Our speakers for this conversation are poets, are editors, and are a part of a writers group in Salem MA. Kathi & Jennifer have spent their time locked up with their work and also time with each other revising, workshopping, reviewing, reading. They know each other’s work intimately and while the words are their own, they were supported and propelled by others. Writing is writing. Writing is also revising, reading, talking, mentoring, editing, sharing, and supporting.
A reading and conversation with novelist and memoirist Amy Hoffman and poet Meg Kearney. Amy reads from her new book, Dot & Ralfie, and talks with Meg Kearney about humor in the face of challenges, craft, and transcending genres.
“Amy Hoffman creates unforgettable characters, and her scintillating wit keeps things lively even in the face of the decline that awaits us all” writes Alison Bechdel, author of The Secret to Superhuman Strength.
A writer, editor, and community activist, Amy Hoffman is the author of the novels Dot & Ralfie and The Off Season, and three memoirs—Lies About My Family; An Army of Ex-Lovers: My Life at the Gay Community News; and Hospital Time. An Army of Ex-Lovers was short-listed for a Lambda Book Award, and both An Army of Ex-Lovers and Hospital Time were short-listed for the New York Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award. Hospital Time was also a New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age selection and has been adopted in college and university courses. It is the subject of chapters in several works of literary criticism.
So let’s talk about my week instead. I spent it with Anne-Marie Oomen’s newest memoir in essays, As Long As I Know You: The Mom Book, winner of the Sue Silverman Prize for Creative Nonfiction. It was my companion as I sipped my first cup of coffee on weekday mornings, my lunch date on Saturday, and my break at work, between meetings and desk shifts. It made me smile. It made me cry. It reminded me that good memoirs are built from tight yet breathable essays, that essays are constructed from paragraphs weaved together to tell a bigger story, and that paragraphs don’t sing without exquisitely written sentences. And, even if someone accomplishes all of that with technical skill, a good memoir in essays needs an invisible scaffolding: lacework of deep thinking and a willingness to be vulnerable, to show our bruises, to face ourselves in the most unflattering light without being so focused on the I that we exclude the reader from the truths we’re trying to share.
The Event
Please enjoy this in conversation with Anne-Marie Oomen & Patricia Ann McNair:
When Lisa and I began planning this project over a year ago, we had the same vision in mind. Our hope was that we could provide a non-competitive space, a space where people at all stages of their writing life could feel welcome and bolstered by the creativity they see in others. We also wanted to give creatives the time and the platform to do what they might not get to do in the course of a normal reading at a bookshop.
And another reason for doing what we do is selfish, but selfish in the way that it nurtures us. We get to participate in the events we host and revel in the curiosity, the motivations, and the practice of being a poet. We are so honored to host Jessica Cuello and Jan Beatty for this conversation. We are so grateful to them for their time and for sharing with us.
Both of them are fierce writers about womanhood, exploring themes of the body and autonomy, the changes we experience as we grow from child to adult. This conversation doesn’t shy away from menstruation, death, or neglect… and it also celebrates the work, the words, the moments that give us peace.
When I think about what makes my creative life fulfilling, I realize that my relationships with other writers and creatives are vital to not just my work, but my life.
We brought two poets together for a conversation. Marcia Karp and George Kalogeris have known each other for 25 years. They have been privy to each other’s successes and to each other’s struggles. They have similar backgrounds but different writing styles.
I imagine their relationship akin to a lifeline: A thread that can be followed back to the beginning, a thread that’s been woven into everything between that beginning and now.
I also realize, when I’m thinking about my own creative life, that when I’m curious, I’m more engaged, more committed, more excited. These events give us a chance to learn, discover, and celebrate what it means to be in a creative community.
“Fall in love with someone else’s work,” Meg Kearney told us. “It’s the best way to stave off the jealousy and that insidious belief that we do not belong.”
And how can we not fall in love with other people’s work when poets like Eileen Cleary and Allison Adair make the falling so easy? How can we not fall in love with Eileen’s clear and haunting images, her mastery of form? How can we not fall in love with Allison’s ability to find beauty in the dark, in her lush language?
