"...This was the book I had to write at the time."
An Interview With Claudia Emerson, by
Susan Culver
 Claudia Emerson was born in
Chatham, Virginia, in 1957. She earned her bachelor's degree in English
from the University of Virginia in 1979, and her M.F.A. in poetry from
the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1991. She is
currently associate professor of English at the University of Mary
Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. She has also taught at
Washington and Lee University, Danville Community College, and
Randolph-Macon Woman's College.She is the author of three collections of poetry: Late Wife; Pharoah, Pharoah; and Pinion, An Elegy. Her verse has also appeared in numerous literary journals and publications, including Shenandoah, Poetry, Blackbird, Southern Review, Five Points, Visions International, Ploughshares, Chattahoochee Review, and Crazyhorse, among others. In 1991, Emerson won the Associated Writing Program's Intro Award as well as the Academy of American Poets Prize. She has been awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, as well as the Virginia Commission for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship in Poetry twice, in 1995 and 2002. In 2003, she won the Mary Washington College Alumni Association Outstanding Young Faculty Award. In 2005, she was awarded a Witter Bynner Fellowship, which carries a $10,000 cash prize from the Library of Congress. In 2006, Emerson was awarded the Pulitzer Prize of $10,000 for Late Wife, an autobiographical account of the break-up of her 19-year marriage and the start of her life with a new husband. Her publisher, Louisiana State University Press, nominated her for the recognition. •••
CE: I’m not sure becoming a poet is a decision—though determining to commit to the genre certainly involves the discipline of decision. For me, deciding to go to graduate school was a huge part of my development as a poet; I was able to devote all my creative energies to developing my art—for two amazingly intense years. And that was just the beginning of my education. SC: You come from a small town that is big on literary achievements. Do you think it's a coincidence - all those accomplishments from one region - or is there something more to it? What makes the place such fertile ground for literary accomplishment? CE: Chatham, Virginia is indeed a very small town to have grown so many artists and writers—and I’m not sure I know why that happened. Since there’s not a lot to do in a rural community, lives tend to focus on family and community—and for me, family get-togethers meant stories, stories about the past, and plain old gossip. I grew up learning the makings of a good story, and even though I’m not a fiction writer, I’ve always written poems that imply narrative. SC: It took you a while to get your first book published. Did you ever consider giving up? What inspired you to keep writing, keep submitting, keep believing in your work? CE: I was lucky to have some poet-friends and mentors who encouraged me to keep trying even when the book was rejected. Betty Adcock was a major voice in my ear telling me to keep writing and revising. Even though the book took a while to place, I was fortunate in having poems accepted by some good literary journals—and those successes were very important in my mindset. SC: Did you find the writing of Late Wife to be therapeutic, in terms of writing and sharing in such a personal way? Did the writing help you to get past the hurt of the experiences you wrote about? CE: Writing the poems was cathartic, though I tried hard to keep them from being sheer therapy! The working of metaphor and centering the poems on an event or object helped me order the emotions and render them into poems I hope transcend my personal experiences. SC: Was there a greater fear in how the poems would be received by readers, since they were so personal to you? How did your husband react to the publication of poems based not only on your personal life, but also on his? CE: I was happy about this book—and felt upon its publication that I had effectively balanced some difficult subjects and emotions. I learned that there’s a fine line between the personal and the private. That said, my audience became unexpectedly huge—and I did feel more vulnerable at first. Now I’ve made what still can be an uneasy peace with the attention. Dave Smith, my editor, asked me would I change the poems if I’d known what would happen to the book—and the answer, for good or ill, is no. This was the book I had to write at the time. My husband’s reaction was, as you might expect, complicated, but he has said often that the poems do order emotional chaos, and make art out of what was for him catastrophic. SC: On the subject of autobiographical poetry: It has been said that every poem is a confession. Do you believe this is true? Why or why not? CE: Hard question. When I’ve written poems I thought in no way autobiographical, I can still look back and see from some distance that my choices nevertheless reflect much of what was going on with me personally. When I’ve written poems closer to the personal, I see myself detaching from the emotion in order to make art. Perhaps there’s no escaping the self. SC: What do you think every good poem must achieve? CE: Poetry is for me the highest ordering of language, and the best poems will always surprise me in some way—with original metaphor, clear if complex meaning, beauty despite harshness, fresh interpretations of the natural world. SC: How did you find out that you'd won the Pulitzer Prize? Can you describe how it feels to be given that sort of news? CE: I was in my office at school, and while my memory is cloudy about that day, the phone started ringing and colleagues began banging on doors and running up and down the halls. First reaction? Oh my God. That kind of thing. SC: How has winning changed your life? CE: Oh yes. I have a lot of opportunities these says to travel and give readings and workshops. The University of Mary Washington very generously gave me an endowed chair in poetry, so I am teaching two courses instead of the four course load I had for years. I love my teaching life—and with fewer students I am able to work more intensely with the students I have—and have more time to write. SC: You write and sing songs with your husband. Do you find that this is a similar creative outlet to poetry, or does the music provide its own, unique experience to your life? CE: The songwriting, while a rewarding creative pursuit, is completely different. Poetry, for one example, I write in complete solitude, while the songs are a collaboration in terms of the music and the lyrics. I cannot imagine collaborating on a poem… SC: Describe your perfect day. What would you be doing? Who would you spend that day with? CE: I’ve known lots of “perfect” days—some spent in solitude writing and others spent hiking with my husband in the Shenandoah National Park. Other perfect days usually involve a good run, an inspiring conversation, good coffee, a glass of nice wine, laughing, music, seeing a hawk on the wing, or cedar waxwings. SC: What are you currently working on? Is there a new book coming out, and - if so - can you tell me a little bit about it? CE: I’m almost done with a book that has as its opening a surreal lyric sequence about girls in a boarding school and then moves to either children or women narrating poems about women figures in some sort of isolation. I had exhausted the first person singular in Late Wife—and disallowed it for the next project. |