Stonecoast Voices: An Interview with teri elam by Lo Galluccio

teri elam ~ poet and former Poetry Editor for the Stonecoast Review

Where did you grow up and why did you start writing poetry?

It was at my neigh­bor­hood school, Terrace Manor Ele­men­tary, in Augusta, Georgia where I fell in love with my first poem, Langston Hughes’, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” My 6th grade English teacher, Mrs. Hettie Copeland, would gather us up in a choir and, lit­er­al­ly, conduct us as we recited it. Every single time I hear that poem, I think of her. We were silly kids and would laugh at how dra­mat­ic Mrs. Copeland seemed as she waved her arms to let us know whether to speak soft or loudly—not knowing how dra­mat­i­cal­ly she was chang­ing our lives by intro­duc­ing our young black minds to our first black poet. I also learned about Nikki Gio­van­ni that year when Claude Tate came over from the high school to recite “My House,” and later that year my reading teacher, Mrs. Lula Francis, took another student and me to hear Ms. Gio­van­ni at the local college. I still remem­ber how giddy I felt at that reading. I wrote my first poem that year—it was about the first black Santa Claus, and it was pub­lished in a local inde­pen­dent paper. That was also the year I wrote down that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up.

I also have to mention my 90-year-old mother, Viola Elam—she used to ran­dom­ly recite Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees,” a poem she had to commit to memory when she was in ele­men­tary school back in the 1930s. When I’m feeling whim­si­cal (which is rare lately) and come across an amazing tree, like the Mag­no­lia, the first two lines of that poem often come to mind, “I think that I shall never see / A poem as lovely as a tree.” My mother also tells a funny story about how every night I wanted her to read my favorite book, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, and if she tried to skip ahead, I would know it. In a way, I was learn­ing rhythm, rhyme, and meter before I could even read or write.  So, truth be told, my mother was as heavy an influ­ence on my learn­ing to love poetry as was my neigh­bor­hood school, Terrace Manor. I’m just now really getting how much I answered this question.

What makes you a poet?  What is it about the genre that cap­ti­vates you?

That’s a great question—one I often side­step. For some reason, I feel com­fort­able calling myself a “writer” but am usually shy about calling myself a poet—though I may say that I write poetry. I see poets as ele­vat­ed beings, and I am still climb­ing the steps—which is why I’m study­ing the art form. I will get there.

In an inter­view in Mosaic Mag­a­zine, Lucille Clifton said poetry “is the… human heart speak­ing.”  That is what cap­ti­vates me. At the end of a poetry work­shop I taught for 5th-grade girls, one of the 10-year-olds eagerly pulled me aside to read a poem she wrote about her best friend. I cannot recall the name of the little girl or entire poem, but I never forgot that last line: “She is my rich and my poor.” Wow. I still get a lump in my throat when I think about it. She was so young, but her heart clearly spoke about her friend. You could only hope for that type of love with anyone.

I know in some of your poems, you play with space, can you talk about that?

Yes, space and cap­i­tal­iza­tion are some­thing I’ve played with. Ini­tial­ly, I think it was my silent protest, having worked in cor­po­rate America for almost 30 years in pol­i­cy/­com­pli­ance-based jobs. For art, I wanted the relief of releas­ing rules and writing unen­cum­bered. As I con­tin­ued, I real­ized I needed to be more con­sis­tent in how I used it, e.g., was there a dif­fer­ence between 2 or 3 spaces and an emdash in the poem?  A few of my pro­fes­sors have chal­lenged my lack of punc­tu­a­tion and space, and I have become more inten­tion­al about whether I cap­i­tal­ize words or use punc­tu­a­tion or not. For instance, when I worked with Amanda John­ston, this was some­thing we dis­cussed and I feel that it has caused me to grow another dimen­sion as a writer.

Have you been influ­enced by any famous or major current poets?

Def­i­nite­ly, in addi­tion to Langston Hughes and Nikki Gio­van­ni, my list shifts over time. I learned about Lucille Clifton’s poetry 20 years ago; I am not alone in this admi­ra­tion society. My mother is a writer of sorts (though she’d never call herself that)—she’s written count­less speech­es and intro­duc­tions for dif­fer­ent events that are all so beau­ti­ful­ly expressed. However, I know she has a more in-depth truth—if she were a poet like Ms. Clifton, amazing stories might unfold. I wept when I found out Ms. Clifton had passed away. I am regret­ful I never got to study with her but am for­tu­nate to have heard her read once in Atlanta and got a few books signed, includ­ing my touch­stone: The Book of Light. I’d like to think her energy is pre­served in those pages.

