Recently I caught up with Somerville Poet Molly O'Leary. She generously agreed to answer my questions. From her website:
How has it been for you as a poet living in Somerville?
Somerville and the surrounding neighborhoods have a really vibrant arts and poetry scene. I’ve met a lot of people through poetry, including a local group of Boston poets called the Chickadee Collective. It’s been really inspiring and energizing to connect with people who share a love of language and want to talk about it!
You studied at Kenyon College with Somerville Poet Jennifer Clarvoe—how did this experience shape you as a writer?
Jennifer taught my Introduction to Poetry workshop when I was sophomore in college which was hugely influential since I was just starting out and finding my voice. I was also in her Prosody and Poetics class where I learned more about the musicality and rhythm of poetry. I remember we had to memorize and recite poems in her class, and that was such an interesting exercise in what lines, rhymes, or metaphors tend to stick with you and why that might be. It was a wonderful surprise to run into Jennifer at a coffee shop in Somerville almost 10 years since I took my first class with her!
Reading your poem " The Forgetting Curve," I am reminded of Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" with its opening line " The art of losing is not hard to master." Was Bishop an influence for you?
Almost all of my mentors and various readers have drawn parallels between myself and Bishop—and I love that! Bishop has always been a big influence. I was actually introduced to her poem ‘Sestina’ in a class with Jennifer. Bishop’s understatement in that poem while also being so straightforward and honest with the reader struck me and has stayed with me ever since. Studying Bishop’s emotional restraint and her use of unadorned yet moving language has helped me write some of my more difficult poems like “Anti-Elegy.”
Why should we read your work?
My poetry is very interested in memory and how it shapes our understanding of ourselves and our connections with others, especially in the wake of traumatic or emotionally difficult events. If you have memories that you are both hesitant to remember yet afraid to forget, I think you’ll connect with my work.
RECURRENCE
Peering into the scoured bathtub, I spot
sour mildew budding. I wake to pink biofilm
on graying porcelain. Even slime mold has memory;
its amoeba body retrieves oat flakes. After I scythe
seven inches of hair, still I feel long strands running
down my spine. Ever since the flood, I try not to hold
onto much, exfoliate dead cells as if this excess
might weigh down a life raft. I slip pale sea glass
into my pocket only to part with it once I reach the car.
I used to capture wild hermit crabs, place them
in salted tap water, swooshing the tupperware
to mimic waves. I thought I could trick them
into being home. The hermit crabs lasted a day,
leaving behind their tiny calcified capsules, perfect
like piped frosting. The brain wants to be buoyant,
shedding ghosts to avoid overgrowth. We’re meant
to slough off the past, but I still don’t know
where to keep the shells the tide gives back.
sour mildew budding. I wake to pink biofilm
on graying porcelain. Even slime mold has memory;
its amoeba body retrieves oat flakes. After I scythe
seven inches of hair, still I feel long strands running
down my spine. Ever since the flood, I try not to hold
onto much, exfoliate dead cells as if this excess
might weigh down a life raft. I slip pale sea glass
into my pocket only to part with it once I reach the car.
I used to capture wild hermit crabs, place them
in salted tap water, swooshing the tupperware
to mimic waves. I thought I could trick them
into being home. The hermit crabs lasted a day,
leaving behind their tiny calcified capsules, perfect
like piped frosting. The brain wants to be buoyant,
shedding ghosts to avoid overgrowth. We’re meant
to slough off the past, but I still don’t know
where to keep the shells the tide gives back.
*** From the Chestnut Review
