SOL Books

Interview with Connie Colwell Miller, author of Bodywearers

The following thread is a question-and-answer session with Connie Colwell Miller. Her collection of poetry, Bodywearers, was a SOL Books Upper Midwest Writers Series selection.

Posted on November 1st, 2007 under Bodywearers, Interviews with Authors, Upper Midwest Writers Series • RSS 2.0 feed • You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed

17 Responses to “Interview with Connie Colwell Miller, author of Bodywearers”

1
bahoena:
November 1st, 2006 at 12:40 am
Connie, welcome and congratulations on having your collection of poetry, Bodywearers, selected as the winning entry for our Upper Midwest Writers Series, and thank you for agreeing to be interviewed on our blog.

So let’s jump right on in . . .

Your title poem, “Bodywearers,” has an interesting idea, that our bodies are only things we wear to feel “wasp stings” and to smell a “lover’s hot breath.” What role does the “body” play in the themes woven into your collection?
2
conniem:
November 2nd, 2006 at 2:08 pm
Quite a large one. The human body is the vehicle by which all my poetry travels. In my writing, I rely heavily on my senses to capture as much as I can of the stuff of life, and the body shows up often in my work – whether directly as in “Bodywearers” or indirectly as in a poem that seeks to describe the beauty of nature, for example. I have to admit that I do experience the body as a double-edged sword of sorts: it’s what I use to define the world around me (what I see, taste, touch, smell, hear), but I also find that my body, since it’s the only tool I have at my disposal, limits me to my own experience. I guess that’s the essence of being human and the essence of my title poem.
3
bahoena:
November 2nd, 2006 at 10:43 pm
You say that your poetry stems from your own experiences, with the body as its main tool. Do you consider yourself a confessional poet then, like Sylvia Plath and Robert Lowell for instance? Or does the narrator(s) in your poems live beyond what you personally see, think, and feel?
4
conniem:
November 3rd, 2006 at 6:11 pm
Ah, this is the question of the year! To be completely honest, I am a confessional poet of sorts. I don’t know how I feel about being labeled as such (I think there’s a danger in assuming that the poet IS the narrator), but most of my poetry stems from my personal experience. I know writers who can write convincingly about how it feels to be someone they are not; I’m not sure I’m that kind of writer. I have a hunch that when I write about being a mother, it’s only truly convincing because I am a mother. Likewise, when I write about being a woman, a lover, a human, what have you. Furthermore, I would not call myself particularly imaginative. My strengths, in terms of writing, are that I am deeply affected by the happenings in daily life – I am observant and good with words. But I am not the type of poet/writer who is drawn to create elaborate scenes or draw fully imagined characters for the sake of writing. I am drawn more strongly to recreate reality. And, therefore, my poetry tends to mimic my own personal reality.
5
bahoena:
November 4th, 2006 at 4:28 am
So as you “recreate reality,” what elements of daily life is your observant eye drawn to? Do you have favorite people, objects, places that you like to write about? Or are there particular moments that spark inspiration?
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conniem:
November 5th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
I seem to be particularly drawn to images pertaining to the natural process of living and dying, and I especially wrestle over the meaning of death. Any object that, for me, symbolizes the life cycle is enchanting. However, these objects vary greatly and depend directly on what is going on in my life at the time I’m writing and thinking. Still, certain things seem to always fascinate me: animals, sex, procreation, menstruation, pregnancy, childhood, and for some reason road kill. For me, there is something haunting about road kill. I’ve yet to write the perfect road kill poem, but I will.
7
bahoena:
November 6th, 2006 at 2:39 pm
Well then, have I got a poem about a raccoon to share with you . . .

You seem to be a writer who’s very attuned to those moments of inspiration, almost as if you seek them out. So here’s a question I like to pose to all authors about their writing process: are you the fastidious type of poet who carves out time each day to hunker down at her desk and write, or do you find yourself waiting for those sparks of an idea, scribbling something down on a note pad while driving between work and daycare (which could be a possible cause for that fascination with road kill)?
8
conniem:
November 7th, 2006 at 1:22 pm
The latter. I write and edit for a living, so words are mulling around in my head all day. I’m also the mother of two young children, so time is scarce. My most inspirational moments are those magical night-time hours before my kids go to sleep. I’m often inspired to write while I’m nursing my daughter or while I’m watching my son drift and float in that spastic space in between the conscious and the subconscious. Then again, in the mornings as I head off to work I have a bit of solitude, and I create in my mind then, too. In many ways, I see myself piecing things more completely together after my children have grown a bit and need me less physically. In terms of my most important and mature writing, right now feels like a gathering time, a harvest before the feast.
9
bahoena:
November 8th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
Along with the body, another major theme running throughout your collection is nature, whether it’s the narrator(s) observing a red-tailed hawk or watching someone out in the wilderness trying to start a camp fire. How do these two themes: the body and nature, tie your poems together in Bodywearers?

