An Interview with Frank X Walker

Conscious Narratives: Exploring Historical Poetry with Frank X Walker

By JoAnn LoVerde-Dropp

I had the pleasure of being introduced to Frank X Walker, also a Spalding University MFA graduate (2003), while attending a panel discussion in 2009. I mentioned to Spalding faculty member Jeannie Thompson that I was currently interested in the persona poem for an alternative approach to my study of the life of Mary Jemison. Frank happened to be in the ballroom of the Brown Hotel that day, and Jeannie said, “Well let me introduce you to someone!” The result was a deep appreciation for not only his poetry collections, but the example he sets for us all regarding earnest research when representing the life of our heroes and heroines.

A founding member of the Affrilachian Poets, Frank X Walker is the editor of America! What's My Name? The "Other" Poets Unfurl the Flag (Wind Publications, 2007) and Eclipsing a Nappy New Millennium. He is the author of six poetry collections: Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers (University of Georgia Press, 2013); Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride (Old Cove Press, 2010); When Winter Come: the Ascension of York (University Press of Kentucky, 2008); Black Box (Old Cove Press, 2005); Buffalo Dance: the Journey of York (University Press of Kentucky, 2003), winner of the 35th Annual Lillian Smith Book Award; and Affrilachia (Old Cove Press, 2000).

A Kentucky Arts Council Al Smith Fellowship recipient, Walker's poems have been converted into stage productions by the University of Kentucky Theatre department and Northern Kentucky University's Theatre and Dance Department and widely anthologized in numerous collections; including Ecopoetry: A Contemporary American Anthology, Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol. III, Contemporary Appalachia, Spirit and Flame: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry and Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art.

He is the first Kentucky writer to be featured on NPR's This I Believe and has appeared on television in PBS's GED Connection Series, Writing: Getting Ideas on Paper, in In Performance At the Governor's Mansion and in Living the Story: The Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky. He contributed to Writing Our Stories: An Anti-Violence Creative Writing Program Curriculum Guide developed by the Alabama Writer's Forum and the Alabama Department of Youth Services. He co-produced a video documentary, Coal Black Voices: the History of the Affrilachian Poets, which received the Jesse Stuart Award presented by the Kentucky School Media Association, and produced a documentary exploring the effects of 9.11 on the arts community, KY2NYC: Art/life & 9.11. A multidisciplinary artist, Walker's visual art is in the private collections of Spike Lee and Bill and Camille Cosby.

Walker is a native of Danville, Ky., a graduate of the University of Kentucky, and completed an MFA in Writing at Spalding University. He has served as founder/Executive Director of the Bluegrass Black Arts Consortium, the Program Coordinator of the University of Kentucky's King Cultural Center and the Assistant Director of Purdue University's Black Cultural Center. The University of Kentucky and Transylvania University awarded Walker honorary Doctorates for his collective community work and artistic achievements. He is the recipient of the Thomas D. Clark Literary Award for Excellence, Actors Theatre's Keeper of the Chronicle Award and a Recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship in Poetry. He has held board positions for the Kentucky Humanities Council, Appalshop and the Kentucky Writers Coalition as well as a government appointment to Cabinet for Education, Arts & Humanities and the Committee on Gifted Education. He has served as vice president of the Kentucky Center for the Arts and the executive director of Kentucky's Governor's School for the Arts.

JoAnn LoVerde-Dropp: I was introduced to your work in the fall of 2009 upon reading Buffalo Dance and When Winter Come. These historical poems travel through and beyond the scope of social justice in order to create the profound sense of empathy the reader feels for York. What happened in the very beginning of this journey that inspired you to explore this man’s story?

Frank X Walker: My initial journey with York and my initial interest in historically based persona poems began with the embarrassment of acknowledging my own ignorance. After attending a Chautauqua presentation given by Hasan Davis in the character of York, I tried to rationalize how it happened that I had never heard his name before, given his Kentucky connections, given my background in African American culture and history, given the fact that I was living in the same city and walking the same streets, and given his significance to the success of the expedition. I wasn't sure if the education system failed me or if had failed myself. I thought I was familiar with the Lewis & Clark story, but the more I learned about York and the other young men from Kentucky who participated and other important details regarding their interactions with Native peoples, the richer the story got.

