Speaker 1 00:00:03 Listening to right on radio on cafe 90.3 FM and streaming live on the web at cafe AI. I'm Liz Alz. Tonight on right on radio. I will be talking with Jacqueline Winspear about her memoir this time. Next year, we'll be laughing and eye opening at heartfelt portrayal of a post-war England. We'd rarely see this time. Next year, we'll be laughing as a story of a childhood in the English countryside, working class indomitability and family secrets of artistic inspiration and the price of memory. Jacqueline is the author of the mystery stories. Uh, Mr. <inaudible> and she has been published internationally and nationally her short stories and magazines. She has received the Agatha McCafferty and Alex awards, and has just recently been nominated for an Edgar award for the, uh, for her recent book. The next time we'll be laughing and I'm Annie Harvey in the last part of the hour, Dave talks with Kiran Cooper, the author of women in the waiting room, a poetry collection, her previous volume of poetry visiting Indira Gandhi's palmist was the winner of the arts and letters, Rumi prize, and the antivenom poetry award come forager up between Honolulu and new Delhi.
Speaker 1 00:01:26 And now lives North of Boston where she is a writer teacher and a translator, all of this and more so stay tuned to write on radio.
Speaker 0 00:01:34 <inaudible> hi, Jackie, can you hear me,
Speaker 1 00:01:47 Greg? Do you have a reading for us to start with?
Speaker 2 00:01:50 I sure do. Yeah. Okay. Um, this piece is actually about my first ever job, which I had when I was six years old. There was a reason that I wanted to earn money. Um, there was something I very much wanted and my mother who already worked on a farm figured out a way for me to do it at the start, the school long school, summer holiday. So I'll begin on Monday morning, we walked down to the farm, the sun already warm on my tanned arms and legs. The day starting out humid. As soon as we arrived, we walked over to collect a few fresh wooden trays from a pile at the bottom of the field and sheets of find waxed paper provided to line them money, demonstrated lining the tray, and then showed me how to pick the black cards, using my four thing thinker and some to pinch away each Sprig of black current from the Bush.
Speaker 2 00:02:47 Then she showed me how to do it even faster. She warned me to be careful that I'd be docked for damaged fruit, and that I'd also be pulled up short for an underweight tray. Mum started me off picking the first Bush before she said to work on the second, when I finished one Bush and she said she had checked to make sure I was a clean picker and that only green fruit was left behind. I was to move on to the next Bush beyond her and so on until we'd finished that road, I tried hard not to squash fruit and was doing my best to coordinate my thumb and forefinger and therefore execute a perfect tearing of the Sprig from the branch. I finished my first transect it beside my mother's already picked tower of trays. I wasn't intimidated by her speed, but lined a fresh tree and went straight back to work.
Speaker 2 00:03:41 My mind wandered as I increased my pace, filling the next tree faster. My thing is now weaving through the Bush until I picked it clean, then came a shout across the rows of black pants. One of the workers letting the pickers know that the tractor and trailer with the weighing machine was on its way. It stopped every few rows for the farmer to weigh the pick fruit, which would then be taken to the storage shed to be collected by Lori that night, these black counts were bound for the Ribena Cordell factory. As she made her way back down the row with her full tray, my mother stopped to check every single Bush I'd worked on. And then she pointed to my trade. You need to take cleaner hurry. You've got enough time to get those leads out of your trade. Before Mr. David comes to the wedding, David was the farmer's first name and because his brother had the neighboring farm, they were known to the workers as Mr.
Speaker 2 00:04:36 David and Mr. John, I cleaned my trays and began to worry. When the trailer reached us, mum lifted up her trays one by one to be placed on the scales. Mr. David weights weighed each tray, marked her tiny book and handed it back to her. Then she lifted my trees and handed him my tally book. He looked at mum then at me and smiled before weighing the trays and marking up my book. Children weren't officially supposed to work. There were laws against it, but I knew many who did their picking recorded on their mother's book, a boost to the family income. My mother made it easier by creating my book, using drawing paper and marking up columns on the pages. So I wasn't using an official farm document for keeping track of my earnings. And those earnings would be all mine for my Cinderella watch.
Speaker 2 00:05:31 You've worked enough this morning, love that mum. You can go and play now, but wash your hands in the stream. First, I was hot and sticky. So I ran into the woods, took off my sandals and stepped into the cool stream, bending down to reach through the water. And for like, until I could touch the stones and the sand at the bottom, and I rubbed my hands together. Then I sat down on the sun bank amid the pungent wild garlic and deep yellow Southern dimes that grew alongside the water. I greened, I just done some money. I didn't know how much, but I don't some money. Thank you.
