Episode 12 - Fractured Time: Writing and Reading Poetry During Motherhood with Nancy Reddy and Emily Pérez
"I think of all the arts, poetry is a really good one to pair with motherhood, because you can do something that feels complete in the fractured time you have, and then you can revise it in fractured time."
~ Emily Pérez
Have you ever been at a conference, totally energized and excited, but you leave and have lost all that momentum?
Thankfully, this was not the experience for poets Nancy Reddy and Emily Pérez. They shared in a panel conversation at a writing conference, then took all of the energy and support they received and channeled it into being co-editors of a new and inspiring collection of writing in and around motherhood called “The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood.”
“It seemed important at that point to present views on motherhood that would be like all three of those things - difficulty, ambivalence, and joy - because I think both of us, at that point in our writing and mothering journey, didn't feel like we saw the real complexity of mothering and trying to write while mothering represented in the work that we saw, or maybe we did see that work and we wanted to find a way to gather it together and to talk about it.”
~ Nancy Reddy
Emily is the author of What Flies Want, winner of the Iowa Prize; House of Sugar, House of Stone; and two chapbooks. She teaches high school in Denver, where she lives with her family.
Nancy has authored Pocket Universe and Double Jinx, among others, alongside her day job teaching writing at Stockton University.
Nancy and Emily joined Kaitlin on the podcast to chat about The Long Devotion, the inspiration behind it, and the many amazing writers that generously contributed to it. They also spoke about poetry and how it intersects with and enriches motherhood.
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More about Nancy and Emily:
Nancy’s website: http://www.nancyreddy.com/
Nancy’s Instagram: @nancy.o.reddy
Emily’s website: www.emilyperez.org
Emily’s Instagram: @theemperez
Order your copy of their book here: The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood
Related resources:
More about the anthology and how to order your copy: The Long Devotion
This article highlights the paucity of poetry on motherhood and the postpartum experience, which thankfully is becoming a bit less of a problem now.
More about Rachel Zucker: http://www.rachelzucker.net/
More about Raina J. León: https://www.rainaleon.com/about
About Clarissa Mendiola: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/clarissa-mendiola
About Sun Yung Shin: https://www.sunyungshin.com/
Katherine Duclos speaking about her artistic process on the Postapargum Production Podcast: https://www.postpartumproduction.com/episodes/03/1
The Writer, by Richard Wilbur: https://poets.org/poem/writer
Erika Lee Sears on legacies and the cultural imprint we leave behind as creatives: https://www.postpartumproduction.com/episodes/10
Angela Garbes latest Book: Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change
Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
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