Karen Rigby is the author of Chinoiserie, which won a 2011 Sawtooth Poetry Prize. A National Endowment for the Arts literature fellow, her poems have been published in journals such as The London Magazine, Australian Book Review, and Poetry Northwest. She lives in Gilbert, Arizona. Fabulosa, which is named as one of Ms. Magazine's Best Poetry of 23-24 selections is her latest collection and she recently talked about it with Daryl Maxwell for the LAPL Blog.
How did you get started as a poet?
Happily, through my childhood library. Back when cards were typed on manual typewriters and stored in wooden drawers. It was on those library shelves that I found poets such as Rita Dove, Sharon Olds, and many others. Reading with appetite gave me the desire to try writing. And so I spent hours making up stories and poems without any idea what I was doing.
How do your poems develop? Please guide us through your process of writing a poem.
Each poem has its circumstances and method. Instead, I'll say it all begins with attunement and desire. Ecclesiastes writes, "The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing." Poets have a restless hunger. Writing is a way to see and hear everything again and to be changed by it.
Who are your favorite living poets?
Angie Estes, Alice Fulton, Diane Seuss, and too many others to name. It's a thrilling time in which to be a poet.
Who are your favorite dead poets?
Not so much poets, as individual poems, which include Conrad Aiken's "Music I Heard," and Pablo Neruda's "Ode to a Lemon."
How and where did you first get published?
In a school contest. I was seventeen, placed second, and had a tiny poem about a ficus tree in a newspaper.
Can you give any advice to someone wanting to write and publish poetry?
Read as much poetry as possible, but also read outside of your interests across fields and genres. You never know where inspiration will come from. And during your reading, pay attention to where the living poets you've grown to admire are sending their work. Look at those journals and presses. Also, take your time.
In Fabulosa, there seems to be a theme running through the collection that speaks about the glamorous (you write about Oscar fashion, TV dramas, and the Olympics) with the sharp contrast of secrets from behind the scenes and how the magic is made. Did you write them intentionally?
Yes. I was exploring surfaces, beauty, and the arts—which people so often turn towards to endure this life—alongside a few circumstances that might lead one to appreciate those arts. But such deliberation happened on a subconscious level. I'm a firm believer that books should be wiser and know far more than their writer does, long before the writer arrives.
What's currently on your nightstand?
A stack of good intentions. I’m planning to reread Silencer by Marcus Wicker, and On the Street of Divine Love by Barbara Hamby, to name two.
What was your favorite book when you were a child?
Sylvia Cassedy's Behind the Attic Wall haunted me with its poetic final image, strange setting, and vision of a lonely girlhood. Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy, which portrays a bygone version of New York through the eyes of a flawed, aspiring writer, was an almost yearly tour. I have never forgotten Harriet's tomato sandwiches.
Can you name a book you've bought for the cover?
Tomi Ungerer' s A Treasury of 8 Books (Phaidon Press, 2021), because of its pink typography and slipcase. Fortunately, the stories inside are splendid.
Can you name a book for which you are an evangelist (and you think everyone should read)?
Books are so particular, aren't they? Does the reader ever choose, or does the book call to the reader? I’ll go with Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
Is there a book you would most want to read again for the first time?
Kafka’s Letters to Milena, which I first encountered in my teens. I had never at that point known the intensity of the epistolary. The moment he describes, early on, rain and a balcony scene, I felt I was reading a writer.
What is the last piece of art that you've experienced or that has impacted you?
Endeavour, the prequel mystery series, makes an appearance in Fabulosa. The set design, music, story, and casting are excellent, but what sets it apart for me is the arc surrounding how a person is formed, and how, despite all of the darkness, and all that keeps its main character isolated, there are deep currents and driving convictions which pull him back from the brink every time. I also keenly felt the ongoing thread regarding books and the arts—part of how he keeps himself alive.
What is your idea of THE perfect day (where you could go anywhere/meet with anyone)?
An overcast day in a mountain town amid rolling green hills sounds wonderful to me. Right on the cusp of seasonal change. Either fall into winter or winter into spring.
What is the question that you're always hoping you'll be asked but never have been? What is your answer?
How I come by my first name. I've been told my mother named me for an actress, or the role that the actress played, at the drive-in movies. But she can't seem to remember which movie it even was, and so this origin story feels like embroidery. True or not, it seems fitting, given all the cinematic turns that unfold in my poems.
