#susanrich

[authorsusanrich]

Not quite a crossword puzzle, but fun with Scrabble letters...

[authorsusanrich]

Getting my YouTube groove back. More coming soon.

[femmesfollesnebraska]

Susan Rich, poet

Susan Rich is the author of four collections of poetry including Cloud Pharmacy, named one of five finalists for the Julie Suk Award and a finalist for the IndiFab Award. The Alchemist’s Kitchen was a finalist for the Foreword Prize and the Washington State Book Award. Her other books include Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer’s Tongue, winner of the PEN Award for Poetry and the Peace Corps Writers Award.  She is a recipient of fellowships and awards from Artists Trust, the Fulbright Foundation, and The Times Literary Supplement of London.  Rich’s poems have appeared in the Antioch Review, New England Review, and the Southern Review. She is the poetry editor for The Human journal published in Istanbul, Turkey.

She generously shares with LFF about how she got into writing, her visual and surreal inspirations for writing, feminism in her work and much more...

Where are you from? How did you get into art? 

I grew up just outside Boston, Massachusetts. In third grade, Miss Schiavo, made the class memorize poetry. I was not a fan. And yet. By the sixth grade I was writing my own books of poems. I went on to major in Creative Writing in college only to have two (male) professors give me unsolicited advice: "don't write poetry; try something else." For 10 years I listened to their advice. 10 years without poetry. It wasn't until I returned from the Peace Corps that I decided I would write poetry for myself and I needed poetry in my life. My first book won the PEN Award for Poetry and since then, three more collections. 

Tell me about your inspirations, process.

These days my poems tend to be visual and surreal --- lots of color, texture, and surprise. I read Mark Doty's "Still Life with Oysters and Lemon" several years ago and that long lyric essay gave me permission to experience visual art. I learned that my ability to gaze and gaze again at a painting (sculpture, installation, photograph) could be an amazing starting point for poetry. As a young poet I read Elizabeth Bishop, Denise Levertov, and Adrienne Rich. They remain my personal triumphant. 

Tell me about your current/upcoming show/exhibit/project and why it’s important to you.

I'm currently working on my fifth collection of poems which will be more experimental and raw than my past work. It's difficult to say more than that right now. 

Do you think your city is a good place for women in art? Do you show your work elsewhere/is there a difference in how your work is received? As a poet, I read work rather than show it --- except for a gallery show I did with the Canadian artist Carol Sawyer. We took over the Highline College gallery for the month of April (2015) National Poetry Month. I loved doing this collaboration of poetry and visual art. We hope to do more! I've also read my work for the Mass Poetry Festival in Salem, Mass and found the audiences extremely receptive. This is also true in my adopted home town of Seattle. The difference is that I'm very well known (to poets) in Seattle but not in Massachusetts where I haven't lived for 20 years.  It felt great to be judged favorably on the poetry alone.  Artist Wanda Ewing, who curated and titled the original LFF exhibit, examined the perspective of femininity and race in her work, and spoke positively of feminism, saying “yes, it is still relevant” to have exhibits and forums for women in art; does feminism play a role in your work? Yes. You can tell this, I hope, by my poems. “The Women of Kismayo” is based on a news story from the early 1990’s at the beginning of the civil war in Somalia. I teach at a college that has a large percentage of Somali immigrants. The news story focused on women shaming their husbands and demanding that they defend their village from the warlords that were ravaging the country. If you could make one wish for art today, what would it be? Relevancy. Respect. Reimaging. I wish more people valued poetry in our country. When I travel to other countries (I’ve worked in the Middle East and in Bosnia Herzegovina) poetry becomes an invitation to engage; in this country it simply makes many people uncomfortable. Perhaps this is changing? Poetry---as every Somali knows --- is also a strong advocacy tool in that empathy is key to poetry, as it is to other arts.

~

Les Femmes Folles is a volunteer organization founded in 2011 with the mission to support and promote women in all forms, styles and levels of art from around the world with the online journal, print annuals, exhibitions and events; originally inspired by artist Wanda Ewing and her curated exhibit by the name Les Femmes Folles (Wild Women). LFF was created and is curated by Sally Deskins.  LFF Books is a micro-feminist press that publishes 1-2 books per year by the creators of Les Femmes Folles including Intimates & Fools (Laura Madeline Wiseman, 2014) and The Hunger of the Cheeky Sisters: Ten Tales (Laura Madeline Wiseman/Lauren Rinaldi, 2015). Other titles include Les Femmes Folles: The Women 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014 available on blurb.com, including art, poetry and interview excerpts from women artists. A portion of the proceeds from LFF books and products benefit the University of Nebraska-Omaha’s Wanda Ewing Scholarship Fund. See the latest call for work on the Submissions page!