LoVerde-Dropp: In the poem “Revisionist History,” York brings to light the omission of his own role in the journey in the lines,

            The truth seemed to stretch so

            that by and by I seem to disappear from they tongues

            as if I had never even been there

            as if my blackness never saved they hides.

            Them twist the tales an leave out my parts in it

            so much so, that directly I become Massa Clark’s boy, again

            just along to cook

            an carry.

Here the speaker offers at least part of the explanation. Now in regard to your discovery of the revised history of York’s role in the expedition, I’m wondering if you experienced similar serendipitous events that led you to begin researching the lives of Isaac Murphy and Medgar Evers.

Walker: It would not be a stretch to say something similar happened in each case. Part of my interest in all of them is admittedly what I perceive as erasure. In Murphy's case, the degree to which African Americans participated and in many cases dominated thoroughbred racing is so invisible that it rarely comes up, though it wasn't my motivation for pursuing his story. And Medgar Evers' invisibility in a larger discussion of the Civil Rights that is often condensed to something as simple as 'MLK had a dream and Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat' is equally unfortunate. 

LoVerde-Dropp: In When Winter Come, the sequel to Buffalo Dance, you begin including voices other than York’s to tell his story. These voices manifest in the form of The River; Watkuweis; Sacagawea; William Clark; York’s Nez Perce wife, his slave wife, stepmother (Rose), father (Ol’ York), hunting shirt, hatchet, and knife. You state in the prologue, Another Trek, that these voices “provide the emotional undercurrent” in this second book. Could you talk more about this?

Walker:   Buffalo Dance is told in one voice, York's. By the time I was ready to write the sequel I had traveled more extensively throughout the Northwest reading from the first York book and had enjoyed significant exchanges with Native American scholars and members of the Nez Perce tribe which gave me a chance to hear another side of the story. I believed the sequel could get closer to the truth and be more authentic if other missing voices had a chance to contribute. I also believed that adding female voices would humanize the narrative even more.  Those new voices were the emotional undercurrent I was referring to. I have seven sisters and was raised by women so I know from experience that women see the world differently than men. I wanted to add their acute, honest, insightful perspectives to what had always been offered as a counterweight to an overtly patriarchal and predominantly white superman mythos.

LoVerde-Dropp: Your third book of persona poems, Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride, emphasizes the fierce devotion within Murphy’s circle as much as it does his rise to fame. I am thinking specifically of the poems “Keeper of the Flame” and “Too Heavy,” which were attributed to his wife, Lucy. What were you able to borrow from your devotion to your own family in order to create voices so real?  

Walker: I feel confident in how I perceive human interaction especially between women and men. I'm old enough to have loved and lost enough times to have become wiser for it.  When I craft collections of persona poems, I'm building from source material gathered from memory, research and imagination. It’s the emotional currency that comes from a first person voice and the imagination that keeps it from just being another history text. I'm fortunate to have survived enough personal experiences to create the authenticity that I want my readers to experience.

LoVerde-Dropp:  You’ve now released your fourth book of historical poetry, The Unghosting of Medgar Evers – how has your approach to the persona poem evolved over the past decade?

Walker: My approach to building a narrative driven by persona poems or what I now refer to as Historical Poetry, has definitely evolved over the four collections. I think I can say with confidence that multiple voices, especially those voices in opposition, lend more authenticity to the narrative and create a greater sense of truth for the reader. I've learned that much of what we accept as history is often simply the point of view of the one individual who wrote it down. I've learned that there are great rewards in spending the time, money, and effort in the research. I'm a better human being having encountered these men, their families and their stories.

LoVerde-Dropp: What do you feel are the most important lost details about the life of Medgar Evers that Turn Me Loose has restored to public consciousness?

Walker: I would hope that Turn Me Loose helps push Medgar Evers' name back into the conversation about civil rights. I think more people know about the details of the tragedy of Emmett Till than know about Medgar's assassination and even fewer know how responsible Medgar was in bringing the Till case to trial. I hope the book corrects some of those injustices.