Speaker 1 00:06:14 That's Jacqueline Winspear author of this time. Next year, we'll be laughing also author of the Maisie Dobbs mystery series. We want to bring that up, uh, in the introduction or, uh, of the book you say that memoir could be better described as re memory it. Can you share your thoughts about this?
Speaker 2 00:06:38 Yes. I think that when we're writing memoir and especially when we're looking back at, uh, you know, some distance back in time, you know, remembering the memories we had of that time. And, uh, you know, for example, I was recently speaking to one of my aunts, one of my surviving aunt, and she was talking about a conversation she had said, had with another aunt and she said, it's so funny. Her memories of that day are so different from mine. And then I think that's it, you know, she she's remembering the memory that she held up that day. And I think sometimes as I said in the book, we, we, we tend to put, it's like putting the wash through a second cycle. You know, certain things, we leave out certain things that are perhaps less comfortable for us or more comfortable things that are interesting to us. And we would just go back again to that memory. And sometimes the memories are bang on, but I think what it speaks to is that, um, different people, different characters will remember different aspects of the same event.
Speaker 1 00:07:40 That kind of brings up an idea for me of the structure of the book. It's not trying to logical and it's not big chapters. It's, it's smaller vignettes that, uh, hit sometimes your memory. Sometimes your memories of your parents sometimes memories that you must've gotten talking to someone else, perhaps your aunts about your mother and fathers growing up in a world war II and even your grandfather's growing up in the great war or serving in the great war. And, uh, I'm wondering if that structure came to you right away, or if you, um, decided on it as you were writing it, or, um, how did you come upon that structure, which is very important and reading the book? I think it makes it well, I think it's a lovely book, so,
Speaker 2 00:08:31 Well, that's lovely. Thank you so much. Um, it was three organic, actually. I didn't think about how I was going to structure it. I just sort of got on with it. But, um, one of the things that I realized is that, you know, we don't have memories in long stories that are chronological. We might go, you know, wake up one day and there's a smell in the air and it brings back a memory and or something, someone might say something and incomes the memory and then your birthdays and other celebrations bring back memories. And they don't come in. And as I say in this nice tidy order, they come in sometimes like a sneaker wave. Uh, if you know, California you'll know what sneaker wave is, it's the ways that you didn't expect to come in and it sneaks up on you. And I think grief is like that grief is definitely like that, you know?
Speaker 2 00:09:27 Um, so I didn't plan the structure, but I worked with the structure that came most naturally to me. Sometimes it felt that I, as I was telling the story, I told, look it back to something else that happened. So I'm looping, I'm actually joining memories from different periods in some, in some instances. So I wanted it to be, gosh, I suppose more in a way like a song. So th th the rhythm goes back and forth, um, and it was quite organic, but of course I was, I was working with it in, you know, sometimes, um, you know, I, I sometimes think that working with words is like working with fabric. It's like, it's, you're, you're moving fabric to create a design. And, and a lot of that you're doing to actively,
Speaker 1 00:10:19 Uh, some people as perhaps you've done this yourself actually cut out pieces of their writing and moved it around. Like you're talking about with the actual physical pieces of writing.
Speaker 2 00:10:33 Definitely done that. I've definitely done that. Um, sometimes you find that, that, that, you know, a paragraph, you know, it doesn't work there, but, Oh my goodness, me, if I can just slot it in there, it, it works a lot better. Or you, you realize that something is added, you know, and that's a bit, that's when it's more like cooking, when, you know, it's like, Hmm, what do I need, Oh, I need a little bit of that spice or that herb or that flavor. And then you go in and you add it. And sometimes what's amazed me is that it can be, and this is something I've learned. And I learned a new, every time I write something, um, that was quite different or whatever, that sometimes it's just a word. Sometimes it's two or three words, and sometimes it's a whole paragraph, but it's, it's, um, you know, you're working with words and your, your, um, move, sometimes moving things around. And sometimes, you know, a whole chapter doesn't fit in that space. But if you just move it over to that space, add a bit, take away a bit, you know, it just locks into place.
Speaker 1 00:11:36 It almost seems like a magic and hard, very hard work at the same time.
