The Monthly interview American poet, Molly Rice – Part 1 – The school librarian

Do you have an early memory of being attracted to the arts, writing or poetry?

I lived on a Mill Hill; McAdenville, ‘Christmas Town, USA’. It was the home of a textile mill. At the elementary school there I had such a wonderful experience, because so many of the teachers were interested in storytelling. They were interested in doing plays, playing music, in particular; the librarian there would read us stories, and she would dress up as Amelia Bedelia.

Because Amelia Bedelia would always take things very literally, if the story was about dressing a turkey, the librarian would dress up with her Amelia Bedelia costume and bring a turkey in and dress that up as well. That librarian captured me early on, and her enactments led me to hang around the library, and so I was introduced to a lot of books.

Does that  include poetry books?

Regarding poetry, I remember asking the librarian about “Sonnets from the Portuguese” (Elizabeth Barrett Browning) and she told me that that was probably a bit much for me at that time, but I was drawn to the shape of the poem on the page. I didn’t understand the poetry, but I was drawn to the idea of poetry being different from the prose in my chapter books.

It is important to recognise that was still a time, back in the 1970’s, when poetry was read in class, poems were memorised, and poetry was still an important part of the curriculum.

You discovered literature and poetry at school?

Yes, because we didn’t have books in our house. We did have talent shows at school though, and my mom would copy lyrics off the radio, and I would memorise those lyrics. My mom would rehearse with me, and I would recite them at the talent show.

Despite not having books at home, you still had support at home?

My mom was a very playful mom, she was a young mom, in her early twenties, and she loved playing with us, creating plays, or little readings, reading poems to us. She loved directing me and my friends in a play and often we would be asked by our teachers at school what my mom was creating for us for the talent show. It was a golden age, pre-internet, where that sort of connection was still very important.

Amelia Bedilia

What about your own writing. How does that begin?

I did write poems for my grandmother, usually seasonal poems, Valentine’s Day or Christmas, things like that. I tended to write little poems to family members. I didn’t consider that anything different from what we had learned in Elementary School.

When I was a teenager, I lived through a lot of abuse, and I would write to find a way of dealing with that situation. It was in some ways a sense of therapy. My writing was like a teenage journal, but it was less a conversation and much more an attempt at trying to find a structure which would allow me to find a way of dealing with my experiences.

When I went to Junior Hugh School, I was 13, kids started calling me “the poet”, and they would come to me to write them a poem. I started selling my poems. Sometimes a boy would come to me, and I would ask them questions about what they liked about a girl, or what colour her hair was, and I would charge them a dollar. Again, that was seasonal, around Valentine’s Day, and I would try to tailor fit each poem for the person who was asking me to write it.

Later, when I got to High School, around 16, I did have a poem that got me in trouble. It was written for suicide awareness week; I performed it and I ended up in a Chemistry teacher’s office who proceeded to tell me very personal information about his own situation regarding suicidal thoughts. It was quite bizarre, and this ended up with me going to therapy despite me telling people that the poem wasn’t about me!

How do you develop your writing from there?

I had a Spanish teacher who saw my writing and she liked what I was doing, and she invited me to her writers’ group. She was a writer and her writers’ group was made up of older women. She also had her own magazine, she was a published author, and at first, I wasn’t interested, but eventually she said, “You need support with your writing, and I would love to be that.” So, I went along and I grew to love the women in that group.

She taught me how to edit my work and that my first thoughts needed work. She really took me under her wing. She showed me how to add structure to my writing.

What happens after that?

By the time I get to college, I was part of a literary group and I put my poems into the college magazines, and I won awards through that college work. But when I became a teacher, my writing went on the back burner. I was writing lesson plans rather than poetry.

To find out more about the work of Molly Rice see the following link – www.mollyrice.com/home

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