Jack Ricchuito interviews area children's author and poet Sara Holbrook, author of several poetry books for children and teens. She has performed for audiences in schools and teacher conferences, and has authored two poetry books for adults, Chicks Up Front (Cleveland State University Press) and Isn’t She Ladylike (Collinwood Media, distributed by Bottom Dog Press). Her poems have appeared in the anthologies Slam and The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry.

How did you get started in writing?
I started writing about 25 years ago when my kids were small. I wrote some poetry in college because I took one creative writing class. Then I started writing rhyming poems for my kids when they were little, and I learned about the elements of poetry and how it works. Then it took about 10-12 years for my adult voice to come back. At the same time I was working as a professional writer.

What voice are you writing in now?
I switch back and forth. I like being able to switch because it keeps me fresh.

Is the inspiration different in those two modes for you?
No, because something will happen and part of me reacts in my kid voice and part of me reacts in my adult voice. I have a couple poems for kids on war, but they’re from me thinking as if I were 12. That’s one version, and then there would be an adult version.

You’re not afraid to use rhyme in your poetry. What’s the function of rhyming in poems for you?
I think it’s something I’ve benefited from, practicing that discipline. If you start to write in any kind of pattern, for example, as a journalist, you learn to weight every word which is a good discipline. Rhyming is a long, long tradition. Mary Oliver pointed out that free verse evolved out of rhyme, and I think we all need to have an appreciation of rhythm in language to be able to write prose and free verse that works. Even free verse has a rhythm to it.

What I hear a lot of poems lack, like some I hear at readings, is specificity; they’re not specific enough about one observation. I think more practiced writers write more specifically. I also think listening to too many people reading poetry can be bad; you don’t listen to your own voice, and that’s so important. This is why I write; my voice is important. I think we all have a personal philosophy. I think your values are exposed in your writing.

Do you have favorite themes you like to write about?
I write a lot about relationships, and I mean that in the broad sense. I feel really lucky I didn’t have an audience for about 10 or 12 years because I think I would have started writing to that audience, and I didn’t; I just remained true to myself. So, when I went into publishing I couldn’t get anyone interested in the middle market, so I self-published and sold 43,000. Then they decided to talk to me.

How important is joy and beauty to you in writing?
I think a lot, and I think the writing brings me back to it. I think that’s one of the pleasures of poetry, that you have to look at things really intently and from more than one angle. It should be more 3-dimensional like sculpture, instead of something flat.

What makes poetry 3-dimensional?
Looking at things from many points of view. When I teach kids poetry I have them write about something, and then from another point of view. I think good writers do that.

Do you have a favorite venue for writing?
Morning or late at night; it helps to tie it in around sleep. When I write prose, I write for a specific period of time...you can’t do that with poetry. I always have several poems I’m working on at a time.

How structured is your writing process?
I never know where the process is going. It starts with an observation usually, then I don’t know where it’s going to go. I start out with a narrative, a few lines that spark memories, and then that becomes the poem. If I’m writing about kids, I need to be around them.

How do you think of creativity?
I think of creativity as a tool we use. In poetry for example, it’s a matter of developing focus; we have to write about one thing at a time. So instead of writing about war in general, we may write just about what we observe and feel as we sit watching it on TV. It’s about really observing your experience. And from those microcosmic observations, you should be able to extrapolate universals. Creativity takes a lot of alone time - leisure time. As soon as I started working as a full time poet, I didn’t have as much leisure time, so writing becomes more of a challenge. At the bottom of creativity is leisure time, and in an industrialized society, we don’t value leisure time. We think that success breeds success but that’s not true. Success breeds failure because it breeds a precedence that gets repeated, and that’s not creative.

Unstructured time could just be riding in the car with the radio off or being in your house with no TV, no computer. Walking the dog is leisure time. Being quiet, being silent is very important. The only thing I can do to stimulate creativity is build blank space in my life. I tell kids that: boredom is your friend.

Who’s influenced your work?
I read a lot of Marge Piercy and Jane Kenyon’s work. When I’m in writing mode, I tend to go to the shelf and pull off essays and philosophy. I find Wendell Berry very inspirational, and a lot of Tagore.

What’s the role of critique in your process?
There’s always that point in a poem where you need to share it with somebody. I can do that orally and watch their faces; there are two people I can share things back and forth with, and I can trust her and she’ll be very honest with me. I think writer’s groups can be very helpful.

When I did a poem for my daughter’s wedding I counted up to 67 edits. That’s what computers are taking away from us; we don’t save all those valuable drafts. Unfortunately, we don’t have the ability to see all the versions.

I think that’s a lot of what my poetry is about, just my reaction to the world in questioning and I think you need leisure time to do that. That’s what’s missing in business, we don’t give people mind space. I think also what keeps people from being creative is their fear of what’s going to flow out, so they don’t give themselves the space to do that.

Interview by Cool Cleveland contributor Jack Ricchuito jack@designinglife.com

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