Beate Sigriddaughter, author of hundreds of poems, is the winner of the 2014 Jack Grapes Prize and a multiple Pushcart Prize nominee. She has promoted women’s writing at her blog, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, for many years, an activity which grew out of her earlier Glass Woman Prize. Siggriddaughter is the author of Emily (review below) and Dancing in Santa Fe and Other Poems. Her forthcoming Dona Nobis Pacem will be issued in December 2021 by Unsolicited Press.

Emily, in your latest collection, you assume a unique voice, so different from the personas you presented in Dancing in Santa Fe. Can you tell us a little about how Emily originated? Did the collection fall together, for example, over a period of months, or years?

In late summer to early fall 2017, I had an opportunity to have a solo writing retreat in a friend’s condo near the ocean at California’s Central Coast for about two months. Beautiful! Especially since I normally live in contrasting New Mexico mountain desert terrain. I challenged myself to write a poem each day and I did that, although the daily poems did not all survive into the final form. The Emily collection came from those poems. A month after my return, I had the collection in its present form. “Emily Celebrates Her Insignificance” is probably the theme poem for that creative situation. I had hoped to be a participant in a local writer’s conference, which, as new poet laureate, I had imagined would automatically happen for me, but it wasn’t to be. So then I was determined to at least celebrate my insignificance by walking by the ocean and writing and having a great time anyway. I can’t remember how the name Emily came about. I’ve been asked if it has to do with Emily Dickinson, and I personally never made that connection; I connect the name more to a vague memory of a Simon and Garfunkel song, “For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her.”

When did you first know you wanted to write poetry? How did you begin? Is it your major genre?

Talk about insignificance! I could probably blame my entire writing career on insignificance: I grew up the youngest in a family where everybody was too busy to pay much attention to me, all in the nicest way, but still, I didn’t count for much. I was polite in turn, but once I knew how to read and write, that was it. I started rewriting things to my satisfaction or copying things in my flavor. I still have a poem, in German, I wrote about the twelve months of the year. It’s not very good, but I’ve had 60 years of practice since then. Then later, in college at Georgetown University, I had the privilege of being accepted into a coveted poetry workshop with Roland Flint—one had to submit sample writing anonymously, and I got in. I also write fiction. I can’t say which of the two, poetry or fiction, is my major genre. Lately, poetry has been dominant, but I do love writing fiction which, to me, is a fantastic way of telling the truth without endangering victims or directly enraging bullies.

Your website, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, by its very title, has been an encouragement for many women writers. How did you conceive it, and when did you develop this important literary hub for female poets and writers?

Back yet once more to the concept of insignificance: I do believe that women’s voices have been undervalued in our world for a very long time. To the point that in the 19^th century, if you were a woman and wanted to have something published, you were wise to do it under a man’s name. Along with that came the phenomenon of trying to impress and/or imitate men. When I was in college, “you think like a man” was still a great compliment. Rebel that I am, and confident—albeit shakily—in my own intelligence, I really wanted to have a venue for women’s unapologetic voices where material that won’t necessarily impress men but is nevertheless foremost on our minds is welcome. From everyday beauty or pain to experiences or observations of epic proportions, I want to honor it, not dismiss it as it has been so often dismissed as feminine fluff. An old memory comes to mind: very early on I wrote a story about Socrates’s much-ridiculed and maligned wife, Xanthippe, and I submitted it to a literary magazine. The response I got from a male editor was that it was a very interesting concept, but it was a shame that I didn’t give any weight to Socrates’s point of view in my story. I didn’t argue with the editor, but privately I thought, hadn’t Socrates’s point of view already been amply represented in the last few thousand years? Unfortunately, my story which dated back to pre-computer days got lost in one of my many transits in life. I wish I could reread it.

In 2007, I started a fiction contest, the Glass Woman Prize, for fiction written by women. I funded it with 10% of my income, sort of like religious groups do with tithing. Women are in many ways my religion anyway. Then I stopped working a day job and had no income for a few years, so that project ended. Unfortunately in late 2018, the web program I used for the Glass Woman Prize and my own website ceased being supported by its developer, and it would be far too costly and time-consuming for me to reconstruct the archives online, so they are history. Once I started collecting Social Security, though, I wanted to resume tithing in support of women’s writing. I went to a blog format and decided to include poetry as well. The prize I offer, $91 once a month on the full moon, is small, and I wish I could pay every contributor, but at this point, I am not rich enough. I really love reading the different voices of women that come my way. Not everybody thinks like I do (surprise!), and yet we all have so much in common (surprise once again!).

As your work accumulates during your creative periods of writing poems, how do you organize the poems? Do you write by hand, or use a computer? Do your poems move through various files, for example, filed according to the subject matter, or style, or poems completed, poems to revise? How do you keep track of everything?

Truth is, words are always getting out of hand. There are so many! And they are all so gorgeous! I have voluminous files and subfiles, by subject matter, by genre, by year, by the project. I do write a lot by hand at first, then transcribe what I like on my computer. Microsoft Word is pretty sophisticated these days and I can sometimes find things I even only vaguely remember. It does get pretty unwieldy, though. I’ve “scribbled,” as one of my post-college roommates called it, regularly since the college poetry workshop I mentioned earlier, and even before then I’d often sit with my family back in Germany, writing something or other while everybody else was watching TV (which usually didn’t greatly interest me). I do my best to pick what interests me the most and work on it. I have worked on certain projects for decades before they see the light of day. Happy to say I’ve had the luxury of decades.