In other words, was their a purpose behind fitting the poems together in this collection, or were the poems merely lumped together because they were what you were writing at the time? – Another question I like to ask poets to see how their writing process works, to see if there’s some sort of method to the madness of sculpting a collection.
10
conniem:
November 9th, 2006 at 6:44 pm
Wow. What a question. I guess I see a correlation between the poems about nature and the poems about the body, but only in a vague kind of way. I see everything I write as being about the experience of being human â€” being human in a human body and using that human body to experience this Earth (which of course includes the pleasures of the flesh as well as being witness to the beauty and the terror of the natural world). So maybe for me the body and the natural world are the two most tangible qualities of the human experience â€” and I exploit them to illustrate whatever I want.

I think I answered the question…
11
bahoena:
November 10th, 2006 at 5:28 pm
Yeah, I think you did, and I suppose that wasn’t the easiest of questions. It’s always interesting, though, to learn what the author’s thoughts were for gathering selected poems into a collection. Were they written with the collection in mind, or did they fall together after the fact. Your poems seem to naturally fit together, whether planned or not, because of your bodily approach to writing.

And one of the things I enjoyed most about your work is that the poems have a ring of honesty to them, as if the narrator(s) actually experienced the events in your poetry. Do you, as a quasi-confessionalist poet, ever fear exposing too much of yourself to readers, especially considering the intimate topics: motherhood, past lovers, the frailty of parents, that you write about?
12
conniem:
November 10th, 2006 at 5:43 pm
Short answer: yes. I worry, for example, that my parents will find it hard to read about their daughter’s sexuality, or my husband will be disturbed about a poem that seems to chronicle a relationship similar to ours. Or, perhaps scariest of all, that my children will grow up and be ashamed of what I have written about my love for them and their little bodies.

However, I learned at a very, very young age how remarkably liberating honesty can be (even when it’s a difficult topic), and since then I haven’t been able to surpress my openness. Candor is so much a part of my personality that I really feel that anyone who knows me well is not surprised by the level of honesty in my poetry. I talk openly about everything in my life, and secrets pain me a great deal. I worry sometimes that I’m offensive or off-putting in my honesty, but I really do find that I draw other more open people to me when I keep things real.

So the long answer to your question would be: yes, I sometimes fear being too honest in my poetry, but I don’t fear honesty as much as I fear the shameful silence that would fill those poems’ space.
13
bahoena:
November 11th, 2006 at 3:03 am
Now it’s my turn to WOW!

As you mentioned earlier, people often mistake a poem’s narrator for the poet. Do you find it difficult, because of your subject matter and approach to writing, to keep those two separate, or do you even bother? What’s the narrator’s role in your work?
14
conniem:
November 13th, 2006 at 2:59 pm
When I’m writing, I don’t worry about keeping the narrator separate from me. I jump into BEING the narrator in order to get the poem right. So, in a sense, I guess it’s true: I AM the narrator. However, it would be a mistake to assume that all the qualities about which I’ve written and the incidences, experiences, and feelings are completely mine. Not necessarily so. And it would also be a mistake to assume that my poetry is autobiography. The narrator’s role? I’ll take a stab at it: my narrator’s role is to communicate the essence of the poem to the reader. The best way I know to accomplish that, then, is to BECOME the narrator.
15
bahoena:
November 14th, 2006 at 3:00 am
Sounds kind of like the method-acting approach to writing. I like it.

So with the holiday just around the weekend, I suppose I better start wrapping this interview up. But before I let you go . . .

What are some of your favorite poems in the collection, or poems that you feel exemplify the themes running through Bodywearers?
16
conniem:
November 15th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
Of course, I tend to most like the writing that I have most recently written. Right now, I’m enjoying my motherhood poems the most, and I seem to have distanced myself some from the older topics (or, more likely, I’ve grown and changed). Then again, it’s refreshing to read anew the poems that I’ve not thought of for some time. Currently, my favorite poem is “Living This Land,” and it’s probably no coincidence that it is one of the more recent additions to the book. I feel like I’m always striving toward the perfect poem, and, although I’m pleased with a lot of my work, I don’t feel as though I’ve yet hit the pinnacle. Hopefully, before I die.
17
bahoena:
November 16th, 2006 at 12:49 am
Well, Connie, thanks again for participating in the Upper Midwest Writers Series contest and also agreeing to be interviewed on our blog. I’ll see what I can do about getting a link to the poem you mentioned.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving, and you’ll have to let us know if you ever write that perfect road kill poem.

Best of luck with your writing.