Speaker 2 00:11:44 I think it is both. I think it's, it's definitely both. Yeah. When I wrote my first novel Maisie Dobbs, um, and that, you know, moves through time, it goes back and forth between two times and I had that structure, but I had, uh, but I realized, and I was working with my first ever editor. And, uh, she, uh, she knew what I wanted to do. And she sort of directed me and helped me know how to do it. Um, but I had one chapter of one era on another, you know, I went back and forth chapter by chapter, and then I realized, you know what, this doesn't work. It's too much bouncing around. It's like a big old zigzag. And I needed to cluster them in a different way. And literally all I did was move the chapters around, didn't change a word, moved them around a bit so that it was, it had more of a flow to it, even though I was going back and forth in time. And that taught me a lot from right from the get, go about moving things around. And it's rather like rearranging the furniture in a room to suit a different season.
Speaker 1 00:12:46 I'm curious, um, your, uh, books, uh, the Karen banishment of lives is set in the great war world war one. And, um, this book has references to the gray bore and, uh, Maisie, Dobbs goes back and forth between, uh, that, and I'm wondering, uh, when did you get interested in this particular section of time and how and why and what,
Speaker 2 00:13:19 That's a very good question. I think there's a couple of different answers there, because there's the question of when did I first become curious? And then when did curiosity become a real interest? And I think right from childhood, I was interested in the eras that came before. And the reason being is that I was a child when I was a small child. Um, we, we lived in a community where there were a lot of older people, you know, um, where my parents moved to the house at the end of the terrorist, which I talk about and write about in the book, they were known as that young couple, they were still known as the young couple twins, five years later, but came in with one small baby and a little girl and a baby on the way. I spent a lot of time with the older people in the street.
Speaker 2 00:14:07 And some of those women were women who had died, had been widowed in the great war. They were leaders of a certain age, or they had never married due to losing perhaps their sweetheart in the great war. And I had a great, I loved it if someone only had to say the words, Oh, in my day. And I was all ears, I, I really loved listening to what I used to call the olden days. And of course, I think, you know, no parent loves it when their child's system, when you were young in the olden days. But, you know, that's what I used to say. I was very curious about it. And of course my mother was a great storyteller telling me about her childhood during the war, but as I grew from a child to, you know, a young adult, so that interest became a real curiosity.
Speaker 2 00:14:54 And that period from just before the start of the great war. So we're talking 1913, right up to the end of world war II rationing in Britain, which so we're talking the year I was the, I was born effectively, um, that I was very curious about it because it heralded such great changes on so many levels, particularly in society. And as I, as someone who's very, very interested in the history of women, the changes it wrought in the lives of women was quite, quite amazing. So, so it, it all goes back to them. And of course there were the family stories, the family stories of war. And so I became very curious about what war does to people and living through war,
Speaker 1 00:15:40 Talk about this, isn't a particularly important in the book, but I found it fascinating the concept of surplus women and what they did about that.
Speaker 2 00:15:50 Yes, it was well during the great war. Um, and you can just imagine it, you know, there you are, a woman is sort of 90, a young woman in 1913, and your life is expected to be very much like your mother's and her mother's before her, your, your life was as structured as the course that you wore. You wouldn't leave your father's house until, you know, you were married. And, um, you know, and certainly, you know, you were under the thumb until you were 21, but then the long time, the great war, and it wasn't long before it was realized that women were going to play a massive part in that war. And they moved into highly visible jobs as never before. Um, it's not the women didn't work for the war. There were over 3 million women in work, full-time work in Britain and they, but they were working in jobs where you didn't really see them.
Speaker 2 00:16:40 They were in factories or they took in washing, or they took in other people's children and things like that. But suddenly women were in very, very visible jobs, but at the same time, if they were winning, I think a lot of independence here, my grandmother night, 18, 19 years of age, was suddenly living away from home in a, in a dormitory window, replacing themselves and some and so on. But at the same time, they were losing so much in terms of their hearts. They, their young brothers, they, they brothers, their cousins, the boys, they grew up with their young husbands, their sweethearts were being killed at the front. And so after the war, at the end of the war, there were these what they referred to as surplus women. And they were women for whom there would never be a husband and children. And in fact, in the 1921 census revealed that there were 2 million surplus women in Britain.
Speaker 2 00:17:35 And suddenly, instead of being the darlings of the great war who helped get Britain through that time, but it was, they were, they didn't quite know what to do with them, or how to, how to present them in society, how to, to write about them or what to do about it, because it was fear that they would just be far too strong. Um, by the way, you can easily do the math. There were about 750,000 young men of marriage for age who were killed in that war. And probably 1.2, 5 million give or take who were very, very, very, very badly wounded. Um, and, uh, and the interesting thing is that while they were obviously young women who floundered women who looked after their elderly parents, as the days, went on, women moved into public life as never before. And they moved into a, you know, the women who were justices of the peace, there were women who became teachers.