Is it important for you to remain persistent in your writing? Do you ever feel fluctuations in your ability to create, or do you maintain a steady output? Your Emily came fast on the heels of your delightful Dancing in Santa Fe and Other Poems. Are you a consistent writer or do you sometimes experience dry spells?

I do write every day, even if it’s only journal entries. I never had a dry spell where in order to fill a page I had to write 100 times I must fill this page. There are of course times when life and chores interfere with organized writing, but I always have projects lined up, and if they get interrupted, I have no problem getting back to them. But a lot of my work ends up getting pitched as far as offering it to the public is concerned, so my visible productivity does fluctuate. What’s visible also depends of course on finding publishers for what I have to offer, as well as the oftentimes lengthy publishing process of literary magazines and small literary presses.

Were you able to compose during the first four months of our current pandemic?

Yes. I’ve been working on my writing the same as always. Maybe a tiny bit less, as I tend to take longer walks or sometimes find myself staring off into the distance while the flavors of anxiety and unfamiliarity hang over everything.

Your collection Emily elicited from me a sense of compassion toward your persona—I felt as if I must protect Emily. She seems to me a wonderfully vulnerable soul, which is what draws me to her. Was it difficult for you to allow her to speak so openly? Have you had other reactions to this volume you’d care to share?

I like that Emily elicits compassion and protectiveness in you. Another favorite comment I had about Emily was by another woman writer who told me she loved Emily and that she sometimes was Emily. What made it less difficult for me to write about Emily so openly was that I decided to create a certain distance by observing her from a third person perspective rather than writing in first person, as many of my other poetry has been written. Third person makes confession a little less disturbing and intimate. In other words, I’m not claiming the reader’s sympathy or negative judgment for myself, but for Emily. She’s out there somewhere meandering through her everyday reality. Make of her wanderings what you will.

The poet David Chorlton calls your poetry “skillfully balanced,” as you juxtapose hard world news against the simple beauties of nature. I found that especially true in your poem “The River.”  In it you move from crevices and canyons, and “capricious waterfalls” to the “magic of indifference” and “the sultry patience.” Could you explain what the “magic of indifference” means to you in that singular poem?

I’m quite ambivalent about the “magic of indifference.” I obviously admire it greatly in nature. I have elsewhere written about the admirable indifference of the sun—here it’s the river. Sun and water: without them we, life, wouldn’t exist. They couldn’t care less if we’re righteous and noble, or bullies intent on grabbing pleasure and satisfaction to the detriment of everything and everyone else. Sun and water just shine on or flow on, making it all possible. So I admire nature’s ability, or the universe’s ability, if you will, to carry on and make it all possible without judgment and favoritism. Being human, though, I can admire and even long for that magic, but I can’t ultimately participate in it because I do have judgment and the desire for at least doing my best to preserve this world that I love and, yes, if possible to protect it from “unnecessary evil” as I mention later in that same poem.

Do you have social media, other links you’d like to share so readers can learn more about your work?

Yes, my official website is here and my Facebook is here.

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Beate Sigriddaughter’s Emily presents an intriguing persona. She appears as a possible alter-ego of the author herself. But that is presumptuous; we cannot know for sure. What we can know about her is what we learn from the beauty of the poet’s lines on the page. This persona recognizes insignificance.

Emily cares for Nature’s beauty surrounding her, as in “On Her Climb to Gratitude” (37) where we discover the lines: “She feels / the loud black wings of ravens beat / as though they were her own.”

But in most of these poems, she reveals herself to be a near-defeated figure who does not totally give in. She chooses, rather, to contemplate options. Consider the poem, “Sartre by the River,” for example. Emily goes out to church, her parents suppose. But in her purse instead of a hymnal is Being and Nothingness, “of which / she doesn’t understand a word, even / in translation. No matter. The title, / lovely, certainly intrigues. She wants / to say no to something without hurting / anyone. And so her life begins / with secrets…”

In “Emily’s Letter to Her Husband’s Lover” (21), Emily must subordinate herself to the lover. This is difficult. “I slip the curtain from each morning,” she writes, “step / into the sunlight of regret. I almost kept him / on the shelf with all the trophies.” (Here is admirable tongue-in-cheek.) To the lover, she says, “Perhaps you can keep desire alive. / I yearn for my own season of hunger.”

In “Desire” (26), Emily reaches again, but again she rejects.

Emily stands surrounded by glitter,
Typical temptations, silk fabric,
Color threads, rhinestones, beads, //

Even that leaves her cold. In the end
She doesn’t even want to dance tonight.
Is this enlightenment? She wonders.
If so, she doesn’t want it.

In a beautiful poem about insignificance, (“Emily Celebrates her Insignificance,” p. 27), the poet juxtaposes nature adjacent to self-awareness: “A garland of sleek cormorants / glides low above the water.” From the third stanza: “If she weren’t so insignificant, / she would have important duties…”

I like the imagination I see embedded in this small but mighty collection that speaks to the role of women in contemporary society. One wonders what (or who) will follow Sigriddaughter’s Emily.

– Carole Mertz