I met Erin when we were both teaching at a community college here in Albuquerque, but I really got to know her when I took a creative nonfiction class she was teaching (It’s a long story, but suffice it to say, it was a great class and I got a published piece out of it). She’s a brilliant, vibrant writer, who challenges the people around her to look beyond their own preferred bubbles.
Although poetry is a genre that I have to work a little harder to access, the first time I heard Erin read from her work, I just got it. I felt like I’d been punched in the gut, and I loved her for it. We were sad to see Erin leave New Mexico, but she’s on to exciting new teaching and writing opportunities, and we were delighted to be able to feature her through Plume.
Enjoy the interview!
Plume: When did you know that you were a writer?
Erin Adair-Hodges: Oh—I’m not sure I know anything, much less if I’m a writer in that kind of essentially defining way. I was never exposed to so much when I was young: the violin, pastry making, glass blowing, and maybe I had some latent potential in those fields. I tend to be fairly self-deprecating in that I claim that writing is simply what I do best out of what I’ve tried. But then again, I’ve been writing creatively since I was five—stories and plays and strange little diatribes—and despite the world’s best attempts to dissuade me from writing more, I kept going back.
I will say that my first “published” piece was a story I wrote in the fifth grade. Bound as a book, it was then made available to check-out in our town’s public library. The title was “Daddy’s Not Coming Home,” and I’ve never come up with a better title since.
P: Where do you get your ideas?
EAH: Rocks, under rocks, the absence of rocks, the dreams of rocks. Anywhere. Mostly I’m interested in understanding how my own body frames my experiences, frames the world’s conception and treatment of this body and the person in it, but I’m less interested than I used to be in autobiographical narrative. My recent work tends to invite other figures or hybrid-persona voices to explore and express these concerns: folklore, ’80s songs, rivers, birds I don’t know the names of, angry women of myth—all of it is fodder. I see writing poems not as the act of presenting discovery but the process of discovery itself, and the opportunities for this are everywhere. It’s a surprisingly short journey from a poem about getting spaghetti sauce on my shirt to a rumination about loneliness and sex and death.
P: Where do you write?
EAH: Anywhere. I’ve been in transition the last two years and haven’t had a regular place or room or desk to write. Mostly, I write at the kitchen table when work and school calls my family away, leaving me small moments of time. Having a dedicated space can be an important way to formalize a commitment to the writing life, but if you don’t have that, it shouldn’t be an impediment. We don’t all get “a room of one’s own,” but that doesn’t make what we have to share any less valuable, any less necessary.
P: Do you have any writing rituals?
EAH: I don’t think I do, or I’m hesitant to elevate infrequent practices to the level of ritual. I’ve been interested in the rituals others employ, how they can formalize a commitment to the writing life, and I think there’s something in that, but the demands of my life, the essentially unceasing obligations, mean that my writing time is very, very short—I never have more than an hour at a time, and often much less than that. The only thing I would say approaches the realm of ritual is that I always read the work of others before I write, even if it’s just a poem.
I recently received a fellowship for a month-long writer’s residency, and during this period, I had what I hadn’t had in about 13 years—time. I was able to spend this time walking, exploring, letting life come to me and inform my work. It was extraordinary, but it is not my real life.
Having extra time means we can give ourselves over to accidents, to rituals, but there are those of us who don’t have an extra minute, don’t have time not claimed by what others need from us. I want to say it’s okay, then, to not have a writing space, not have rituals, not have a regular writing practice. You can still write. You must still write, and that won’t look like anyone else’s process.
P: How supportive is your local community for writers?
EAH: I’m a recent transplant to Kansas City, Missouri, where I’m near some really incredible women poets. We’ve formed a kind of collective and are excited about connecting with the local community for events and outreach. It can be so, so hard to find community, even in a big city where there are lots of events. Once we’re in a circle, we don’t always see those left outside its lines. I’m trying to see outside the lines, going to events and supporting the work of others. My role has shifted, and it’s important to me that, having a small bit of power in the literary world, I concern myself with lifting up others. In Albuquerque, where I’m from, Rebecca Aronson and I tried to do that by creating the Bad Mouth Reading Series, and I now seek to do this work as an editor of Pleiades. Some of us won’t ever be able to have a local community that supports our work, though, and we’re fortunate that the Internet and support like that offered by Plume can fill in some of those gaps, bringing us together and lifting us up.
P: What are some of your self-care practices?
EAH: I don’t really use this term, or perhaps even practice self-care. The term “practice” implies regular commitment, and most days I’m scrambling to feed and bathe myself after seeing to all of my obligations. While I don’t have self-care practices, part of my ethos is not to feel guilty about it. I don’t have time to make candles or wear face masks or even exercise as much as I used to, as I don’t have the child care to go out for a run, so my self-care is drinking as much coffee as I want and not feeling bad about it. And when I occasionally sleep in instead of wake up before everyone to write, I don’t feel bad about it. Leftovers for dinner again? Don’t feel bad about it. These small things make me happy, and I can do them while taking care of those I need to take care of. Also, I come from Puritan stock—I was raised at the altar of self-abnegation, not self-care, and that can be a difficult switch to flip.
My self-care dream is to be a woman in one of those romantic comedies where she’s taking some “me time”—reading a book in a bubble bath surrounded by candles and the bath stays warm and there’s no child banging on the door asking me if I’m pooping. That is my American Dream.
P: What is your favorite book about writing?
EAH: It’s pretty standard, but I turn to Richard Hugo’s The Triggering Town again and again. I also love two series on craft and poetics: The Art of… series published by Graywolf (with titles like The Art of Daring, The Art of Syntax, The Art of the Poetic Line) and Poets on Poetry, published by the University of Michigan press. I no longer look for writing books that encourage me to sit down and write, but more for books that shake my understanding of poetry’s near limitless capacity to reflect and create wonder. In the past, though, books like Bird by Bird by Anne LaMott served crucial roles in helping me to imagine that I could have a life as a writer, and that importance can’t be overstated.
P: What are you currently working on?
EAH: I’m currently working on a draft of my second book of poetry, which is finally coming together. It’s been pretty slow going, and I despaired I’d never have the space to see it through, but now I’m excited to be getting a sense of the scope of this thing, its intentions and voice. She’s still not done, but I now know that, soonish, she will be.
Drafting a second book has been, for me, far more difficult and scary than the first. With the first, there was no pressure, since I wasn’t a known poet in any real way. Now, however, I feel a huge amount of pressure, most of it self-created, but it’s inhibited my work at times in ways I was surprised at. Each writing session, I try not to think of the book but just the poem in front of me, the line I’m writing, the next word, the sound. Sound by sound.
Sign up for Plume for September and you’ll receive a letter of encouragement from Erin, as well as some of her creative work!
Erin Adair-Hodges is the author of Let’s All Die Happy, winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. A recipient of fellowships and scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Sewanee Writers Conference, and Vermont Studio Center, her poems have also won The Sewanee Review’s Allen Tate Prize and the Loraine Williams Prize from The Georgia Review. Her work can be seen in journals such The Kenyon Review, Boulevard, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, and more. Born and raised in New Mexico, Erin is now an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Central Missouri and the Co-editor for the literary journal Pleiades.