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Melissa Ridley Elmes

Goodreads Author

Born

The United States

Website

https://melissaridleyelmes.wordpress.com/

Twitter

@MRidleyElmes

Genre

Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction

Member Since

January 2013

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/mridleyelmes

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Melissa Ridley Elmes is the author of Arthurian Things; A Collection of Poems, winner of the JayZoMon Open Contract challenge and nominated for the 2022 Elgin Award for best book of speculative poetry by the Science Fiction Poetry Writers Association. Her fiction and poetry appear in a variety of literary journals and popular magazines, including Star*Line, Eye to the Telescope, Spectral Realms, Illumen, Haven, Gyroscope, In Parentheses, Thimble, Heartwood, and World of Myth. A medieval scholar and associate professor of English and gender studies, she has authored articles on various subjects including the Arthurian and Robin Hood legends, Chaucer, women and gender in medieval literature, medievalism, and pedagogy, and she is the co-editor ...more

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I love the incorporation of both the modern and humorous in this collection you’ve written. What inspired you to take such a modern approach to Arthurian literature?

Melissa Ridley Elmes Hi Nicole, thanks so much for your question! I knew when I started this collection that I wanted to do something with the Arthurian legend, but I didn…moreHi Nicole, thanks so much for your question! I knew when I started this collection that I wanted to do something with the Arthurian legend, but I didn't want for it to be a traditional, straightforward retelling or adaptation. Fortunately, one of the best things about the Arthurian legends is their adaptability--we see them everywhere, in every genre and media form--in things that try to be faithful to the earlier tales, like John Boorman's Excalibur, in adaptations that wink and nod at the traditional stories but go into their own direction, like T.H. White's Once and Future King and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, and then in things that seem completely outlandish, such as Sharknado 6 and Transformers: The Last Knight. I was inspired by these kinds of takes on the Arthurian legends--the out of the ordinary, humorous ones--and by authors I love who blend mythologies together with the dark, the comic, and the thoughtful in entertaining ways, like my childhood favorites Lloyd Alexander, J.R.R.Tolkien, and Ursula le Guin, or more recently, Neil Gaiman, Naomi Novik, and Deb Harkness. I wanted to do something that was unexpected and humorous, but with modern social and ethical concerns embedded within it--which has always been one of the essential characteristics of the Arthurian legend: its combination of timeless myth and employment as critical commentary on a given community in a given time and place. Coming into it with fresh eyes from a nonhuman point of view really opened the legend up to modern issues in a way I hope is dynamic and generative and good to think with.(less)

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How did you begin thinking about the inner lives of uncelebrated figures, even elements of the settings, in Arthurian legend? (The cat, for instance.) Was there a particular story or character that inspired you to think, I wonder what X feels or thinks? (In some ways, the logic -- looking elsewhere, at what is right before us but often not noticed -- seems akin to "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern," a play I love.)

Melissa Ridley Elmes Hi Maria, thanks for this question! I knew I wanted an unexpected entry point into the legend, some perspective from which things might look different…moreHi Maria, thanks for this question! I knew I wanted an unexpected entry point into the legend, some perspective from which things might look different and fresh. My initial idea was to create an entirely new character and bring them into the scene for the first time, which is actually an exercise I do with my students sometimes when we are studying the Arthurian legend, and I got about twenty poems in and thought "well, that's not really what I wanted though"--it was becoming more of a bildungsroman, and nothing very unexpected was coming out of it, and frankly, I was growing bored. Around that time I picked up Jane Yolen's tremendous collection of retellings How to Fracture a Fairy Tale for inspiration, and happened to be binging on Chvrches. One day I was reading Yolen, listening to Chvrches' "Get Out" and it came to the line "you are a kaleidoscope" and I chanced to glance over at one of our cats, Ariel, who was lying in a sunbeam, and she looked up at me with her sun-glittering eyes and I thought "Hmn, fracturing, kaleidoscope, cat, perspective . . . " and suddenly in my mind's eye I was looking at the kitchen-cat in an Arthurian scene and that cat was Not Impressed (as cats so rarely are . . .) And "What the Kitchen Cat Thought" just came. The first poem in the collection was really the first poem I wrote for the collection, and it set the tone for the others--by turns critical, a little snarky, darkly comic and meditative, still incorporating the essential elements we expect but not looking at anything Arthurian the way we're used to seeing it. From there, I fell into a routine: make lists of things that you might find in an Arthurian scene, look for the things that aren't listed, write from their perspective. I'd walk with my coffee in the morning thinking and talking to myself, then draft new poems for a couple hours, then go for a run or take a nap or read or do something entirely unrelated, and then sit down to do revisions on earlier poems in the afternoon. When I completely ran out of things/perspectives, I took to social media and asked people to suggest other animals and things. It was a pretty blissful way to spend the summer!(less)

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Melissa Ridley Elmes’s books

Average rating: 4.45 · 33 ratings · 13 reviews · 15 distinct works

	Dwarf Stars 2023 by David C. Kopaska-Merkel (Editor), Miguel O. Mitchell (Editor), Rasha Abdulhadi (Goodreads Author) (Contributor) 4.75 avg rating — 8 ratings — published 2023	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Arthurian Things: A Collection of Poems 4.86 avg rating — 7 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Melusine's Footprint (Explorations in Medieval Culture, 4) by Urban Misty (Editor), Melissa Ridley Elmes (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Deva F. Kemmis (Editor) 4.50 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 2017	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Lenses: Perspectives on Literature by Abigail Browning, Melissa Ridley Elmes (Goodreads Author) 3.80 avg rating — 5 ratings — published 2015	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Unwelcomed: Stories of Hauntings and Possessions by Stéphanie Bardy, Jim Bates, Dawn DeBraal 4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Dreamscapes and Dark Corners by Melissa Ridley Elmes (Goodreads Author), Alien Buddha (Contributor) really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 2 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Ethics in the Arthurian Legend (Arthurian Studies, 91) by Melissa Ridley Elmes (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Evelyn Meyer (Editor), Elizabeth Archibald (contributor) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	When a Dragon Has a Cold by Melissa Ridley Elmes (Goodreads Author), Jenna Sparks (illustrator) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Food and Feast in Premodern Outlaw Tales by Melissa Ridley Elmes (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Kristin Bovaird-Abbo (Editor), Melissa Winders (Contributor) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2021 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Food and Feast in Premodern Outlaw Tales by Melissa Ridley Elmes (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Kristin Bovaird-Abbo (Editor), Melissa Winders (Contributor) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2023 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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