LoVerde-Dropp: I get a sense of this the most in the poem Arlington, which is written in the voice of Medgar Evers’ wife, Myrlie. Each tercet is like a note higher than the last as the poem, which withholds its only period until the very last line, thus resisting both closure and complicity. Arlingtonreveals the incongruity between the ceremony offered upon Evers’ death and the reality of the lack of acknowledgement that should have honored his life.   This poem also integrates craft on a larger scale than what your readers are used to seeing, and I am wondering if you chose the tercet for this extended metaphor for a particular reason.

  

Walker: The tercets in this poem are intended to extend the image of the triangularly folded flag directly onto the page. Additional efforts, which include contemporary forms like the contrapuntal and hinge poems that are used throughout the collection, allowed me to illuminate the juxtaposition of voices that are in dialogue throughout the collection. I really worked hard on raising the craft in this last collection to something worthy of the narrative, where in the past I had been more concerned with just getting the narrative right. It was important to me that there was as many rewards for the reader looking for poetry as there was for the reader looking for a history lesson in these pages.  

                       

                                    Arlington

During the flag ceremony

                        soldiers folded, creased, tucked,

                        smoothed, and folded again

                        with such precision and care,

                        I imagined they were wrapping

                        a body

                        a red, white, and blue

                        mummy

                        which they passed, and saluted

                        and honored so much so

                        everybody stopped looking

                        at the casket

                        by the time they placed that triangle

                        of husband in my arms,

                        they left no doubt

                        I was holding his future

                        and what we were burying

                        was only his past.

LoVerde-Dropp: The topic of social justice appears in your role of editor as well as writer. The August 2013 issue of Pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture is themed “The Lost Ones” and cites “the wake of the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case” as the inspiration for its title. In this regard, you have a voice, unlike writers with compartmentalized public and private personas, that is steady and consistent. What can you tell us about how this carries over into the classroom when you are teaching in a University?

Walker: I don't try to hide the fact that I see myself as an artist/activist and teacher actively engaged in the world around me. I encourage my students to tune into what's happening in their own worlds and to consider what they are or can be emotionally invested in and to use that emotion as a starting point or an emotional center for their own work. I also use some of my own work in the classroom. When the students can make the connection between the writer and the work and have access to the entire backstory, they really understand the writing process, especially how authentic emotion vs. sentimentality can impact a piece of writing.

LoVerde-Dropp: Could you talk a little bit more about this – teaching the difference between authentic emotion vs. sentimentality – as it applies to creating a more three dimensional backdrop, especially in Historical Poetry?

Walker: Many students mistakenly initially believe that receiving an emotional reaction from an audience after sharing the details of a tragic event makes it a good piece of writing, which could spiral a peer workshop away from craft and into a tragedy contest. This evokes a kind of sentimentality that has more to do with the subject and less to do with the quality of the writing. When they fully understand the historical context, the motivation of the speaker, the possible emotional state during that poem as it relates to the other poems and other variables in a series that portrays the subject as a multi-dimensional character it is truly instructive.

LoVerde-Dropp: You also write in other genres besides poetry, and you are currently working towards finishing a fiction novel.  What was it that prompted you to explore the lives and circumstances of these men and women in the form of historical poetry as opposed to the biography?  

Walker: I like the under-the-skin-closeness of poetry. I like getting so deep inside a character's head and heart that you start to imaging what they dream about. That would be breaking the rules in a biography. You're not supposed to take those kinds of poetic licenses. And I also love the fact that a small collection of poetry, can take you as close or even closer to a subject as a thick biography or book of history.

LoVerde-Dropp: You noted that African American poets Kevin Young, Natasha Trethaway, Tyhimba Jess, Marilyn Nelson, and Adrian Matejah, among others, have also contributed to the genre and that an effort is being made to convince libraries, bookstores and publishers that Historical Poetry deserves its own shelf space. What exactly is it about Historical Poetry that draws you in so closely?

Walker: I think I’m drawn to the fact that the poetry is doing more than what most people expect of poetry, that it is misbehaving, that it has taken on a level of activism that allows it to break new ground and is creating new poetry fans.