Speaker 2 00:18:32 There was a way to have children around you. Women moved into government, um, did all sorts of jobs, many kept their jobs from the war though. There were others who had to give them up because when the men came home, but another twist to that is that many employers realize they didn't have to pay a woman as much as a man. So they became a very strong generation of women and, um, a very forthright generation of women. And of course I remember them because they were in our community. I w I I'm very, it was sort of the doubty English woman. Oh, here's another job that became very popular in between the Wars and that it was, uh, it was the time of the, uh, the great women, women mystery novelist. I mean, there was a job you could do at home without training. And it was a golden age.
Speaker 2 00:19:23 It's a mystery and written by women, many of them. So it was, it was really an interesting generation. And that let's say that power for want of a better word, that influence really lost it as well, because it's probably due to those women as they became a certain age with the vote that gave Britain things like the welfare state and the national health service, because they knew what it was like to want a land fits the heroes, because many of those women ended up looking after their wounded brothers for the rest of their lives. And certainly I, I saw that in my community. So, um, I think they're an amazing generation of women or a tragic yes, amazing generation of women in Britain.
Speaker 1 00:20:12 Talk about your mother and your father is a work and life and world war II.
Speaker 2 00:20:20 Uh, well, um, in, in world war two at the outset, you know, my mother was, um, was 12 years old. And, um, she was evacuated for a couple of years until she was 14. And then she was brought back to London by her mother to work in the laundry. That was the age at which you could go out to work. It was actually devastating for my mother because she had won a scholarship to a very prestigious girl's school. And, um, she wasn't allowed to take it up. She was a highly intelligent woman. And, uh, but what she did was what a lot of people did. She went to night school and justice over here in the States. Um, nights, nights school became a very big thing know during the late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds. And there are lots of purpose-built places, you know, um, as cities grew, um, and that's certainly true of London.
Speaker 2 00:21:14 Um, so that's how, I mean, she eventually worked for the government and so on, but she did all sorts of jobs. I've got to tell you, she, she was very restless in her work after the war and being evacuated at the outset of war was devastating for her. It was a horrible experience. My dad, um, at the outset for he was, um, he'd been tapped at school to be a runner because he was very, very fast runner. So he was running messages for the ALP era precautions people. And in fact, my next novel, which is coming out at the end of March, um, it's about a boy runner and it's one of the main characters. And it was inspired by his stories, although he never sought anyone murdered, but, um, but then when he was 14, of course it was time for him to go out to work.
Speaker 2 00:22:04 And his father got him an apprenticeship with, uh, a painting firm and he ended up, um, they got a special contract for painting, um, all airfield buildings throughout the country. And they were building new airfield. Like there was, you know, nobody's business and he was working with very highly toxic materials at that point. And, um, it demanded a lot of travel going from one place to another. And at the time he was 17, he missed being at home. So he, he gave up what was actually what's called reserves profession, which meant it was basically government work. And the next thing, you know, he was straight in the army and they tagged him for being, because he's very calm. He was very calm man, under pressure, even 18. And he became an explosives expert. And so towards the end of the war, especially he was in Germany, blowing up communications lines and things like that as the enemy retreated. So they both had a very interesting, more, I would say, you know, very interesting
Speaker 1 00:23:08 Your, uh, your father wanted things to be very quiet.
Speaker 2 00:23:14 He did. Um, and, and it's hardly surprising because his, his own father had been severely wounded at the battle of the Somme in the first world war. And so my grandfather was, um, he had been gassed, you know, you could always hear him wheezing. He, uh, had a profound limp because he had severe shrapnel wounds in his legs. He was still removing shrapnel from his legs when he was died at the age of 77 when I was 11 years old. And, um, and he was also shell. And one of the, it depends, but one of the manifestations of shell shock, particularly in the first world war was actually a real sensitivity to sound. And so my dad was raised in a quiet house and therefore he, he liked, he liked things quite. I mean, as I say, the book is exception was a good swing band cause he and my mum liked, you know, they took up dancing when they were in their forties and they became very, very good at it, actually ballroom and Latin American.
Speaker 2 00:24:12 So he, he liked that. But, um, and the funny thing is, um, you know, one of the books I quote in my memoir is, um, uh, a book about, uh, the way that an experience of war, particularly when young can take three generations to get through the family system. And it's funny because I actually quite liked things quiet. I never, occasionally I have, you know, the radio on, in my car playing some thing a bit louder than usual, but, um, I don't like a lot of unexpected loud noises and it's because that's how it was when I was a kid, you know, um, my dad liked to have the house somewhat quiet. I mean, we made, uh, my brother-in-law made a lot of noise, but we generally made out in the garden.
