"Contributor Notes: A Q&A with Candice Kelsey" by Amanda Renteria
Contributor Notes is a new series featuring brief interviews with MORIA contributors. Below is an interview with Candice Kelsey, author of Issue Nine’s “Slowly Emerging from COVID, I Watch Mountaineering Documentaries.”
1. In “Slowly Emerging from COVID, I Watch Mountaineering Documentaries,” you create a fascinating connection between mountaineering and quarantine. At what point in the writing process did this connection begin to be forged? Was it there from the outset, or did it arise along the way?
For this poem, I knew its direction at the outset. The poem came to me as I was quite literally emerging from COVID and watching mountaineering documentaries. As I meditated on the loss of life and the specific ways the body betrays itself at extreme altitudes, I noticed the connection to extreme COVID symptoms. Also, being quarantined in my bedroom for five days with my family far away at base camp, also known as the kitchen or living room, struck me as a startlingly similar loneliness.
2. Part of what makes this poem so compelling is the way you bring the familiar and the unfamiliar together. While everyone can relate to the pandemic, I imagine not many readers can relate so readily to the world of mountaineering. Yet somehow your piece collapses this divide, making both feel relevant to the reader. Can you speak to this tension between what is intimate and what is faraway, whether for you, the reader, or both, and how your writing adapts depending on your connection to the subject?
Well, life – or the act of living – is really a tension between apathy and curiosity in my opinion. The familiar often breeds apathy while the unfamiliar, to me at least, opens that Narnia wardrobe to things unknown, magical, and intriguing. That’s where I began thinking of Joseph Conrad’s portrayal of human nature in the throes of hideous colonization, how the familiar informs the unfamiliar, and how it can all go so horribly wrong without a sense of dignity for human life.
3. The structure of your poem really stood out to me. I felt a significant shift in energy and tone during those two isolated lines in the middle. What is the importance of this formatting shift and how much does form play a part in your approach to prose poetry in general?
Those two lines are meant to be a pause. The first stanza is a labored inhale, then the pause of those lines, then the final stanza’s exhale. Also, the two lines act as the bridge, I hope, between the Everest entry point and the larger, more universal subject of loneliness. The reference to the “mother’s touch” is meant to honor those who have died – both on Everest and from COVID – and returned to the womb of Mother Earth. It’s also, quite honestly, a basic allusion to how in times of sickness and despair, we often cry out for our mothers!
4. I thought it was interesting that you mentioned the pandemic by name in the title, yet the poem feels like it could also be referencing loneliness in general. Did you know from the beginning of writing the poem that it was about quarantine during COVID, or was that an idea that came about later on in the process of writing about loneliness?
I did begin by aiming to write about my personal experience with COVID, and I think I don’t mention it by name in the body of the poem because it felt too heavy handed. I wanted my reader to find the connections and therein the joy only poetry can offer.
5. I’ve noticed that quarantine seems to have influenced the work of every artist, from poet to painter, in very different ways. Some artists seemed to be more inspired than ever during the shared experience, while others had difficulty trying to get out anything creative at all. Did you notice the pandemic causing any particular change in your process for writing poetry?
During the first six months of the pandemic, I was unable to write a thing. But then, I got my footing and couldn’t stop writing. I have no explanation for this other than the basic Kubler-Ross grief cycle of denial and anger, which stultified my creativity, as opposed to the bargaining, depression, and acceptance stages, which were quite fertile places for me.
6. Finally, can you share a little more about what your writing practice looks like? Do you have a place or time of day that you enjoy writing at? Do you have any kind of routine that you like to follow? And since “Slowly Emerging from COVID, I Watch Mountaineering Documentaries” is there any more writing or other projects in the works that we can look out for?
I’m blessed with both a day job – teaching high school English – and a family – patient, loving, supportive – that create space in my life to think deeply and write often. I credit my students and my three children with much of my inspiration as they are walking poetry. Also, being immersed in good literature at work keeps my ideas percolating. When you get paid to teach Kwame Dawes and Dorianne Laux, for example, how could I not be turning over new poems in my head? I am happy to say I just had my first one act play published in Spellbinder Mag and I am searching for a home for my first golden shovel style poem about menopause. I’m waiting to see if my full length manuscript will find a home too. Until then, I am always observing, thinking, writing, and submitting. I am so thankful to MORIA and its brilliant team. My Twitter address is @candicekelsey1
Amanda Renteria
Amanda Renteria is a senior Graphic Design major at Woodbury University and the Social Media Manager for Issue Nine of MORIA. She enjoys any project that allows her to practice and expand her creative thinking skills. When she’s not designing, she loves road trips, concerts and spending time with her family and friends.