Detail from Once Upon a Time: The Bedtime Story, scroll down to see more of the collage.
June 2021
Gay Guard-Chamberlin is a Chicago poet and artist living in the redolent Devon Ave. neighborhood. Her first book of 36 poems, Red Thread Through a Rusty Needle, was released by New Wind Publishing. Gay has a Masters in Interdisciplinary Arts from Columbia College, Chicago.
When did you begin writing poetry?
I’m not sure but I do remember when I was 11 or 12 and I had submitted a poem about dandelions to (the then very austere) Poetry Magazine. I misread their exquisitely polite rejection letter and did a victory dance, thinking I was about to become a published writer (sigh). When I was 15, my best friend and I were nearly arrested for graffitiing a park district wall with a Lawrence Ferlinghetti poem.
What triggered your interest in creating poems?
Getting into trouble, apparently!
Seriously, poetry speaks in a way that nothing else can. I have loved poems as companions, as sources of comfort and camaraderie, and as friends. I find much joy and revivification through the challenge of learning the craft of poetry. I’m excited by the myriad, inventive ways people can put language together, and by how much there is to learn–it is without end! I love humor and word play and also how honest and raw poetry can be, dealing with the most difficult issues and human challenges in ways that speak to the heart. I marvel at how through poetry we talk with each other, defying physical boundaries and the borders of space and time.
Who are your favorite poets?
There are so many! I teach a weekly poetry class with two young poets (ages 10 and 12) and through them, I’ve been enjoying again some of the classic great poets, like Emily Dickinson, Yeats, e.e. cummings, Mary Oliver, Langston Hughes, May Sarton, Joy Harjo. I love the work of Kevin Young, Ellen Bass, Billy Collins, Denise Levertov, Rita Dove, Barbara Kingsolver, Toi Derricotte, and recently I studied and reviewed a wonderful book by a prolific poet, new to me, Heather Corbally Bryant: http://highlandparkpoetry.org/reviewsthanks.html
I’m currently reading (or re-reading) the work of several poets I know from P & P and other poetry venues, including Jenene Ravesloot, Sarah A. Rae, Kate Hutchinson, Caroline Johnson, Arlyn Miller, Wilda Morris and Californian Deborah Meltvedt. I’ve been a lifetime fan of Anara Guard’s writing! I also get inspired by reading lots of fiction, nonfiction, and speculative fiction.
It helps me to “prime the poetry pump” to read poetry every day so I also rely upon receiving daily and weekly poems from websites such as Poets.org, the Poetry Foundation, Your Daily Poem, Literary Ladies Guide, etc. These are great resources to discover current writers and to honor voices from the past who have been ignored or forgotten far too long.
Once Upon a Time: The Bedtime Story, collage
What inspires you? Other poets, painting? music?
All of the above plus mindfulness practices and meditation. I’m inspired by spending time with trees and with my artist-musician husband, Doug Chamberlin, my back porch plants, my cat. I tend to like to have lots of things cooking at once and often change gears by cooking and baking. Several kitchen poems have been born by taking culinary action!
I’m happiest when I have both poetry and visual art brewing so that one media informs the other. Currently I’m in a rather fallow writing period, but I’ve learned to accept that the muses have their seasons and rhythms and reasons.
Where have you published?
I published my first book, Red Thread Through a Rusty Needle, through a small independent press, New Wind Publishing: https://newwindpublishing.com/book/red-thread-through-a-rusty-needle/.
Some of my poems have appeared on Wilda Morris’ blog, YourDailyPoem.com, and PoetryStoreHouse.com, in Encore Magazine, SisterSong Journal, several of the annual “black & white anthologies” from TallGrass Writers Guild, and Budlong Library Writers books, including Life, Death, and Everything in Between, published a few weeks ago.
I’ve also won prizes in the Jo-Anne Hirshfield Memorial Poetry Awards, and in annual contests for ISPS and Poets & Patrons. Two of my poems have been made into evocative videos by video artists Paul Broderick and Doug Chamberlin: https://vimeo.com/paulb23922478 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMtQsgJyOhI
Are you in a feedback group that meets regularly? If so, How often?
Before covid, I attended monthly poetry seminars given by Maggie Queeney of The Poetry Foundation. I am an occasional participant in the weekly Budlong Library Writers group, based on the Neighborhood Writing Alliance method. I attend as many workshops as I can, now virtually, through P & P, ISPS, Highland Park Poetry, Rhino Poetry, the Chicago Public Library, and The Poetry Foundation.
I regularly trade poems for feedback with my sister and with other writers in Chicago and Kalamazoo, Michigan where I used to live. During the pandemic, I created more than 175 cut & paste poems on postcards and mailed them out to friends and strangers to help keep their mailboxes from getting too lonely. Sometimes I got responses back which was fun. (I’m continuing this practice at a slower pace now; readers interested in receiving one can contact me.)
We know every poem is different but--on average--how many revisions does one of your published poems require?
Most of my poems take a lot of time and revision. I tend to go over them again and again with the proverbial poetry tweezers. Occasionally I am lucky enough to have one come nearly fully realized. Creating my pandemic postcard series or participating in the annual August Poetry Postcard Fest Challenge (https://popo.cards/how-it-works/) helps break up my tendency to overthink it or to work a poem to death.
Do you gear some of your work toward performance poetry rather than the written form? Why or why not?
Performance is always in the back of my mind, thanks to my grad school experience at Columbia College, Chicago in the (now defunct) Interdisciplinary Arts Program. At Columbia, I wrote poetic prose for both solo and collaborative performance art pieces seen at The Athenaeum, Randolph Street Gallery, N.A.M.E. Gallery, Links Hall, The Field Chicago, and The Field Philadelphia.
I love open mics for the chance to try things out, to hear other people’s work and to hear one’s own. Sometimes I don’t really know if a poem “works” until I read it out loud to an audience.
How long might you struggle with a poem that doesn’t seem to want to come together?
I have no time limit and throw nothing away. Maybe because I am a collage and assemblage artist, I tend to want to recycle and reuse in a new way.
Is there a special person in your life you’re inclined to share your work with? Explain.
My husband and/or my sister are usually the first to read something new, and I also share a lot in the early stages with my dad who, at nearly 96, is a wonderful writer and an avid appreciator of poetry.