The Monthly talks short form poetry with Roberta Beary – Part 2 – The influence of Emily Dickinson and other poets

Did you have any influences?

Emily Dickinson is the biggest influence on my writing. I read her poetry and I memorised her poems. I liked that they are short. “I heard a Fly buzz  -when I died” is a favourite. Emily Dickinson gave me permission to write brief poems. And words to live by. Whenever things are difficult, I recall her poem, “Hope is the Thing with Feathers”.Another poem of hers,“Tell All the Truth, but Tell it Slant” also is very important for my writing. I follow her approach when I am write about my past.

After The Unworn Necklace was published, people asked if I were writing autobiographically. I’d tell them it’s about the experience that shows a universal theme rather than a specific, personal situation.

Did you have any other influences?

Beat Poets such as Alan Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “A Coney Island of the Mind,” I read a lot of beat poets.

When my children were older and spending more time at their Dad’s, I began doing self-guided literary pilgrimages. Early on, I went to Emily Dickinson’s grave. She had to fight for people to take her writing seriously. That is important to keep in mind.

You have produced quite a lot of work?

I have produced work over a very long period of time. “The Unworn Necklace”, which was awarded the Merit Book Award from the Haiku Society of America and was a finalist in the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Book Award, the first book of haiku to receive such recognition, was written in 2005 and published in 2007. It was published by Snapshot Press as its contest winner, and the next book published by Snapshot Press as its contest winner, Carousel, was released in 2024. Recently, Carousel was named a Touchstone Award finalist by The Haiku Foundation.

Do you feel that taking time to produce your work is a positive thing?

Yes. I advise emerging writers not to rush putting together a manuscript. I didn’t have an idea of my first collection until 10 years after I started getting my work published. Among writers, there often is a rush to publish.

It’s not a question of one’s age, or something particular to men or women, but more that some poets try to establish themselves too quickly. It took me 6 or 7 years before I felt confident enough to submit my work to quality journals.

I believe writers need time to develop their skills.

Are there recurring themes in your work or do you write about a wide array of topics?

It’s very simple. I am a survivor of sexual abuse and domestic violence, and I often write about those subjects. I have one haiku which caused a stir

family vacation
in the museum corner 
uncle’s hard kisses

There is another haiku in which I spell “traumatic” vertically. With the “m” I put a “y” next to it and with the “c” I put “childhood” and with the “r” I put “rape” so when you look at it a certain way it reads, “my childhood rape”, another way, “rape my traumatic childhood”.

t
r a p e
a
u
m y
a
t
i
c h i l d h o o d

(Blithe Spirit, Journal of the British Haiku Society, 34.1 February 2024)

I hope my work offer others permission to write about the things they carry with them, things that they might feel people haven’t believed or listened to. I used to put in my bio that I write for the silenced, but I no longer do that as I think it’s obvious what my work is about.

Are there other themes?

My mother’s illness, my father’s illness, my mother’s dementia are recurrent themes. I also try to write some, what you might call, “happy haiku”, because there are people who say I focus on the dark-side.

I appreciated that comments about “The Unworn Necklace” suggested it tells a story, that it reads like a novel. The Poetry Society’s Ron Silliman included that in his judge’s comments.  Forgiveness is another theme. The penultimate haiku in “The Unworn Necklace” :

far from home
a red-tailed family
… forgiving my father

My writing isn’t all black clouds of despair. But I also think that everything is grist for the mill. Writers should not be too worried about family. If I write a poem that affects how members of my family might feel, it doesn’t bother me. Although I experienced a greater freedom in my writing after both my parents died. But when they were alive, I didn’t let that stop me from writing.

Many poets have told me that they think I’m brave. What they mean by that is that I have written about things which might impact my relationship members of my family. They tell me they didn’t write about something because they knew it would upset a member of their family. I answer that you should go ahead and write it. Poetry is not biography.

It is reasonable to say that you do use humour in your work, sometimes quite bitter humour, but humour nonetheless?

I think I do. For example,

family picnic
the new wife’s rump
bigger than mine

or

mother’s day
she puts me
on hold

I was the least favourite child of my mother’s when I was growing up, right up until she needed help after my father died. I was the only one who stepped up. But I still wasn’t her favourite. Even though my caring for daily did change how she viewed me.

My older sister was the pretty one, my mother was beautiful, and I wasn’t. I was a fat child, my mother would say I needed to lose weight, not eat dessert. That I didn’t look good in brown, that my hair was limp. It was one criticism after another. I have to laugh about it because otherwise that kind of relentlessness could kill you. Writing about it helped too.

dreary alcove
between sips mother asks
my weight

I published a haibun titled, “Dementia (Mild to Moderate), about my mother’s dementia causing a surreal aura of pleasantness. That haibun shows both the darkness and the humour which much of my work contains:

I don’t recognize this woman. I want my mother back.