Kirsten Self is a queer poet and former English teacher currently living in Boston, Massachusetts by way of St. Louis, Missouri. She received her BFA in Creative Writing and MAE in English Education at Truman State University.
You can read Scraps in the October 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 Scraps after listening to Ada Limón talk about contentment on an episode of The Slowdown podcast. I then started thinking about my own relationship to contentment. The reality that contentment already exists if you live in the present moment seems so simple, but it is often a struggle. You can see the ‘I’ in this piece having glimpses of presence, of contentment with what is, but is quickly followed by the intrusion of a hunger for more. The tangling of peace and insatiability was aimed to create a churning that culminates in the very unsettling final image of a familial argument. In my opinion family arguments are universally uncomfortable and often elicit the need to escape. This need for escape is mirrored in the speaker’s efforts to escape the friction between contentment and wanting more.
As a poet, what does creative success or achievement look like for you?
What success looks like to me right now is simply giving myself permission to write. I’m not a full-time poet, so I use the word permission because I often fall prey to the productivity monster. The capitalist machine’s dialogue in my head says free time should be spent on ‘necessary’ tasks. However, at the beginning of this year, I made a resolution – “stop and write any time I feel moved to”. This resolution may seem easy for others, but it hasn’t always been easy for me. Allowing myself the truth that poetry is and has always been a part of me was huge. These realizations lead me to where I am now, having my first published piece in Pinhole. Outside of this poetry permission, success is having someone read something I’ve written and feel something, anything. The idea that someone will casually be reading my poem makes me emotional. It’s what I’ve always dreamed of, really. I can’t thank Pinhole enough for giving a piece of my work a home.
What are you working on now?
I’ve been on a Mary Oliver kick lately because I feel a kinship with her observations on nature. I am currently working on a piece contemplating how nature may observe me. What I’ve discovered ultimately is that what’s swirling in my head is really of no concern to nature, to the bluejay, to ash tree, etc. Nature persists. When I let this truth set in, a physical weight seems to lift. It’s relieving. That’s what I’ve been trying to capture.
How or where or with what does a poem begin?
More often than not, my poems begin with a need to capture something. Sometimes it’s an image. Sometimes a feeling or question. My brain kind of gets stuck on these things, and the poem becomes the release. Not all that I capture is pleasant, so I am thankful for poetry’s versatility in helping me through these moments along with the beautiful ones.
Are there other art forms that inspire or inform your poetry?
I love to sing and listen to music. I find inspiration in how different musical artists create feeling and put together phrases and images. I also find inspiration in people watching, nature, and looking at photographs and paintings. Recently, I started watching the public television program Poetry in America created by Elisa New the Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature at Harvard University. The series brings together people from all walks of life from professors to Supreme Court justices to discuss poems and poets. It’s inspiring to see how poetry reaches across content areas and the varied perspectives poetry can create within people. I highly recommend checking it out!
What are you reading or watching or listening to lately that intrigues or inspires you?
Nature is what I am listening to most in this season of my life. Nature is truly the best medicine for both personal and worldwide woes. I am an avid mushroom forager, birder, and citizen naturalist. Nature– in action, sound, color, resilience– is a never-ending fount of inspiration. Concepts for my poetry often entangle with what I am encountering in nature.
Have you ever received advice (or has there been something you’ve learned on your own) about writing or revising poems that has made you a better poet? What was it?
This past April I was lucky enough to attend the inaugural Nosrat Yassini Poetry Festival at the University of New Hampshire. I attended a session led by Heather Tressler (Professor of English and Presidential Fellow for Art and Education at Worcester State University) and Anthony Walton (Professor of English and Senior Writer-in-Residence at Bowdoin College). Both shared personal processes and tactics they have discovered while also sharing knowledge they have gained from other poets. A crossover piece of advice or series of questions that stuck with me are: What’s behind the poem you’re writing? What is really going on underneath? Is there a secondary perspective or angle that is unexplored? Is there an undiscovered third rail? Taking the time to almost disrobe my writing has become a new practice that stretches my initial drafts.
How did you begin writing poetry? Was there a specific inspiration or reason?
I was raised Catholic in the Midwest, and I went to parochial school. Going to church three times a week or more, I was exposed to metaphor, symbolism, and song from an early age. As a Queer woman, I don’t practice Catholicism anymore, but the language still sticks with me. The use of imagery and words as almost magic; a calling out to something bigger. My mom might think I’m blasphemous for saying that, but it’s true. Poems are more than themselves in a magical way that will never cease to astound and interest me. I can write a poem into aliveness, and the poem can find its way to someone and create a doorway into feeling, understanding, awakening, belonging, you name it. Is that not magic?
In terms of poetic style or craft, is there a big question you are trying to find an answer for?
The poem for me is wild and alive. The choice of what to reign in or set free is something that I contemplate often. I am also interested in how the reader handles this aliveness, this physical sensation that poetics does so well. How might we as readers foster this aliveness? How do we as writers and readers respect the being of a poem? These questions often preoccupy me and tend to impact my process, especially revision. If a poem is an alive thing how much do I manipulate it? Is revision a taming?