12 or 20 (second series) questions with Mary Leader
Mary Leader [photocredit: Margaret Ann Wadleigh] began writing poems around age forty in themidst of a career as a lawyer, working for the Oklahoma Supreme Court. She left home to earn a PhD in English andAmerican Literature from Brandeis University, published her first book, RedSignature, and went on to teach, primarily at Purdue University in Indiana. Retired now, she has returned to Oklahoma toread and write full-time. Her Britishpublisher is Shearsman Books. Shearsman hasbrought brought out three of her collections, most recently her fifth book, The Distaff Side, and will also publish her sixth book, The Wood That WillBe Used, in 2024.
1 - How did your firstbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous?How does it feel different?
My first book, titled RedSignature, was chosen for the National Poetry Series and was published byGraywolf in 1997. I was 49, so my viewof the world (jaundiced) and of myself (knowing "in myheart" that my poems were real) combined to mean I was never reliant onpublication as representing any kind of meaningful judgment pro or con. On the other hand, I was penniless, and thebook allowed me to get a tenure-track University teaching job. That was a big plus.
2 - How did you come topoetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Circuitously, andlate. I married at 20 and had one babyseven months later and another two years after that. As they grew up, I started taking collegeclasses, and decided fiction was my direction. I went to law school, though, and worked as a lawyer until the kids weregrown, then had my stereotypical midlife storm. I came out of that writing poems.
3 - How long does it taketo start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially comequickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to theirfinal shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
To be honest, I am notsystematic enough in my writing to be able to answer those questions. I notice dust on a neglected knickknack on adusty shelf, next to a pile of paper not covered with dust but not presentableeither. It's a wonder anything evercoheres, but it does, and from my language-busy brain things like poems, andultimately the parameters of projects, emerge. Then I further mess with connecting my old writing over the years withnew ideas for pushing this way or that.
4 - Where does a poemusually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combininginto a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the verybeginning?
Well, in saying I couldn'tanswer that last question, I seem to have answered this one!
5 - Are public readingspart of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer whoenjoys doing readings?
I love doingreadings. My road not taken? anactress. I adore voices.
6 - Do you have anytheoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are youtrying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questionsare?
Again picking up from "voices"from the last question, the biggest theoretical concern I don't have,and never have had, is the prescription to "find your voice." For me, that's not the task of poetry. Utterance that comes out has to do with the intersectionsof imagination and memory and language and form. Voice as identity? having just one? well,that's not a process I believe in. Ibelieve in engagement at intersections, with other minds and with weather.
7 – What do you see thecurrent role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? Whatdo you think the role of the writer should be?
I get nothing, personally,by placing the tips of my third-and-fourth fingers on the wrist ofculture. I know there's a pulse therebut it is so huge and so complex, I can't deal with it. Only language and the art of using it is therealm I have access to. Infinitewriters, manifold roles, make up reality for me. It may or may not have a public aspect, butfor me, not so much. It's abstract. It's a belonging to consciousness. Culture and consciousness overlap, I suppose,but on different levels of our times and spaces.
8 - Do you find theprocess of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
At least one readeris essential. Editors doing what they do— putting out magazines and books and webpages and so on — I find pleasant towork with on those things, especially Tony Frazer of Shearsman Books. Seeing the book into print is an importantjob and I personally am quite keen on the book form as a thing of beauty.
9 - What is the best pieceof advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Always consider — don'talways do it but consider — removing first lines and last lines. Those are the two most popular places fortelling a lie. Sometimes, they can beswitched instead of being removed. Oh,and read poems line by line up from the bottom. That helps you, over years, get a sense for shapeliness of line. Once in a blue moon, the whole poem is betterthat way.
10 - What kind ofwriting routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does atypical day (for you) begin?
I wake up early and firstthing, I stagger to my chair and boot up my laptop. I do word puzzles on the New York Timeswebsite (saving the news for afternoon or evening) and jigsaw puzzles onLenagames.com, Lena being a Russian. This drill lets me wake up and see how my brain is doing. If it's perking, I turn to the hard stuff ofcomposing language and editing it, almost "playing poems" as a game. If my brain is sluggish, I do corollaryactivities such as corresponding with someone or flipping through a book ofpoems or making my bed. I wish I knewanother language. I'd enjoy translationas another kind of game. See, HomoLudens, by Johan Huizinga.
11 - When your writinggets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word)inspiration?
I'm retired, so betweenreal writing and fooling around, there's always something to do. Attention produces inspiration. I also have fallow periods, but that is goodtoo.
12 - What fragrancereminds you of home?
Childhood home? cigarettesmoke. Where I'm from, and have returnedto? Oklahoma has a dry smell of grass when it gets parched at the end of thesummer, and a juicy smell when cut, come spring.
13 - David W. McFaddenonce said that books come from books, but are there any other forms thatinfluence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Those four richlyavailable sources — evergreen — support me as a writer, but tangentially. They're all worth pursuing and that pursuit, howeveramateurish, deposits impressions and details that will pop up duringcomposition or revision. But I also seewhere McFadden is coming from. A book isinconceivable unless another book exists and is known to a person who wouldproduce one. It's a Plato thing.
14 - What other writers orwritings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
When, as a lawyer, I firsttook up the notion of poetry, I studied from Norton anthologies. I treated them as catalogues of designs Iwould like to try my hand at, drawn to form. I relished the patterns of George Herbert and shapes of May Swenson, the ventriloquism of T. S. Eliot and thedocumentary technique of Muriel Rukeyser. Poets close to my heart are Eleanor Ross Taylor and Gwendolyn Brooks.
15 - What would you liketo do that you haven't yet done?
Edit and write anintroduction to a Selected Poems by my mother, Katharine H. Privett.
16 - If you could pick anyother occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do youthink you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Actress. But you can't do that alone.
17 - What made you write,as opposed to doing something else?
I did other things first,and did not have anything to do with writing (other than legal writing) until Iwas nearly 40. What made me write thenwas having a psychotherapist ask me what made me happy as a child. I burst into tears. Making art was the answer, mostly visual butalso some little stories or poems or plays. I have practiced drawing as an adult, but I realized I couldn't do thework that artists do unless I made language my medium. Possibly to do with my mother being extremelyverbal, with poetry as her core.
18 - What was the lastgreat book you read? What was the last great film?
At 75, I read and watchfilm mostly for entertainment. Have youseen Derry Girls on netflix? Knowing what is great in these departments is no longer very operationalfor me. I do serious reading, though, ofthe Hebrew and Christian Bibles, in small pieces — as if poetry — at my LectioDivina group. We meditate in silence,contemplate, read slowly and intensively, and finally talk about it.
19 - What are youcurrently working on?
I am polishing my nextbook, titled The Wood That Will Be Used, which is due out from Shearsmanon September 1, 2024. I am going throughthe boxes and piles of paper in an effort to make sense or an archive(whichever comes first), of literary materials from my life. And I have some nascent stories, which I amendeavoring to bring into short prose or long poetry.
