The Poet As An Artist: An
Email Interview with Ann Iverson
Dr.Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal
She dreams
he returns from war
unscathed.
She dreams
they hug and kiss
so much
they all fall down
on the kitchen floor.
This lyrical
effusion from the pen of Ann Iverson exhibits her high poetic sensibility.
Senior Academic Director of Arts and Sciences at Dunwoody College of Technology
in
Agarwal: You
are also a visual artist. Your artwork debuted at the Undercroft Gallery at St.
Matthew’s Episcopal Church in St.Paul. How does you
artwork inspire your poetic imagery? How can a poet establish the visceral
connection between the poetic and visual image? Is this relationship between the
poet and the artist spontaneous? Please illumine the prospective and new poets
about the art of creating an intuitive and cyclical exchange between language
and image.
Iverson:
The inspirational exchange between my art and poetry is ongoing and cyclical. Sometimes when I see the world I want to
paint it. Other times when I see the
world, I want to write it. Painting allows me to create images that words
cannot and vice versa depending on the subconscious content of my heart. After spending a long day of making art,
words come very easily for me because of the energy spent making images. Artists and poets are both image makers, yet
both see and respond to the world very differently. I am unable to distinguish
the variances between how my poet self and my artist self interpret life. Every poem has a visual partner and every
work of art has a poem waiting in the shadows.
One good way to connect the two arts is to experiment in the art of
EKPRASIS, a term used to denote poetry or poetic writing concerning itself with
the visual arts, artistic objects, and/or highly visual scenes. When a poet
uses a work of art as inspiration for a poem, he or she will be led down a new
path of images, into a new world of understanding.
Agarwal: In
this age of stark materialism, the young people seem to have lost interest in
literature and fine arts. They seem to be only interested in the making of
money and wild passionate pleasures of the senses. How can the interest of the
youth be restored in literature and poetry? Please enlighten.
Iverson:
One way to restore our youth’s interest in the arts is to guide them to their
own artistic selves. Every human has a
center point of creative energy that often remains untapped. If young people
are provided with effective opportunities to invigorate their own source of
creativity, their passion for the arts will flourish. Young people need to be led to the river
where art flows. When they arrive at the
base of this river, they will be taken by current.
Agarwal: Has your teaching career been an asset in your
poetic activities? Please explicate.
Iverson:Yes, my teaching career has certainly been an asset in
my poetic activities. In the classroom I
was able to give students opportunities to read and write poetry. As I saw them inspired, it then inspired
me. The act of teaching is much like
writing poetry; every
question is difficult and every answer not always accessible. The act of teaching is artistic; it takes
creativity and energy and passion and emotion and patience and determination,
just as poetry does. Teaching makes a
person alive just like a good poem does.
Agarwal : What is the contribution
of Laurel Poetry Collective in the making of your literary and artistic
sensibility?
Iverson:
The Laurel Poetry Collective has been an amazing source of artistic
inspiration. Each talented member
brought with them a variety of artistic and poetic skills and were very willing to act as mentors. Because of this gifted group of highly
committed and encouraging artists, my first collection of poems was published
and distributed into the world. Working
with that many poetically minded people added great heights to my artistic
sensibility.
Agarwal :In your collection, Definite Space, you present a pathetic
picture of the war. This acute realistic description of the agonies associated
with war is perhaps due to the fact that your own son left for a war in
Iverson:
When writing the poems in Definite Space
I wanted to ensure that the emotions were transferred to the readers’ hearts
with a certain immediacy, so I honored brevity for
this purpose. When writing the poems in Definite Space I desired that they could
be understood by a large audience, not just a poetic audience, so I honored a
simple vocabulary. I believe the
simplistic images help to clear away the confusion that innately hovers around
any war. War is not a dream of any sort and war does, indeed, bring more sorrow
than we can ever comprehend. Definite
Space is one story out of billion war stories.
It is important that we document war days, as these documents become
part of human history. We all strive for
peace: world peace, local peace, and
inner peace. We must continue to strive
for peace. We must commit ourselves to
peace by starting inside our very single hearts.
Agarwal: T. S. Eliot in his essay on Yeats had held that a
poet, ‘out of intense and personal experience, is able to express a general
truth.’ Eliot means to say that the poet universalizes his personal
experiences. What personal experiences, besides the movement of the son to the
Iverson: Ah, Eliot on Yeats, a wonderful quote. When a personal truth/experience is made universal,
or when a universal event/experience is made personal is when the reader is
made whole, is when the reader is enlightened
Every human experience that I witness and/or
experience informs my art. I also
believe that the making of my art informs the way that I live my life with
truth. Art instructs. The personal experiences that have
influenced my poetry the most are the deaths of my parents, and, of course, my
son’s deployments.
Agarwal : What is the significance
of the animal imagery in Come Now To The
Window?
Iverson:
Animals play a significant role in my life because they teach the unequivocal
lesson of unconditional love. I have
always tried to honor the creatures in my life by including them in my work. If
I did not do this, I would not be true to the natural flow of my
surroundings. A good poet takes
everything in and, in my case, the animals must have
their place in my work for they symbolize an innocence and a truth that human
beings are not capable of.
Agarwal: The
cover artist of Definite Space,
Shelly Leitheiser is currently exploiting how
technology can enhance the creative process. Can Information Technology really
substitute the human mind? I think computer can rarely match the creative
process of the human mind. It can calculate, provide information, store data
and do certain other mundane things. But, it can never create a poem. A poem is
written, when there is the spontaneous overflow of emotion in the poet. Poetry
is nothing but the overflow/exit/ drainage of the excessive emotions in the
poet’s heart. And a computer is devoid of emotions. So, how can it be creative
or stimulate the creative process? Could computer ever have created Mona Lisa?
Can it create a new and imaginative play or a novel, despite all the repertoire
of information it has. It
is only the human mind which can create the monumental works like
Hamlet, Paradise Lost, The Waste Land and Ulysses etc. Your
views, please.
Iverson: I think you mean she is “exploring” how technology can enhance the
creative process. Many artists do this,
but I don’t think that any one of them is asking if technology can substitute the
brilliant and intuitive nature of the human mind and heart. We all know what the answer is to that. A true artist will live his/her life in a constant
search of new ways of expression. I
think the key is that, perhaps, technology can enhance the creative process,
not replace the creative process.
Technology is emotionless but the user of technology is not. Emily Dickinson wrote with a quill and ink;
at that point in time, that was her technology.
Sometimes I process poems on a computer; sometimes I write with a pencil
in a journal. I tend to like the latter
best because I like
the sound and feel of the pencil scratching on fine paper.
Agarwal: As the Senior Academic Director of Arts and Sciences at Dunwoody College
of Technology, you must have met certain students, teachers and persons of
Asian/ African origin. What are the psychological problems of these diasporic persons, living in alien lands? Are they
nostalgic about their homelands? Do they feel alienated and dislocated in the
American social order? Is there any racial antagonism between these foreigners
and the natives of
Iverson: Yes, in my years of academia, I certainly became acquainted with a
number of faculty and students who were from another part of the world. While some of them are challenged with the
notion of acclimating to a new culture, many of them become quite settled in
the American culture. Some students did
write of their homesickness as well as their struggles in adapting to new
customs, etc. As a writing instructor, I was often highly
impressed with their deep and explorative thinking, as well as their search for
a personal truth. The faculty members
from other cultures add a wonderful dimension to the school. Their personal experiences help to enrich all
of us. I consider them a valuable
asset. I think racial conflict is a
global phenomenon and will remain a challenge for every member of the human
race.
NOTE: Dr.Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal is
Senior Lecturer in English at