There are so many others like Nikky Finney whose poetry I first dis­cov­ered in the pages of my mother’s EssenceMag­a­zine I used to sneak and “borrow” when I was in college and later Cecilia Woloch, Ruth Forman, and Ter­rance Hayes. I am cur­rent­ly reading Forest Primeval by Vievee Francis, Mil­len­ni­al Roost by Dustin Pearson and Bes­tiary by Donika Kelly.

How has your expe­ri­ence been study­ing poetry at Stonecoast?

Each semes­ter, the writer-facil­i­ta­tors, mentors, and stu­dents I work and study with remind me I made the right deci­sion for this point in my life. I love the com­mu­ni­ty-learn­ing expe­ri­ence and work­shop-based learn­ing. I appre­ci­ate being able to explore other genres, there­fore having expo­sure to writers I may not oth­er­wise have. In addi­tion to growing cre­ative­ly, working with facil­i­ta­tors like Cate Marvin my first semes­ter pro­vid­ed a quick intro to writing academically.

Because we are such a small frac­tion of the stu­dents at Stonecoast, I feel the poetry stu­dents are close and will con­tin­ue our con­nec­tions beyond grad­u­a­tion. As a matter of fact, I have met one of my closest friends in the program and that alone is worth its weight in parch­ment paper.

Stonecoast works to encour­age and create inclu­sive spaces; I feel my role is to chal­lenge and ques­tion the space as well as con­tribute to it and help it grow.

Are there any forms, for instance, sonnet or vil­lanelle, that you like to use?

I love form poetry. Some­times when I get stuck freewrit­ing, I’ll switch to a poetic form. I heard about a study some years ago related to kids in school­yards at recess. The study showed that when the school was not fenced in, chil­dren would play close to the school, but if it had a fence, kids would play near, on, and over the fence. I see writing in a form as freeing in a similar way. I used to take piano lessons when I was a kid and my teacher, Mrs. Rosa Tutt, was strict about learn­ing how to read music. So even though I played a regret­table “Moon­light Sonata,” I knew the dif­fer­ence between adagio and allegro, etc., and then Mrs. Tutt would allow for impro­vi­sa­tion. Sonia Sanchez also teaches you should learn and under­stand the poetic form first, then make it your own.

The forms I’ve used include the pantoum, con­tra­pun­tal (that Tye­him­ba Jess gave life) and the anagram poem Terrace Hayes intro­duced. I’ve also exper­i­ment­ed with the Bop poem created by Afaa Michael Weaver during a Cave Canem poetry retreat and the Gigan, a form crafted by Ruth Ellen Kocher named after the arch­en­e­my of Godzil­la. Evie Shock­ley has written Gigans and archi­tects her poetry on the page in fas­ci­nat­ing and dif­fer­ent ways in both the new black and semi­au­to­mat­ic. One poetic form I will be more inten­tion­al about working on are sonnets—my #life­goal is working them as mas­ter­ful­ly as Patri­cia Smith does, e.g., in her poem “Motown Crown” and others.

What inspires you to write a poem?

Prob­a­bly not much dif­fer­ent than most writers, I am inspired by what hits me in the gut or heart. This past year I’ve written a lot about anger in some form or fashion and also about getting older. I’ve also been think­ing about my family dynam­ics a lot lately and have written about my rela­tion­ship with my mother more than I have in the past; mainly about how our rela­tion­ship is kinda like the Disney movie, Freaky Friday, in a way—shifting and revers­ing itself.

Can you say some­thing about the jewel thief that you’ve written poems about?

Oh, I can say quite a bit, but I’ll try to control myself. I became fas­ci­nat­ed with Doris Payne’s story after watch­ing The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne. I could not imagine how a Black woman, my mother’s age, could manage to travel all over the world and steal dia­monds, even before Civil Rights were an assump­tion. Her story is more than her being a jewel thief—she was a jewel thief who sub­vert­ed racial, cul­tur­al, social and eco­nom­ic lim­i­ta­tions. Her first theft was unin­ten­tion­al and a result of how a jewelry storeowner’s behav­ior changed toward her when a white cus­tomer came in his store—she became invis­i­ble to him, which result­ed in him for­get­ting she had the watch on he showed her. She spoke about how this treat­ment hurt and embar­rassed her, and I think this is the poetry of her story—its heart.

I knew she lived in Atlanta because she had gotten arrest­ed a few times, so I tried various avenues to meet her. I wanted to share a poem I wrote about her that had been pub­lished, but after two years I gave up. Well, one day I walked to the mall for lunch at an unusual time, and I came across two women, one young and one elderly, that were lost. The young woman was helping the elderly woman who was quite lovely, smartly dressed, with a certain air. So I started giving her direc­tions and looked into her eyes and froze, mid-sentence—saying in as calm a voice as I could muster, “I know you!” It was Doris Payne!