Speaker 1 00:24:57 Wow. You know what? We're already out of time. I cannot believe it. I have something more questions to ask you.
Speaker 2 00:25:05 I know, I know, you know, we just touched the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 1 00:25:09 So this book is, uh, being released today.
Speaker 2 00:25:16 Oh, this time, next year, we'll be laughing. It's been out for a few weeks now. Um, but, but my next novel, which is called the consequences of fear is coming out at the end of March. Okay, great. So, um, we were, we were supposed to have, I think originally scheduled for this interview a little while ago, but it got rescheduled or something like that. So, but yes, this time, next year we'll be laughing. And of course, as you've very kindly pointed out, it's just been nominated for an Edgar award in the biography category, which was a lovely surprise.
Speaker 1 00:25:48 So very exciting. I hope you win. Well, I'm going to have to let it go now. What's that?
Speaker 2 00:25:55 Okay. Your time.
Speaker 1 00:25:57 Well, thank you for your time. And, uh, we've been speaking with Jacqueline Winspear author of this time. Next year, we'll be laughing, a memoir, uh, that, uh, takes place all over the place in the, uh, in the, uh, mid and early part of this century. And, uh, thank you very much for joining us.
Speaker 2 00:26:19 I am. Thank you for your interest. Take care. You too. Bye-bye
Speaker 0 00:26:23 <inaudible>.
Speaker 3 00:26:53 Thank you, Liz. And thank you, Annie. And welcome, Kiran, am I pronouncing that correctly? You are. Thank you. Wonderful. Karen Kapoor. I'm going to go with Capoeira unless you tell me copper well comport. Ah, whereas right. You're being lovely tonight. Well, thank you. Uh, welcome to right on radio. It's a pleasure to have you here, uh, take care. And before we get started with your poetry, uh, let's introduce you to our wonderful listeners. So tell us a little bit about yourself, if you would. Um, you're well-traveled and, um, uh, tell us a little about, a little bit about that, and then, uh, your relationship with writing and poetry in particular, how did you become a poet? Let's hear about that?
Speaker 4 00:27:33 Sure. Um, well, I grew up mostly in Hawaii. Um, my mom is American, but my dad immigrated to this country from India. So I spent most of my childhood sort of going back and forth between Honolulu and new Delhi. Um, and you know, Hawaii is an incredibly diverse place. So we had a profoundly rich plural households, um, biracial multi-lingual food and stories and people from everywhere. Um, it was a joyfully mixed, uh, sort of place. Um, and then in terms of how I came to poetry, um, I don't know, uh, I always loved poems from the time I was little. Um, my dad was a wonderful storyteller. Um, and as children, we would all get embedded with my parents at night and he would tell stories, uh, and that sensation of a loved voice in the dark, uh, is pretty close to my idea of what a poem can do and what a poem can be. So maybe it started there.
Speaker 3 00:28:35 Fantastic. And I'm as poetry being your, um, your creative outlet, have you tried fiction or other forms of writing or other
Speaker 4 00:28:44 Written fiction in years? Not, not since I was young, um, poetry really has always been, um, key for me. I think it's because sound is so important. Uh, there's something about, about the music of poetry that, you know, nothing else can replace,
Speaker 3 00:29:00 You know, what, that's a great introduction into your poetry because it is musical. That was one of the things I was going to talk to you about. Um, and, uh, poetry is meant to be heard, right? It's meant to be heard a loud, so let's start with a reading if we could cure and give people a sense of what, um, what's your poetry is like, what do you have in mind for us, for their first reading?
Speaker 4 00:29:20 I thought I'd start at the beginning. Um, both in the sense that this is the first poem in the book, uh, but also that it's an origin story, a foundational story. This poem, uh, thinks a little bit about the great ancient, Epic, uh, Hindu poem, the reminder, uh, which is about, um, not just its Lord rom, but also SITA his wife in the course of the story. Um, SITA is carried away by a demon. Um, and I think that's all you need to know. Great. Thank you. I'm looking at myself in the mirror or rereading <inaudible> reminder. Anyone can disappear across the black water. Every girl can be taught. Her middle name is shame. When will I burn the urge for purity? My bones are a furnace. My face is a game. Every girl steals away with a demon. At some point, all her alphabets, ankle bells, all her braids. She will meet herself in the third person. She will lie with her fear. She will dress in her rage. The world is curdled with husbands blue as the gods and gentle as flame.
