Laura Foley is the author of five poetry collections. The Glass Tree won the Foreword Book of the Year Award, Silver, and was a Finalist for the New Hampshire Writer’s Project, Outstanding Book of Poetry. Joy Street won the Bi-Writer’s Award. Her poems have appeared in journals and magazines including Valparaiso Poetry Review, Inquiring Mind, Pulse Magazine, Poetry Nook, Lavender Review, The Mom Egg Review and in the British Aesthetica Magazine. She won Harpur Palate’s Milton Kessler Memorial Poetry Award and the Grand Prize for the Atlanta Review’s International Poetry Contest.
Website: http://www.lauradaviesfoley.com/
Q: What’s inside the
mind of a poet?
A: I look at life through the lens of a poet, which means
attentiveness, allowing a space in my day for a poem to emerge; to be a poet,
for me, means a lot of not-doing; not being busy; lots of walking in nature,
sitting under a tree, or in a coffee shop, until “the muse” taps me on the
shoulder.
Night Ringing is, basically, my life story, from my
childhood, growing up in New York City, my father a former POW under the
Japanese, then a prominent physician; my three older sisters, two of whom
suffer serious mental illnesses; my parents’ divorce when I was nine; my first
marriage, to a Moroccan actor; my second marriage, to a film professor, native
of Poland, survivor of the Holocaust; the dissolution of that marriage after
twenty years; the raising of our three children, one of whom has autism, as a
single mother, after his death; the discovery of my attraction toward women and
subsequent lesbian dating experiences.
Q: Tell us why readers
should buy NIGHT RINGING.
A: One of the most frequent comments I hear from readers is
that they love my writing—clear and direct, it “restores their love for
poetry.” Read Night Ringing: you will understand every word, you will learn
about the poet’s interesting, varied, life, and you will find a part of
yourself reflected back to you in clarity and new understanding.
Q: What makes a good poem.
A: A good poem discovers
something new, for the poet and for the reader. It is surprising and exciting,
making new connections. A metaphor will do this; comparing the sound of coffee
falling into a hopper with the sound of rain, and finding solace in it, for
example (see “Coffee Beans”), or lying on your back, floating in the river as a
metaphor for watching life, as a train passes overhead; feeling fine even if
you look like I’m a corpse!
Q: What is a regular
writing day like for you?
A: I need to leave home and sit alone in a coffee shop. I
will read poems, either by classic poets or more contemporary ones, until I
feel prompted to respond with my own words/story. Or, I will sit outside, and
enter consciously into the present moment, noticing whatever is happening
around me in nature, the sounds of birds, water passing under a bridge, clouds
passing over head, a season changing. A meditative experience.
I don’t usually write much in the afternoon. Mornings are
best, because I have the most energy, and the day is new. Of course, there are
many exceptions to this. I remember one poem, an award-winner, which I wrote in
five minutes. It felt like I was on a journey, propelled forward through the
words. And this happened in the afternoon!
Q: What has writing
taught you?
A: Often I write as a way to distance myself from the
pressure of reality. When the emotion is too strong to bear, or I can’t make
sense of it, until I begin to unravel it, through words. So, the poem is a way
through, a way to understand what I am going through. Often or perhaps always I
do not know the end of the poem when I begin it… the poem is teaching me
something that I did not know. A process of discovery.
And there is great joy. I have often written poems that
express sadness, and then felt the joy when it is completed, especially when
someone else reads it and responds to it with recognition, recognizing their
own despair and their feeling of gratitude for the connection.
Writing itself is the greatest pleasure. That feeling of
“getting it;” recently I wrote a poem about an old family photograph. I didn’t
know why it was so magnetic to me. Finally, as I described it in words, I
realized I was looking at an image of my mom and sisters a few months before my
mom divorced my dad a few years before one sister was diagnosed with
schizophrenia and the other with some other psychic disorder, and there I was
all squirmy and feisty-looking, a little kid with uneven knee socks, and my
dad, receiving an award, beaming into the camera. It told the whole story of
our family, including my own survivorship.