Our featured writer for October is Atlanta-based poet Danielle Hanson. I met Danielle in the spring at the AWP Conference in San Antonio. It was such a strange, upside-down time at this event that was half-empty as we straddled the line between before and after COVID really took hold in the U.S., so it was a treat to meet someone like Danielle. She’s one of those writers whose affability and warmth stands in stark contrast to work that explores truly dark subject matter. We can’t wait to share more of her writing with you next month! The podcast episode featuring our chat with her will be out next week. In the meantime, please enjoy getting to know Danielle more through this interview.
Plume: When did you know you were a writer?
Danielle Hanson: Ha! I still think I’m just faking it. But I’m OK with that. I think a lot of kids write a poem or two during school years, but it was in college that I started concentrating on writing and thinking of it seriously. I went to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Richard Jackson teaches there. I had my freshman English class with him and he was my academic advisor. He told me I had to take a creative writing class, so I did. I really liked it. I love(d) the game and the challenge of writing poetry, of trying to fit the absurd or funny or personal into a logical structure that makes sense and connects to readers, of making the impossible happen and seem inevitable, of making the trip I took to wherever weave with mythology and science, of bending the world. I still didn’t think of writing as a career, though, even after I got my MFA. I double majored in undergrad and grad school, then had a career in corporate marketing for 15 years. A few years ago, I quit my job and now I consider myself more of a writer, although I might just be a bum.
P: Where do you get your ideas?
DH: A couple places, primarily.
From reading—I don’t mind stealing images/ideas. I use them months or years later in a completely different context. Stealing complete phrases and entire poems is not OK. But letting someone else’s image strike a completely new work from your own mind is fine. That’s the literary dialogue that’s been going on forever. That’s how influence works.
The other place is the world around me, usually nature. I enjoy taking the components of nature and personal history and using them as building blocks. I enjoy giving them permission to act like something other than themselves for a while.
P: Where do you write?
DH: On paper at my kitchen table, mostly. Currently, I make myself sit down every Thursday and write a draft. But the poems almost always start when I’m on my walks. I walk for about an hour and a half a day. On days I’m planning to write, I look over my notes of ideas and images I’ve collected on my phone. I might choose a few that seem to resonate with each other and then solve the problem of how they connect. What logic would put those things near each other. Then I write when I get home.
P: Do you have any writing rituals?
DH: Besides the process I describe above, I sometimes give myself writing assignments. Maybe I mimic the premise of a poem I like, or give myself a bunch of words and a structure I have to use, or I try out assignments I plan to use in a class.
P: How supportive is your local community for writers?
DH: Very. I love my local people! Atlanta is such a diverse and vibrant (those are connected) place. In the past few years, I’ve participated in Amy Pence’s book launch/fashion show where we wore McQueen-inspired clothes while reading her work, a violin/poetry concert (the violinist riffed on our poetry), a puppet show built around my poetry performed at the Center for Puppetry Arts, and tons of small community events. I hold a workshop at my house once a month where we sit around plates of risotto and work on our poems together. We’re not a pretentious community. I really love it.
In addition to the connections, we’re big enough to have great readers come through. Ilya Kaminsky’s program Poetry@Tech (Georgia Tech, started by Thomas Lux) and Emory’s program, led by Jericho Brown, the Decatur Book Festival, and other local colleges, ensure we have varied and compelling voices.
P: What are some of your self-care practices?
DH: Walking, hiking, gardening, my animals, watching my teenagers (they’re aspiring cirque performers), cooking. Actually, when I think about it, my entire days are self-care practices. Like I said, I might actually be a bum.
P: What is your favorite book about writing?
DH: My view of poetry is grounded in Richard Hugo’s Triggering Town, the short story How to Tell a True War Story by Tim O’Brien, and the Introduction to Carolyn Forche’s anthology Against Forgetting, among many other works over the years. Hugo’s work is just a wonderful intro into the act of writing poetry. O’Brien’s story frames for me a discussion about truth and poetry (truth in poetry is emotional truth, not factual truth—lie all you want). Forche’s essay shows poetry’s force and place in the world, it’s importance. Wislawa Szymborska’s Nobel Prize speech titled “The Poet and the World” is another excellent essay about poetry’s importance.
P: Are you able to write during this strange, scary moment we’re living in? If so, what are you working on?
DH: I believe creativity comes from a certain amount of mental space. (See how I justified being a bum there?) I wrote very little during my corporate years (maybe five poems a year). And processing has to come before writing for me. Some writers process by writing, but I don’t. So the first few months of the pandemic, I didn’t write much. My husband has a similar creative process. He’s a roboticist. We talked about how few new ideas either of us was having, but that it felt important to take in and process before creating. That our art/work seemed like it had to change in reaction to such a large event. I’m writing again, and I’m not sure how much my writing has changed, but I still feel that the break was necessary. I don’t feel much good comes from forced creativity.
P: What writers help you find solace in difficult times?
DH: I taught a workshop with Sundress Press in July called Poetry of Stillness. I needed some just-beautiful poems to balance out what was going on. Originally, the workshop was designed for essential workers and those affected by COVID, but by the time it came around, I think many of us needed a breath from the sorrow and weight of working for justice, too. I made a reading list of some of the most beautiful poems I could think of. The list included Andrea Cohen, Richard Jackson, Ada Limón, Melissa Tuckey, and Cesare Pavese. I would probably add Tomas Tranströmer and Pablo Neruda to the list. Maybe Merwin.
Be sure to check out next week’s episode of Plume: A Writer’s Podcast, featuring Danielle. And if you want to get her digital edition of Plume, sign up for our Patreon at the Plume Petite level (just $5!) before October 14th!
Danielle Hanson is the author of Fraying Edge of Sky and Ambushing Water. She was Finalist for the 2018 Georgia Author of the Year Award. Her work has appeared in over 80 journals and anthologies, including Poets & Writers, Hubbub, Iodine, Rosebud, Poet Lore, Asheville Poetry Review, and Blackbird. She is Poetry Editor for Doubleback Books and a Senior Reader at Atlanta Review. Her poetry has been the basis for visual art, included in the exhibit EVERLASTING BLOOM at the Hambidge Center Art Gallery, and Haunting the Wrong House, a puppet show at the Center for Puppetry Arts. Her work has been nominated for several Pushcart and Best of the Net Prizes. She received her MFA from Arizona State University and her undergraduate degree from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Hanson’s second collection of poetry, Fraying Edge of Sky (Codhill Press, 2018) won the Codhill Press Poetry Prize, and was previously a Finalist in the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry, the Wick Poetry Prize, the Antivenom Poetry Award, and the Richard Snyder Prize; and was Semifinalist in the National Poetry Series, the Crab Orchard Series, the Elixir Press Prize, and The Washington Prize.
Her debut collection Ambushing Water (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017) was Runner Up for the Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize; Finalist the Robert Dana Prize for Poetry, the Blue Lynx Prize; and Semifinalist for the Miller Williams Poetry Prize, the Crab Orchard Poetry Series, the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award, the Antivenom Award, the Codhill Poetry Award, The Washington Prize, and the Richard Snyder Prize.
Her third manuscript has been Semifinalist for The Washington Prize.
Follow Danielle on Instagram and Twitter, and visit her website to learn more about her and her work.