Long story short, I walked her to the train station and we had a great talk. She told me about a friend that passed away and men­tioned the doc­u­men­tary about her life. I told her about the poems I’d written about her and how long I had tried to get in touch with her. She gave me her number, we hugged, then she got on the train, and I lev­i­tat­ed on to lunch. I never did call her—but look twice when­ev­er I see an elderly black woman near that mall. In the mean­time, our meeting is still surreal and I con­tin­ue to live in the beauty of that moment.

In what direc­tion do you see your work going now?  What would like to explore?

I’m at a cross­roads in my work and life. I’m coming to the end of some things, in the middle of others, and hope­ful­ly at the begin­ning of many more. I iden­ti­fy as queer, and this inten­tion­al outing occurred later in my life, so I intend to explore that in my poetry. I am also very inter­est­ed in research­ing and writing about “mind health,” a phrase coined by my good friend and Stonecoast class­mate, Jen­nifer Brooke, in part to demon­strate the health of our minds is equal to that of the health of our bodies. For example, if we have chest pain or suffer from an illness like dia­betes, we can seek help without fear of judg­ment, and we are not as con­cerned with sharing it with others. However, there is, at times, a neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tion asso­ci­at­ed with “mental health” which com­pli­cates this invis­i­ble health concern. Using the phrase “mind health” could make the nec­es­sary con­ver­sa­tions about this issue more relat­able and will hope­ful­ly start being used widely to take one layer away from this severe and invis­i­ble health concern.

My Aunt Dene, now deceased, had mind health issues through­out her life and was sent to what was once called Georgia State San­i­tar­i­um in Milledgeville, Georgia in the 60s. I am in the process of trying to obtain her records because I know she received elec­tric shock therapy and I want to know as much about her treat­ment there as I can. Her life was cloaked in secrecy, and it was only in her death I learned she was creative—played the piano, painted, and vol­un­teered at the small local theatre in Augusta.

I want to write a series of poems and prose about cul­tur­al, polit­i­cal, and per­son­al issues related to mind health and, of course, family secrets. I hope to have quite a few done for my grad­u­a­tion thesis.

What are some chal­lenges you have per­ceived in regards to writing as a poet in these polit­i­cal­ly charged times?

I was at AWP in early 2017 when Ter­rance Hayes read several of his sonnets from his newest book, Amer­i­can Sonnets for My Past and Future Assas­sin. It was transcendent—the best I felt since the prior Novem­ber. I was numb after the elec­tion, and after a few days passed a good friend of mine, Ozell, said to me, “Teri it’s time to get over it—you must’ve for­got­ten that we already know how to do this.” And I got over it in just that moment. He was right—the world on fire was nothing new for me as a black woman growing up and living in the south. My poetry is always informed by who I am as a whole and how the world around me is treat­ing me as a whole. I was no longer sad or depressed about the elec­tion, but angry as hell.  However, my anger is also because a lot of well-intend­ed people act like racism and sexism is some­thing brand new. It ain’t new. The truth is that people can no longer turn a blind eye to it because it is slapped in your face every day. Turn one cheek, then here’s a slap on the other.

So, admit­ted­ly, it is some­times hard to write about it because I have to manage my anger every single day, it’s some­thing new from Char­lottesville to Puerto Rico, to verbal attacks on black women to vulgar pic­tures drawn of Serena Williams, to microinequities, to plain-old old school for­ti­fied racism. I often ignore the news and social media some­times to keep my blood pres­sure down and center myself and write. I believe this is why I’ve written more about the per­son­al, like my family. But, some­times it just feels damn good to ‘cuss’ out loud in my home, then release my rage onto the page—in hopes to edit some art out of it.

What do you feel is your unique con­tri­bu­tion as poetry editor of Stonecoast Review?

Every­thing I am comes with me to this role and is what I will use to situate myself as a reader, writer, and lis­ten­er of poetry. This is what I bring to the Stonecoast Review, and within those sen­si­bil­i­ties, I will look for diverse voices that cross and inter­sect, that may be similar to mine or dis­sim­i­lar. But mainly I will be looking for, as Lucille Clifton put it, the “human heart…speaking” because that is one thing that we all have in common.

teri elam is a recent final­ist for the Rita Dove Award in Poetry and hon­or­able mention recip­i­ent of the Jeff Marks Memo­r­i­al Poetry award. teri is a Cave Canem Fellow, aVONA Alum, and a Grad­u­ate Fellow of The Water­ing Hole and was, in a former life, the poetry editor for Gen­er­a­tions Lit­er­ary Journal. In this current life, she lives, works, and plays in Atlanta and, twice a year, Maine.