Speaker 3 00:30:48 That's curing Capoeira reading from her collection women in the waiting room. Thank you for that. I'm so glad you started with that. Uh, because I was going to mention that in my first question and, uh, begin with a little story if I may, not much of a story, but, uh, I I'm an opera fan and years ago, Denise Graves, the Metso soprano was, um, performing in Samson and Delilah at the mat. And she was interviewed in the New York times and the interview was conducted. They were sitting in the seats while the dress rehearsal was going on. And, uh, she said to the reporter there's blood on the stage. Uh, and she didn't mean blood. Literally it's, it's something that one of her instructors had told her about performing opera. You have to leave her everything on the stage. It has to be raw, uh, and that sort of thing. And I kept thinking about that image of blood on the stage. Of course, for me, it was blood on the page and I'm reading your poems. Um, and, and this is a great example, and there's just so many raw emotions throughout this entire book. Um, in the first poem that you just read, um, we are shame and burning and furnaces and demons and all sorts of things, and it doesn't let up Kiran, these poems are.
Speaker 3 00:32:01 Uh, so, uh, there's not much of a question there, except I would ask you to respond to that in terms of like a sematic, uh, a theme for this collection of poems, uh, w w what you were getting at there was very powerful.
Speaker 4 00:32:18 Um, well, I I'd say women in the waiting room is a collection of poems that bears witness to women's stories, and women's voices. There are great many voices in this book, different voices, friends, and strangers, humans, and goddesses like SITA, we just met. Um, but they're all returning, um, from the edge of some, some profoundly different experience, um, difficult experience, illness, violence, grief, fear, uh, and they're struggling in the face of that experience to find their voice. So I'd say this book is about silence and speech and how we find our way back to our own voice. Uh, and sometimes that's through, um, difficult material, some blood on the stage, page,
Speaker 3 00:33:06 Blood on the stage and blood on the page. Yes. Uh, a lot in there that you just discussed or that you just mentioned, that, that I want to bring up, uh, the repetition of God's, um, themes and ideas, words appear again and again, even in titles. And so let's talk about the hotline poems, poems with the word hotline in the title appears throughout the book. Um, maybe I'll ask you to read one of them, if you would, and then tell us about, uh, what's happening there. And I'm going to circle back to the comment you made at the beginning that you don't write fiction anymore, but there are stories in these poems and they're powerful, little, little stories, short stories, but, uh, there are stories here. So tell us about the hotline poem.
Speaker 4 00:33:48 Sure. Uh, the Holland homes are a series of imagined fragmentary conversations between a caller and a counselor. Um, so these were poems where I try to find a shape on the page to embody that tension between silence and speech, right on the one hand silence can feel, um, like an oppressive force, something we have to overcome, or you can break in order to be ourselves or express what's happened to us or just to survive. Uh, but on the other hand, um, silence is a space out of which creativity can come. Um, listening becomes possible in silence. Healing can take place there. Um, so these poems were really wrestling with that tension and that produced a sort of unusual shape on the page. Um, on the page there, the lines are broken and fragmentary. There's a lot of white space, um, on the page. And I was hoping, I think to embody that struggle to, uh, find speech, uh, in the face of something that feels unspeakable to you,
Speaker 3 00:34:54 That is very effective by the way, your use of white space and the disjointed sort of form, uh, it causes the reader to pause almost to have to look for what, what the next word might be or where should I go next? Uh, that's very cleverly done in terms of a, uh, uh, probably a difficult, uh, uh, relationship on a hotline. And I found that, um, Karen poets don't mind any question at all. They're very open. So I'm going to ask you, does this come from any personal experience in any way?
Speaker 4 00:35:26 Well, um, uh, you know, autobiography is a, is a tricky question in poetry, um, and I'll, I'll answer it in a slightly Securitas way, um, which is to say that, um, you know, I, I think that that writing is a transformational process. So even if you start with an autobiographical event, um, or a mythological story or something you read about something you dreamed or made up completely out of nowhere, no matter what material you start with, the process of making it a poem means that it has to pass into language and it's transformed. It becomes an event in language, right? So an experience itself, not the report of, of an experience and that alters its relationship to the factual truth. Um, no matter what you do. Uh, sometimes I, I say that it's like, um, the relationship between tomatoes and tomato sauce. Um, so you know, the NATO in the tomato sauce they're connected, um, one is in the other and, um, you can't have one without the other, but, uh, the process of making the sauce right. Utterly transforms and changes, um, the, the tomato itself, right? Not even its structure remains. So I guess I'd say that, um, you know, I'm certainly in these poems, but I am, I am not these poems.