LoVerde-Dropp: You’ve stated, “I feel that the research and character studies necessary to building the authentic narratives in the historical poetries made for an easier transition back into fiction.”  This brings me back to your current fiction project; what can you tell me about its inception and storyline?

Walker: This novel project comes out of a group of stories I've been carrying around with me for a long time. The one I'm focusing on in the current manuscript is probably closest to the life I've lived these fifty plus years but is still fiction. It’s a coming of age tale and an exploration of black masculinity that centers on a father and son separated at birth, both of whom become writers. After a secret interracial relationship results in an unplanned pregnancy in a state institution in rural Kentucky, the father is charged with rape and sentenced to twenty years in prison and the mother is transferred to a home for unwed mothers where she is forced to give her son up for adoption.  The story really begins when the father and son's lives cross for the first time twenty years later via an exchange of letters just before the father's release from prison. As much as I enjoy the craft of poetry I must admit that I've been excited about having a project that has allowed me to bring these characters to life on the page and to take everything I've learned about writing and things I've experienced in the real world and repurposing it all in an imaginary space on a much bigger screen.

Frank X Walker has taught in writing programs like Fishtrap in Oregon and SplitRock at the University of Minnesota and currently serves as Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Kentucky where he serves as the founding editor of PLUCK!, the Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture. 

Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

JoAnn LoVerde-Dropp is a full-time instructor at Southern Polytechnic State University in Marietta, Georgia and serves as Secretary on the board of directors for the Georgia Writers Association. Her article, “Accessible Poetry” appears monthly on the Georgia Writers website http://www.georgiawriters.org/. JoAnn received her MFA in Creative writing from Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. Her poetry has appeared in Gargoyle Magazine, Public.Republic.net, and Bigger than They Appear: Anthology of Short Poems.

               Photo by Noah Dropp

A Review of Burden of Solace and Interview with Poet, Teneice Durrant Delgado

Burden of Solace
Cervena Barva Press
www.cervenabarvapress.com
by Teneice Durrant Delgado
Copyright 2012

Burden of Solace, a review by Barbara Sabol

Teneice Durrant Delgado’s chapbook, Burden of Solace, offers us the double pleasure of a satisfying read and an important education:  the reader is treated to poems not only compelling in content, deft in craft, but also bristling with history.  Little known history:  the Irish slave trade in 17^th century West Indies is the vivid and tragic backdrop for this collection of narrative poems. 

The ten poems that comprise Burden of Solace form a narrative of a young Irish girl abducted into slavery by the British, transported as human cargo and branded (“. . .We were led to the branding/stand, Master’s iron rolling in a fire”) on a slave ship, laboring in the cane fields, routinely raped by slave drivers (“. . .It became a ritual/picking and being plucked”), floating her new-born, slave-bred baby “home on the sea” rather than surrendering him to Master in “Kosoko.” The story unfolds in clear linear progression with the poet, in persona as a young girl, recounting her journey from her mother’s arms in Galway to a slave hut in Barbados.  Little solace afforded the Irish girl/mother enslaved.

The narrative arc of the collection occurs with the poem “Solace,” in which she is mated like a “breeding mare” with the slaves, hiding her reviled white face against the cot when  “. . .twice a/day a black man was unchained outside the hut, forced through the/door. . .and it went like this/for months. . .”  Finally, when Not-John, a prominent figure in the collection, is whipped into the room, she asserts her personhood through their anything-but-tender connection, making him truly see her as they join; thus, for a brief time, she reclaims her identity:

          . . .when he pushed into me, I looked at his face.  And his

          shimmering molasses-hate eyes didn’t see me, just white          

          . . .and I wanted him to see I was

          Irish, forbidden.  I wrapped my limbs around his cross-scarred

          trunk, held hard as I could.  I whispered some scraps of an old

          Irish, forbidden, lullaby, the only offering I had to make.  He wept

          inside me. . .

Delgado’s sure use of prosodic features throughout the poems animates characters and action.  In particular, the speech line, set in italics, naturally flows through the poems, breathing  life into the narrative.  She captures the diction of the time in credible and rhythmic lines such as the voice of Maris, “the seen-too-much-old,/half-Irish/mulatto” who warns the younger female slaves:

          . . .And if you stop

          bleeding, she said, in Irish, forbidden,

          Don’t ever let yourself love that child.

