Courtney Bambrick is poetry editor at Philadelphia Stories. Poems have or will appear in American Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, Beyond Words, Invisible City, The Fanzine, Philadelphia Poets, Apiary, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Mad Poets Review, and Certain Circuits. She teaches writing at Thomas Jefferson University’s East Falls campus in Philadelphia.
You can read Security in the April 2024 issue.
Would you like to tell us a little bit more about your poem? For instance, how or why you wrote it, or perhaps provide some extra context?
I wrote the poem Security long ago as a college student. I wrote it as someone who was sleeping on friends’ couches in different cities while anticipating a future sense of stability and home. What is interesting to me, though, is that I keep coming back to these ideas about homes, houses, and what it means to be “safe” in one’s environment.
Do you have a collection of poetry or even a single poem that acts as a touchstone?
A poem I continually come back to is Each Bird Walking by Tess Gallagher. Whenever I read it, I consider the power of sharing stories and how remembered details from one another’s lives might endure longer than some relationships. I also love the layers of intimacy in the poem and the clarity about which is which.
How do you revise your work?
I share it with trusted readers and ask for advice. Frequently, I will fully ignore their advice because I know what I want the poem to do or be and I just needed this test to figure out how I felt. But often, other readers understand things about a piece that I simply cannot until I step well outside of it.
As a poet, what does creative success or achievement look like for you?
When this question came up a few months ago in therapy, it was the first time I really actually thought about it. I see creative success as more opportunities to connect — I am a social person and I love making new friends and relationships. I really appreciate the chance to build up my community. I imagine traveling to share poetry and that feels like a success. As an “early-career” poet in their 40s, I think my ambition is less desperate and wounded than it once was. I try to think of my goals as lateral moves that depend less on hierarchies and more on relationships.
How or where or with what does a poem begin?
A poem starts usually about two thirds of the way through a page of freewriting. A phrase might occur to me, an image might stick in my memory, but until I am in the notebook working out all the variables and possibilities, I don’t know what about the phrase or image might be driving me. I don’t remember whose idea it is (Richard Hugo?) that there is the poem that you set out to write and the poem that shows up somewhere along the way. I really believe that!
Are there other art forms that inspire or inform your poetry?
All of them — I draw a lot from museum trips, but as much for the people watching as the art. I also really love songs. I have realized that I am not a great “fan” of specific artists but that I will zero in on an album or a song — I love the odd or unexpected rhythms of language in songs, how syllables are stretched or squeezed into a melody. And I love theater, so I spend a lot of time thinking about the sound and voice of a poem. I joke a lot about how a college theatre class made me think of Aristotle’s Poetics more than may be healthy, but Aristotle’s insistence on completeness and the various unities are at the heart of my revision process: is the “spectacle” serving the “plot”?
How do you make space for poetry in your daily routine?
I don’t think I do. I probably think about poetry every day, and I am likely to read a poem a day, thanks to the handful of mailing lists I am on; but I do not write every day. I participate in a number of accountability groups that keep me moving forward on a weekly or monthly basis. I like the idea of “touching your work” every day and I think I do some version of this. I feel more successful when I can devote a week per month to writing a lot, or I can save a day per week to revise and share a new poem with a group. “Daily” feels like too much pressure. Weekly or monthly goals are easier to manage for me!
I worked as an adjunct instructor of writing in many colleges and universities for about twelve years. In 2021, I was hired to teach writing full time (non-tenure-track) at Thomas Jefferson University’s undergraduate campus in East Falls. My new circumstances opened a lot of time and energy up for writing, revising, and sending out work. I recently got a grant from Jefferson to participate in the NCFDD Writers’ Bootcamp (aka Faculty Success Program) and that really helped me establish much better writing habits.
Do you belong to a writer’s group? If not, where do you find poetry community and feedback?
When I finished my MFA program, I was really at loose ends and didn’t know how to focus. Now, I am a member of a submissions club that meets over zoom once per month to set goals and hype one another up or commiserate, and a revision group that meets over zoom once per week (usually) to share new poems and offer feedback. There is a Facebook group that offers a platform to share drafts every day for the first week of the month, and I have a few friends that I meet for tea and poems in real life once ever four or six weeks. These groups came about via social media and through other groups I was in; for instance, sending a “reply all” to the members of an online workshop that was ending to see if anyone could meet up.
How did you begin writing poetry? Was there a specific inspiration or reason?
As a kid, I was always putting on shows at family functions and deeply invested in stories I read and that were read to me. I really loved the Childcraft poetry book, Mother Goose books, and a misshelved book of Christina Rosetti poems I found on my childhood bookshelf. I remember being five or six and realizing that the illustrations were of a woman crying at a child’s grave! I started writing poems in 4th and 5th grade and then in high school, I worked on the literary magazine, Aura. I think poems affect audiences differently than other forms of literature or art and I enjoy the slippery space they take up.