I could go on and on, cite poems from these two poets that have kept me up and night and poems that have soothed me on difficult days. I could tell you how much I admire how they move in the world, how they champion other poets, how they continually put good work into the world and notice the same of others.
But mostly, I want you to take the time to listen to this conversation, because it is like being at the table with two generous and brilliant people. If you haven’t already, you will fall in love with their work.
Allison Adair’s debut collection, The Clearing, was selected by Henri Cole as winner of Milkweed’s Max Ritvo Poetry Prize and named a New York Times “New and Noteworthy” book. It is coming out in paperback on June 9th. Allison’s work has been honored with the Pushcart Prize, the Florida Review Editors’ Award, the Orlando Prize, a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant, and first place in the Fineline Competition from Mid-American Review. Originally from central Pennsylvania, Allison teaches at Boston College and Grub Street.
Eileen Cleary is the author of Child ward of the Commonwealth’(Main Street Rag Press, 2019), which received an honorable mention for the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize and 2 a.m. with Keats (Nixes Mate, 2021). In addition, she co-edited the anthology Voices Amidst the Virus, the featured text at the 2021 Michigan State University Filmetry Festival. Her poem “The Way We Fled” was recently anthologized in Tree Lines: 21st CenturyAmerican Poetry (Grayson Books, 2022.)
On Saturday April 23, we hosted three wonderful poets with new books: José Angel Araguz, Quintin Collins, and Daniel B. Summerhill.
These three poets: José Angel Araguz, Quintin Collins, and Daniel B. Summerhill, know each other in ways that go deeper than simply reading at the same event. Quintin and Daniel workshopped together in the Solstice MFA Program, now at Lasell University. After graduation, they trusted each other with their works in progress, emailing work back and forth, one on the East Coast, one on the West. And José serves on the faculty of the Solstice program, where Quintin is now the assistant director.
But that’s just the easy stuff. The not so easy stuff is how these three poets witness the world we move in, how they speak past the inherent, institutionalized barriers they continue to face as creatives, as scholars, as partners, as fathers, as Black and Latinx men.
This is a reading, yes. But it’s also community, and proof that when one poet falls in love with and champions the work of another, poetry turns from solo connection to conversation, to recognition, to witness.
To kick off National Poetry Month this year, the poet M. Soledad Caballero joined us to read from and talk about her new book, I Was A Bell, winner of the 2019 Benjamin Saltman poetry prize. It was a joy to talk with Soledad because she is warm and generous and diligent in her craft.
I first met Soledad in 2006. We had both signed up to take Rebecca Morgan Frank’s Master Class in Poetry at Grub Street. We spent 10 weeks together sharing and learning from each other. We were poets who trusted each other deeply, which was such a pleasure to experience.
At the end of the class, I solicited poems from everyone to make a chapbook in which we asked Morgan to write the introduction. As I was getting ready for this event, I tracked down the chapbook and re-read the introduction, where Morgan writes: “the steady intelligent voice of Soledad’s image-rich work…” This is a great description of Soledad’s work, though it has matured much since we last workshopped.
In her new book, Soledad visits spaces no one can access anymore, reaching into her past to evoke the horror of Pinochet’s Chile and the upheaval of immigrating to the U.S. Threaded with poems about cancer, she deftly parallels these two journeys both of which violence/harm initiates. What I take away from this book is that always where there is heartache, there is love.
Even though it was sixteen years ago, that workshop bonded me with poets I am still connected to, in that we still champion each other’s successes. I was so thrilled to have Soledad at the Notebooks Collective to discuss her new book and all things writing.
The Event
About M. Soledad Caballero
Soledad is Professor of English and co-chair of the WGSS Program at Allegheny College. She is a Macondo and a CantoMundo fellow, has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes, was winner of the 2019 Joy Harjo poetry contest by Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts and the 2020 SWWIM’s SWWIM-For-the-Fun-of-It contest. Her poems have appeared in the Missouri Review, the Iron Horse Literary Review, the Crab Orchard Review, and other venues. Her collection, I Was a Bell, won the 2019 Benjamin Saltman poetry prize, Red Hen Press 2021. She is an avid tv watcher and a terrible birder. Visit her website.