                                                              Don’t

          you ever think that child yours. . .

The most poignant example of speech seaming the narrative occurs in the poem “Mary-Margaret,” as the title character, the girl’s mother, chides her, knowing she will never see her daughter again on earth, “. . .You must be very/good, inion.  If you are bad, I will/be lonely in Heaven.”  The poem closes with the most moving lines, I believe, of the entire book: the speaker, gone just “a fortnight” but already initiated into the wretchedness of slavery, laments:

          Mary-Margaret O’Conry, don’t think

          on me, don’t whisper my name

          over so many polished beads, a litany

          . . .

          Mama, forgive your

          child the sin of survival.

Among the prosodic elements employed is the rhetorical device of repetition: the pairing of the words, “Irish, forbidden,” recurs like a tethering refrain, within and between poems. The utterance serves as a resonant reminder of what has been lost―language, culture, Irish identity― all now illicit.  Forbidden or not, the women use their native tongue to curse, to pray, to lament.  They risk the comfort of prayer in Irish, “Áiméan, forbidden” in the poems “Ann Glover” and “Kosoko.”  In the poem, “Adam,” in response to brutal rape in the sugar cane fields “. . .the women cursed [the drivers] in Irish, forbidden.”  The utterance punctuates “Solace,” alternating with “Ireland, forbidden” five times throughout the poem, the words a lodestone pointing home. And in the final poem of the book, “Jamaica,” the speaker proclaims, “. . .never again will/I cry out for Ireland, forbidden” as she walks to the hanging tree.  That language resides at the core of self comprises a secondary yet equally powerful theme that further unifies the poems in this collection:  Irish dovetails seamlessly with English, lending authenticity to the narrative and intensifying the speaker’s isolation in a foreign and harsh environment.

Solace possesses both a cinematic sweep and sharp focus on tangible detail. The poems become a lens that pans a dominated and impoverished Galway, the high sea voyage to Barbados, sugar cane fields running to a distant horizon, squalor quarters.  The “Look-out Tree” high on the hill.  The speaker renders an island landscape and its savage conditions in both panoramic and close-up, intimate frames.  The view is stark, horrific and heartbreaking; descriptions of violence graphic, no holds barred.  The reader visualizes the Irish women’s “rows of burnt skin” in the fields (“Adam”); the camera zooming in as “her work-bent fingers worry over imaginary/rosaries for three long days” before she is “lassoed. . .dragged up the hill to the Look-out Tree,/hung. . .” (“Anne Glover”); a just-born babe whose first breath never arrived “wrapped in a sugar sack,” the new mother’s blood “making a trail/of rose petals in the dirt” (“Kosoko”). 

In the space of ten poems, Delgado takes the reader on a sad, shocking journey, back to a century when Irish families were torn apart by the West Indies slave trade.  Through the experience of an unnamed Irish girl, the reader can fully imagine a cruel chapter in history.  Dramatic though the story may be, the speaker’s voice is matter-of-fact, perhaps numbed to atrocity, as she reveals a shadow-side of British history: “a story: water, hell, the/consequence of empire.” I admire the poet’s commitment, in terms of rigorous research, passion for her subject and an authentic voice, and I am thankful for the brave and accomplished poems in Burden of Solace.

Interview with Poet, Teneice Durrant Delgado, by Barbara Sabol

Burden of Solace is a powerful and important book, for the strength of the individual poems and the story they tell collectively about the Irish slave trade―a little-known and shameful piece of history.  The speaker’s voice in Solace is compelling―authentic and unadorned; a dry-eyed description of the conditions of an Irish girl’s slavery in Barbados.  Her voice resonated long after I read the book and I remain haunted by the story and its telling.  Of course, I had the pleasure of hearing you read from this book at the Third Thursday Poetry reading last October, and so the poems became that much more audible and animated.  With each re-read, I am even more riveted by the strong sense of place and person in these poems; there is a cinematic quality to the poems and the narrative progression through the book, which leads me to the first question:

B:  The speaker’s voice in these persona poems is consistently credible and genuine. The poems read like memoir in verse.  I wonder how you found your “protagonist’s” voice, and whether she may be a composite character from your research.

