Interview with Doug Holder
I contacted poet Trapper Markelz about his new collection of poetry, " Off to War, Daughter." Trapper is on the advisory board of the New England Poetry.
You are a high-tech person-- what led you to poetry?
It is true, I’ve been involved in technology since a very early age. You actually get a view of this in the last poem of my book titled Standing Ovation, where I describe some of my earliest interactions with my grandfather about programming games in BASIC on my Laser 128 Apple-compatible computer. From there, I went on to run dial-up bulletin board systems (BBSs) out of my basement in junior high and high school, and on to the internet and websites through the 90s into online community development, ad networks, video games, healthcare, and beyond.
Much of the work with software and technology is writing. The code is a language. The developer and customer documentation is language. The design and technical specifications are language. The documents for running a company, fundraising, pitching, business deals, and day-to-day operations–it's all language that has to communicate not just with machines, but lots of different kinds of people.
I got into poetry pretty late. I heard an NPR episode about Jim Harrison's life in 2018 and started exploring his work. From there, the floodgates opened, and I started reading voraciously. Works included Ted Kooser, Billy Collins, Tom Hennen, Jane Hirshfield, Louise Glück, and Jane Kenyon. I got a POETRY subscription, as well as Rattle, a half dozen others, and was just reading poetry at every moment.
Growing up, it was common in my family to try new things. We value hobbies and the process of becoming curious about something, learning it, and doing it. I was just standing in the shower one day, and I killed a little bug that was crawling on the windowsill… and a bunch of words just flashed into my mind. I jumped out of the shower and wrote them down. That was my first poem. I’ve been learning, writing, and submitting ever since.
What is different about this collection of poetry from others that you have written?
Well, it’s only my second collection [laughs], and it continues in a theme of family. My first book, Childproof Sky (Cherrydress Chapbooks, 2023), was about the loss of my daughter, June, to SIDS in 2009 and the grief and growth that came from that. I wanted this second book to be about living in the shadow of that loss, but also how you can step into new light. When you lose a child, you live with the new reality that it can happen again. Your perspective on everything shifts. Before losing a child, you feel a bit invincible, and then that armor is ripped away in one moment, and it’s easy to find yourself hesitating around every corner.
But I didn’t want to live that way. This new book, Off to War, Daughter (Rockwood Press 2026), is about how you can build a new kind of armor forged from moving forward–how you can get back in the arena, I guess, as Roosevelt wrote. My poem There is Fire, goes right at this feeling:
There is Fire
She watches orange paper lanterns
reach across the twilight pond–
one by one in a soft wind
extinguished
and submerged, except for one
single lantern
arcing away
in missing man formation
before a sudden sign of flame
pitches firefly embers
that fade in the cold,
young wishes
that slip to space.
I’m watching her grow up.
Right now. By this water,
releasing lanterns
like I release her
—into the water,
the wind,
the dark,
the flame.
In that poem, you have elements of fire, water, rain, etc., to describe your children's release into the world. It sounds like some Shakespearean maelstrom. Do you ever feel like King Lear at the edge — screaming against these very elements? The lurking storm ahead?
[laughs] I’m not really much of a screamer, to be honest. But I was a child once. I did grow up like the rest of us. I found myself dodging my way through the shooting gallery that is life. I look back at how I made it to this moment and, wow, if it isn’t a whole bunch of luck!
At the heart of that poem is an image of all these lanterns lifting off, sailing into the sky. Some were blown right back down into the water and extinguished before even starting. Others floated around and crashed into each other. Others never even lifted off. But this one lantern… it somehow beat the odds. It lifted up and sailed away from the others. We want our kids to be that lantern.
That is probably what scares me the most, how much random chance this all is. My wife and I could do everything right, and we could still see these beacons of hope and light extinguished. That’s just something I meditate on regularly. You have to get to a place where you acknowledge it. We can’t control whether the storms come and go. We just have to live through them, hope we make it to the next day, and be ok with that hope.
I never had children, and your poems about your four daughters seem to be a love song, laced with fear for their future. How hard is it to let go of children?
I’ve been so lucky, which, when you lose a child, is a real triumph to be able to say. It all starts with my amazing wife, Maureen, who is just one of the most resilient and stable people I’ve ever met in the world. You don’t need an amazing marriage to raise amazing kids, but it sure does help. Life is a team sport, and not having to do it alone is such a gift. Having a solid foundation like that makes it a lot easier to see your kids grow and move on.
I grew up the oldest of four, and in my family, it was pretty clear that the expectation was that we were to go out into the world and make our own space. I like to think I’ve passed that on to my kids, and they are excited to get out there and build a life. I wouldn’t say it’s hard to let go. I’m excited to see them thrive and build their own life. What can be hard is when you think back to what’s passed, about how challenging, but how fun those days were when they were younger and everything that has changed. But it’s a joy to have lived through that and be here now watching them grow, entering new life stages, and telling new stories.
I’ve also been lucky to have a son, Jack, as well, the two of us smiling as all these strong women orbit around us. I’m planning my next collection around him, my Dad, and some of the other friends in my life. It’s been great seeing him grow into a smart and kind young man who benefits from all these sisters! Although he might not see it that way! [laughs] But seriously, it’s a great household, and they are all a big part of my writing as I try to find a little meaning from the meaningless.
You have been influenced by the poet Jim Harrison, a poet and writer who was known for his intimacy with nature...it was his religion-- so to speak. Is this true for you? What do you take from this writer?
Harrison was the first poet I really connected with. I credit his work with opening the door for me to experience poetry. I was born in Alaska and grew up surrounded by nature. It’s something I took for granted when I was younger because it was just all around me. But as I've grown older, I’ve been drawn back to places and pastimes that put me outdoors. My kids have grown up camping in New Hampshire and hiking the White Mountains. I’ve discovered a love of cycling down winding roads, and fishing the quiet of a pond at sunrise or sunset.
Much of what Harrison writes about are these moments that connect our small human experience to time and nature, which is so large. I also strive in my own work to connect the everyday to big ideas. He has a poem in his book Songs of Unreason that I remember reading for the first time, and it just left me dumbstruck. It’s a short untitled piece that goes “I read so much that my single eye became hot / as if it had been staring into nebulae. / Of course it had. On some clear nights in the country / the stars can exhaust us. They only mean what they are.” I strive for that clarity and that perspective of the immense in my own work, and enjoy revisiting it in his.
Why should we read this book?
I typically read the books of people with whom I somehow develop a connection. Maybe it’s an interview or a poem that appears in some journal. You connect with that, and you think, “I felt something there… I’m interested in feeling more.” Maybe that happened here today!