Speaker 3 00:36:45 Okay. The character in these films. Great answer. I'll let you off the hook at that, with that one, that's beautifully said, I love the tomato metaphor by the way. That's very nice. Um, I expressly asked you about where you've lived, because I want to talk about geography, if you will, in terms of your poems, um, the place, uh, the primacy of place in these poems. So some of these poems really they're set at a particular place. You tell us where we are. Other places, it feels really exotic at least to, you know, some guy sitting in a Minnesota, but we don't know where we are. Um, so how does place shape these poems or informed these poems and maybe inspire them?
Speaker 4 00:37:27 Oh, that's a good question. Um, well, I suppose, um, mostly for me poems, uh, come down to the details, uh, and the details of any poem are nailed to what you see and what you feel and where your body is and what it's doing at any particular moment. Um, so I think poems are very often tied to place, uh, in this, in this particular, uh, collection. I think I was also interested in, in different kinds of places and spaces. So some are, as you say, quite specific, like, uh, there's a poem set in Waikiki, um, you know, in Hawaii, uh, and then like the hotline poems, which are this sort of liminal space, um, that's really just the space of a conversation, the space of, of intimacy between two people who are trying to, to connect in a, in an empty place. Um, so I think both kinds of, of details in place are here.
Speaker 3 00:38:27 Should we hear a hotline poem? We've talked about that, but let's hear what all right there must be at least a half a dozen or so there are, um,
Speaker 4 00:38:36 Let me read this one. This is the last, uh, hotline poem. Okay. Hotline. When she asks, are you a survivor too? I do not say I have been trained not to answer that on the page. I've learned confession is another mask. When she asks, what do you do when you can't sleep? I don't explain how I walk around my small town in the middle of the night to remind myself, I say, we're safe. We count our breaths together. I hold on while she goes to get an ice cube goes to the bathroom, cries, murmurs, maybe even sleeps. Are you still there? She asks, are you there? The self calling the self back, the poem I was trying to make I'm here. I'm here we take turns saying
Speaker 3 00:39:52 Thank you, Karen Capote, reading from women in the waiting room, uh, and listeners, you could hear the way she was reading that you could S you could almost see the spaces in the poem. I'm sure that was beautifully read by the way. Thank you. I'm going to make a little confession here since we're all opening up. I want to serve on a hotline. I, as on hotline, as a caller, a receiver of calls, uh, years ago, and these were powerful poems, they really took me back. I'm going to S I have to tell you that, um, speaking of geography, again, back to places where you've lived, is there a nostalgia from, you know, some of these places that you're recalling from memory, even though there's a lot of hard things happening in these places?
Speaker 4 00:40:32 Yeah, I think so. Um, you know, certainly, uh, you know, I have a deep love for, um, for both India and Hawaii, um, both places that appear in the book, uh, and you know, and the truth about all those places about every place is that, you know, beauty and hard things are, are chicken jowl everywhere always. And so, um, I think I hope these poems try to honor both those.
Speaker 3 00:40:59 Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you've mentioned form. I want to talk a little bit more about form and craft, um, writers and writers who are listening love to talk about craft, but, uh, uh, there's one thing which many things pleases me about having read this book and I will keep with me and what is a Ghazal? Am I pronouncing that correctly As well? Um, T tell the listeners, please, if you would, what a guzzle is. Uh, and, uh, and I, I'm going to tell you that I was really enchanted by the form, and that felt song like to me in many cases, um, we almost trance-like. Um, so go ahead, please, if you would
Speaker 4 00:41:36 Sure. The guzzle is a form that probably started, um, or grew out of, um, Arabic poetry, but really is celebrated and, um, beloved in Persian and Ooredoo poetry. Um, there are many, um, beloved, uh, or do guzzles, um, that people, people in India even today will know by heart or know lines of them by heart they're often sung. So, um, you have the right perception, their, um, their sets of music and their sung. Um, and they do have a very particular, uh, form, and they have both, um, repeating, uh, element and, um, a rhyming element, so Kafka and redeem their calls. Um, so at the end of each the line they're setting couplets there at least five couplets. Um, and at the end of each line, you have an element that rhymes across the couplets and a little phrase that repeats. Um, and, but on the other hand, so that ties the poem together very tightly and very musically.
Speaker 4 00:42:41 On the other hand, um, the guzzle is, uh, not thematically linked, um, the Kashmiri American poet, uh, Grisha had Ellie used to say that a guzzle should be, uh, the couplets of a guzzle should be like the Juul is on a necklace each home separately, um, and able to shine independently and connected only by the chain of the form. Um, so dramatically, um, the goals of the couplets are not related. It's, it's the form that ties it all together. Um, so it, it has the strange quality of having a lot of space and being able to go and sorts of all kinds of directions in the subject matter, but then coming back very tightly to this rhyme and repetition that is song like, and that builds sort of expectation and satisfies.