T: First thank you so much, Barbara, for inviting me out to read at Third Thursday and for reading Burden of Solace. The voice of the narrator in these poems came to me after much reading and research. I took an interest in the Irish slave trade when I happened upon a book called Testimony of an Irish Slave Girl by Kate McCafferty. It is a fictional account of the trafficking, but it was very rich in detail. From there I found To Hell or Barbados by Sean O’Callaghan, which is part history, part non-fiction account of his own research in present day Montserrat and Barbados. When I began researching this topic, there were very few resources, and most were citing the same three or four authors or state papers. On a shoe-string, I managed a visit to Manchester, England and spoke with a trans-Atlantic scholar, tried to see some plantation records (I was denied access, of course. You can’t just walk into the Rylands Library in Manchester and ask to see 400 year old papers.) I kept reading and re-reading, knowing I wasn’t going to use all of the material I had found, but hoping that it would filter into my subconscious. Then I started imagining myself in these situations: being branded, being isolated, giving birth. That’s when the narrator’s voice started coming out.

B:  The scenes and experiences described in the poems are disturbing, often horrific.  How much

did you identify with the “I” in the poems, and how did putting your poet-self in her shoes impact you while you were writing the book.

T:  Many of the events I describe were written about in detail in stewards’ and missionaries’ reports. For example, pregnant women were, in fact, expected to dig out a little trench in the ground so they could lay face down to receive the whippings. Women were hung for singing or praying in Irish. The women and children were raped daily, and expected to continue working. Several nights I had to stop writing, or cried my way through a draft.

B: There is quite a cast of recurring characters in the book: Not-John, Master D, Maris, and others. Are they based on anecdotal research or completely of your making?

T: The characters that the narrator meets are composites of people that I would expect to be the most influential in a young slave girl’s life. I was wary of making stereotypes, so I tried to give each of them a distinct personality.

B: Even though the same character speaks each poem, the poems form a kind of theater of voices created by poignant lines of monologue and dialogue. Often an utterance takes a dialectal turn of phrase or a Irish word appears. The speech lines are so natural– how did you come upon the speech patterns and language?

T: I think by not thinking too hard about it. I listened to old Irish hymns and read poems. I looked up Old Irish words. I didn’t want to force it. So, along with the research on dates and places, I researched songs and poems and let it all filter through my subconscious.

B: Many characters reappear throughout the book, and they all are all named (even the refuse-to-take-a-western-name, “Not-John”). However, our main subject, who speaks every poem, goes unnamed. I wonder if that was because self-reference didn’t suit the poems, or perhaps because she lost her Irish identity so utterly, that she no longer possessed even her own name.

T: The choice not to name her was deliberate, as was the choice not to give the master’s full name. In regard to the narrator, I often called her “Solace” in my head, since the impetus for this collection was the quote that described the plantation owners need for Irish girls “to solace them.” But, yes, she goes unnamed throughout the sequence; though references are made to what she was called by her mother and what the other Irish girls call her, once she becomes pregnant. Names are so vitally important to our sense of identity, so it seemed fitting leave her unnamed as she struggles with this new, forced and wholly unwelcome life as a slave in Barbados. I didn’t name the master simply because so many masters are already named, their names inked into history books and state papers, ledgers and on the sides of important buildings. No more ink needs to be spent on them.

B: Solace intersects poetry and history is a truly engaging way. I can think of a few other books which brave a poetic re-imagining of history. One such example is Linda Bierds’ The Profile Makers, in which a Civil War survivor examines the plate-glass negatives depicting her family and battle scenes; another is our fellow Spalding University's Low-Residence MFA alum, Frank X Walker’s When Winter Come: The Ascension of York, a book of persona poems in the voice of the explorer, York, who accompanied Lewis and Clarke. Yours is also an ambitious and successful first person journey in a specific historical time frame. Did you model Solace on any particular work of poetry profiling a chapter in history?

