Perfect Pretense is forthcoming from Sunnyoutside.
Poetry Circle: Adrienne, what got you into writing poetry?
Adrienne Lewis: As a young girl I learned to read way before I went to school and one of my favorite things to do was to write small verses -- typically in homemade cards for my parents. After marrying and having a family, I decided to (finally) go to college. It was my intention to become a kindergarten teacher, but during my first semester I was fortunate enough to have an instructor who encouraged his students to experiment with their voices and modes/genres of composition; I wrote a slew of poems for him and rediscovered that I had still the ability to express myself in this way. And without the limitations of youth, the awkwardness of adolescence, or those uncomfortable young adult years when most people first attend college holding me back, I exploded, and quickly switched to a major in English.
Poetry Circle: Who were your earliest influences?
Adrienne Lewis: My earliest influences were Sharon Olds, Mary Oliver, and Lucille Clifton. At least books by those writers were the first in my collection of poetry resources. I was fortunate, however, to also be surrounded by a wonderful writing community where I attended college, and those writers were truly my earliest influences, the first living literary writers I interacted with and who helped to shape my emerging voice and philosophy of writing/teaching writing.
Poetry Circle: How do you think you've grown over the past three years as a poet?
Adrienne Lewis: When I was first started to write poetry I found myself gravitating, if not genuflecting, toward poets whose topics and themes matched my own. Today I think I appreciate language in a more intense way; what is personal or similar between my poems and those I read and hope to emulate doesn't have as much to do with subject matter as it does with voice and cadence and the use of white space as an element of composition, as a way of saying something a little more
And looking at my first book of poems to the work I'm doing now, its impossible for me to deny it: There has been substantial changes (hopefully growth) in my poetry over the last three years. Along with pushing my personal evelope on subject matter, I've begun to explore field composition and what my poetic voice is truly capable of as a linguistically honed object. The need to make sense of life not just in retrospect, but in the immediate has surfaced in my work; self-expression fused even more with the craft and I feel as though what I'm writing now is light years from where I was when Coming Clean was released.
Poetry Circle: What's your concept of line break? When do you decide to break a line?
Adrienne Lewis: My conception of the line break has to do (mostly) with two things: 1) rhythm and 2) tension. To me each line has to be a unit that has to be just as strong as the individual words used within their structure and as well as the poem in its entirety. Rhythmically, I like lines that can be spoken/read and make sense in some way standing alone even if their incomplete. When the voice breaks or pauses, the rhythm does too and a line break is often warranted. Well-honed poems, to me, also contain a lot of tension - not just in their subject matter and sound, but also in their structure. I love the tautness that can be generated by breaking a line midway through, dropping down the remaining thought and fusing it with the beginning of new thought. Something new, something more can be said by doing this; it allows a poet to add emphasis without additional figurative language or imagery. I don't think I do this as much in what I'm writing now as I did in my first books though; I'm more concerned a lot with the fullness of a line, the pregnancy of images and figures. I guess you could call it progression; a determination to carry the reader forward through the poem, across the page, on their tip toes around an idea. Line breaks, even stanza breaks and indentions, create this same type of tension for me now and seem to suit my rhythmic needs as well.
Poetry Circle: How do you know when a poem is complete?
Adrienne Lewis: To be honest, I'm not certain that a poem is ever truly complete. I've published poems in magazines and books only to go back over them with the red pen of revision years later.
Poetry Circle: Are you a rewriter? How many revisions do your poems generally go through?
Adrienne Lewis: Yes, I'm definitely a rewriter. I believe in the value of participating in a writing community. Workshopping, while not as vital to me as it once was, still holds value; especially when I think a poem is nearing completion. Although, I don't go through as many drafts as I once did, but that may have something to do with my maturity in the craft. More than two or three drafts of a poem just don't seem to be necessary anymore. Well, maybe I'm just getting great feedback on the initial drafts and that guides me to what I can consider a finished expression.
Poetry Circle: When do you find yourself the most creative?
Adrienne Lewis: It is hard for me to say that I find a time of day or a specific season as a period when I'm most creative. I write sporadically. Sometimes I go months without touching the keyboard (I do need to use a computer to write). Ideas whirl around in my head until I reach a type of critical mass and they just need to come out. I'm not always conscious of when that time is even at hand. I'll sit down to do something and suddenly feel the need to write. For instance, I am a member of a poetics listserv and recently received an email from a colleague that had this sentence as its last line: "We might figure it out until the whole place is in flames." The line struck me and I immediately felt the need to use it. And after the first poem that initially came from that writing epiphany I wrote several others (enough to finish a new collection). I had no idea those poems were inside me waiting to escape onto the page.
Poetry Circle: How do you think the Internet has changed or will change the business of poetry?
Adrienne Lewis: The Internet has definitely changed the face of poetry both as an art and as a literal business. Moreover, I think that poetry has altered our concept of and accessibility to the literary writing community. As someone who firmly believes that learning to write well requires interaction with others, I believe this is and will continue to be the Internet's most significant contribution to poetry. Apart from that though, I'd have to say that literary publishing has changed dramatically as a result of the Internet; it is no less monumental a leap forward as when the first printing machines made mass production of texts affordable and possible for the general reading populace. Print on demand, ezines, message boards, and sites like Poetry Circle have broadened the concept of what is thought of as a "published work," and also provided a new and seemingly ever-emerging audience.
Poetry Circle: Your poems seem to come from the deeply personal, relationships. How do you see yourself as having or striving for a unique voice among other poets who lay claim to the same territory? What are your goals?
Adrienne Lewis: It is true that my poems originate in landscape that is deeply personal, even internalized. And yes, many other very fine contemporary poets strive to map that same geography. The uniqueness of my poetic voice stems from many things though: An inflected Catholocism that tends to blur the sacred and the profane; A need to confess and believe in a redemption that is not strictly or overtly religious in nature; A tendency to look at relationships with both these concepts in mind. Maybe that is not all that singular when the lineage of contemporary poetry is fully considered, but the territory I claim is my own. To be honest, I wouldn't wish the burden of covering it on anyone else.
My goals with this in mind are simple. To share my work, to have it appreciated as both an object of self-expression and also as fine linguistic craft. Would I like to publish more chapbooks? Of course. Am I interested in forming a full-length book collection or ten? Well, obviously. But not because I want the type of notoriety that the "biggies" in the field possess (I doubt most of them wanted that or continue to write to secure that now). Writing to me is not about being known as much as is it impacting others with my words. If I write one hundred poems that end up in a well-known collection and its appreciated solely for its literary or lexiconic value, I'd cry. If I write one hundred thousand poems and ten of them make someone stop and think "Now that is my life. That is all our lives," then I'm a success.
It is probably easy to write all this since I'm relatively unknown. Perhaps if I had the burden of a laureate on my shoulders, or a broader reading audience, my tune would change. The mocking bird has never meant much to me though. I hope these ideas I have wouldn't change if my circumstances as a writer did. I prefer the screech of the blue jay and I hope I always do.
Poetry Circle: Where would you like to be poetically or personally 10 years from now?
Adrienne Lewis: Poetically, I'd love to have published a few full-length collections, have a full reading schedule, and have completed my M.A. and PhD. in Creative Writing and be teaching the subject at a community college some place where the snow can't find me. Personally, I plan to be married, have more children, and to negate the idea that all life is suffering (Catholics and Buddhists have too many thoughts in common some times). Wherever I am, I hope to be writing the best verse of my life and not living off old successes.
Poetry Circle: Thanks, Adrienne!
Interview (c) 2005 by Jay Dougherty for PoetryCircle.com
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