To celebrate National Poetry Month, the final installation of the Newhouse Center for Humanities Distinguished Writers series featured Carolyn Forché and Valzhyna Mort. Forché and Mort are the first and last poets to be featured and did not disappoint. Each had her own style of writing and recitation and each answered questions on the complicated process of writing poetry after her reading.
Before listing their various accomplishments, including the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Forché and a Crystal Vilencia Award for best poetry performance for Mort, visiting Newhouse Professor Colin Channer introduced the poets as Parisians. Channer qualified this by saying that technically Forché is from the Paris of America, Detroit, and Mort is from the Paris of the former Soviet Union, Minsk. As both poets laughed along with audience members, Channer continued by saying, “and here we are in the Rome of Massachusetts—Wellesley.” While it was clear that both Forché and Mort take their work seriously, it was nice to see that each was able to laugh at herself and with the audience.
When Mort took the podium, she immediately launched into “Preface.” After finishing the poem, she informed the audience that she had written it while in Jamaica at the Calabash International Literary Festival, which was founded by Channer in 2001. She said it disappointed the first person who read it, implying that the reader had been looking for something a bit more upbeat. The next poem was from her book “Factory of Tears,” and she recited it first in her native Belarusian, then English. As she read, the words took on a life of their own; it was easy to see why she had won awards for recitation. She then read the title poem of “Factory of Tears” and upon finishing said that it was how she imagined Paris. Forché commented that was how she imagined Minsk, and Mort laughed, saying that it was how she pictured Detroit.
The last three poems Mort read were new and written in English instead of Belarusian.
Mort described her current state of mind when writing in English as that of a twelve-year-old, particularly with relation to words for female genitalia. Her voice lent itself just as well to poems originally written in English to those translated from Belarusian. When asked during the question and answer session how she felt about writing in English versus her native tongue, she said that the poems are different because “[she as the author is] different but the language doesn’t matter.” Though she later said that English “has a different music.”
When Forché took the podium, she began by reading two old poems. She warned the audience that the second had some obscenities—though the FCC only recognizes one as an obscenity. Amid chuckles, she looked up and said, “I try to be funny between my poems because my poems aren’t very funny.” Between poems she talked about her Lithuanian grandmother, who taught her how to manipulate words when she referred to the colander as the “macaroni-water-stop-go-maker.” Forché said that she has tried to put her grandmother in every book she has written. She finished her reading with a poem titled “Tapestry” that she described as “unfinished and still wet.”
When Channer asked the poets how they wrote, neither could explain without a metaphor. Forché said, “I float a bit; I float on paper.” The way she read was indicative of this process as she allowed her words to fall lightly upon her audience’s ears as if afraid to make too much of an intrusion. Forché went on to say that writing poetry was similar to writing fiction but that poets pay closer attention to cadence and rhythm. Mort said it took a lot of imagination, and both remarked on how long it takes to get a poem completely ready. Channer asked whether it was in fashion to write about big ideas, and both poets said that what they chose to write about could not be preordained. Mort said that the difference between writing poetry and prose is that when writing fiction, the writer is always heading in the direction of a light off in the distance, but a poet has a flashlight turned on and off in her face.
Be the first to comment on this article!