T: I was greatly influenced by the first book of York’s travels, Buffalo Dance, the journey of York by Frank X Walker. Hearing Frank read from that collection and Ascension, you get a sense of how much research went into those poems. There is integrity in the research that comes through in the books.

B: On that same note, what role do you think that poetry plays in chronicling history, especially the suppressed underbelly of history, such as the Irish slave trade in the 17th century? I came away from Solace believing that poetry can be revelatory not just about human experiences but also as a powerful truth-telling medium regarding human history.

T: I think persona poems in particular can create a very powerful bridge between history and human experience. The poems create a space for intense emotional experiences in a way that reading a history report or an article may not, and may get at some truths about human experience that facts may not.

B:  Do you think that the revelations in Burden of Solace are relevant to current times?

T: I really hope that this series of poems creates a conversation about present day trafficking, especially in the United States. Many people think that human trafficking is an Asian or an Eastern European problem, but the United States has an alarmingly profitable human trafficking industry.

B:  I’m really interested in how the book came into being. In the author’s note, you mention a
“random” visit to the UK and a fortuitous meeting with Dr. Natalie Zacek. Depending on how
one feels about randomness, do you feel you were destined, in a sense, to write this book?

T: Yes, I think there was some kind of destiny at hand. Coming across the copy of Testimony of an Irish Slave Girl, seeing these little stories about her materialize over the course of six years, crying with her at night, and finding someone willing to publish them. It’s been a long, but rewarding experience.

B: At the risk of needing a spoiler alert, I must ask about the closing of the final poem, “Jamaica.” It ends on an ominous note, opening up several possible resolutions for the poems’ speaker, rather than signaling “The End.” Did you intend that the reader create her own ending to the speaker’s story, or does the poem signal that the main character chooses the one means at her disposal to regain control of her life?

T: I have a very definite ending in my mind, but yes, I was uncomfortable with spelling it out for the reader. There’s enough ambiguity that, if the reader was particularly hopefully, they could craft a different ending than the one I have in mind.

B: What project(s) are you currently working on? Do you feel inclined to take on another historical or even mythological tale in persona mode?

T: I am very interested in the nurses of the world wars and Vietnam. Often we hear of the men in the battle field, but not the women who saw the carnage of war every day. I’m hoping to do some research and perhaps even document some stories before beginning a series of persona poems about their service.

B: A question about balance and the writing life: I know that you’re very involved with other literary projects, such as Winged City Press Chapbooks and New Sins Press, while earning a Master’s Degree in Community Counseling AND being a mom. That’s one full plate. How do you manage to carve poetry writing time into that kind of a schedule?

T: It happens in fits and starts. I’ll turn ideas over for a long time in my head, then when I get a quiet afternoon, I spit it all out. Then I can pick it apart and revise when I get moments. I have a very supportive family and a couple of amazing writer-friends, particularly Stacia Fleegal, who has read every word and scrutinized every comma I’ve ever written.

Thank you, Teneice, for shedding light on the subject of the Irish slave trade in such a tightly and masterfully woven series of poems. I await your next book!

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About the Poet

Teneice Durrant Delgado is a co-founder and poetry editor for Blood Lotus: an online literary journal, and a proud graduate of Spalding Unviersity's Low-Residency MFA. She is the publisher and managing editor for Winged City Press Chapbooks and also serves on the editorial board for New Sins Press. Her Poems have appeared in the Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Heartland Review, The Furnace Review, Pirene's Fountain, Glass, Pisgah Review and Soundings East. She is the author of two chapbooks, Flame Above Flame and The Goldilocks Complex. Teneice lives in Dayton, Ohio, where she is currently pursuing a degree in CommunityCounseling at the University of Dayton.

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Guest blogger Barbara Sabol lives in the Great Lakes area and has an M. A. in Communication Disorders, an MFA, and a BA in French. She is the author of two chapbooks: Original Ruse (Accents Publishing, 2011) and The Distance Between Blues (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Her poems have appeared in a number of journals, most recently The Examined Life, San Pedro River Review, The Louisville Review, on the Tupelo Press Poetry Project web site, and in the collection, Bigger Than They Appear: Anthology of Very Short Poems (Accents Publishing). An essay and book review/interview have also been published in Public-Republic.