Speaker 3 00:43:27 I just loved them. I just really loved them. It, I might ask you on the side when we're done, or you can let everyone know where we should go if you want to, you know, find some other guzzles and read some more. Um, but I just thought they're marvelous.
Speaker 4 00:43:40 Wonderful. Yes. Um, they're there, it's an amazing forum with such a long history. Um, so many, uh, great Persian poets have have written in this forum or do poets, uh, and I think increasingly American poets as well.
Speaker 3 00:43:54 Yeah. One imagines a lot of these poems being passed down orally because as you suggested, you could just fall into a rhythm and, uh, um, memorize great many lines, I imagine. Um, so, uh, in terms of craft, how do you work Kiran, um, in terms of poetry, uh, people who don't write poetry, or maybe even don't, don't read it very often. Um, must wonder how in the world people come up with these ideas and if something hits them or if they work hard at it, or if they're trying to investigate something about themselves, where do you find your poetry?
Speaker 4 00:44:26 Ooh, that's a tough question. Um, you know, everywhere really, um, and it's different with every poem, uh, some start with an image or a sound, a phrase, um, sound is particularly important to me. So no matter where a poem begins, um, I don't really feel like the poem is underway and likely to come to life until I really hear the music of it. Um, but really, I think it's a matter of paying close attention. Um, you know, inspiration, I think is, is, might just be sort of open, loving, intense attention given to the world. And, you know, I wait for my mind to snag on something. Um, and then I'm, I'm not one of those poets who sets out with a map, um, and knows where they're going. I'm a sort of follow the bread crumbs kind of poet. Uh, so I just, you know, go word to word and line to line, um, following the sound and, um, you know, hopefully you discover something, um, in the process of making a poem, uh, but what you'll discover, um, you can't know, I think until you're in it,
Speaker 3 00:45:31 Yeah. I hear a fiction writer is describing it as a similar phenomenon, starting a story, and then suddenly the characters take over or whatever else happens. And suddenly something turns into something they had no idea they had when they were not planning. Now, following that though, women in the waiting room, which is not only the title of the book, but it's a long poem in the book, um, that looks like a different sort of a horse of a different color as they sit in the wizard of Oz. Uh, that's a long poem. You have to have some forethought into what that's gonna look like going in, or no,
Speaker 4 00:46:05 No, I don't think I knew. I, you know, again, it started with one small poem and then grew, um, and you know, all along the way I thought, well, maybe it'll be a poem with two sections. Maybe it'll be put with three sections, you know, lo and behold, it became, uh, a poem with, I think, close to 15 sections. Um, but I, um, I really try also to resist knowing too much about a poem I'm working on. Um, the minute I have an idea about it, some kind of clear idea, all the possibilities collapse, um, and it becomes, it's sort of smallest version of itself. So as long as I can hold the door open and, and be content with not knowing what's going to happen, um, that's what I try to do. Um, and that's certainly how this poem came about.
Speaker 3 00:46:50 Fantastic. It is the titular poem women in the waiting room. So, uh, why don't you, if you want to read us a snippet of that, that would be lovely. And then you can tell us a little bit more about what what's going on there, if you like.
Speaker 4 00:47:03 Sure. Um, I'll start with the first section, maybe, um, women in the waiting room, women in the waiting room were turquoise, headscarves, Jade, shawls, lemon, yellow teas, ongoing their commitment to the flourishing world. The hair goes, the breasts go, the ovaries gone, the uterus and fallopian tubes. This is the waiting room of philosophers, straightening, lilac raps, discerning where the self resides without nipples or brows or two arms likely to be the same width. Once I was caught shoplifting, teal eyeshadow waiting at the station for my father. I was told that in some countries, my hand would be cut off for what I'd done. There was no imagining blind shock, blind ache, but I understood the shame of being punished that way. As if my pride depended on remaining whole, my father was so angry. He didn't speak for weeks. And so I learned the part of me that can't survive without his voice. You, my friend who have loved me when I couldn't do that, work myself or being wheeled away, I cling to your hand, then the bedrail then stand in the fluorescent hole while in your light blue gown, you go,
Speaker 3 00:48:48 Thank you. I love hearing poetry read. And even that was beautifully read. Uh, that's Kirin Capoeira, K a P U R and her first name. K I K I R U N. I'm spelling that people. So you go out and Google her. She has a ma marvelous website, it's women in the waiting room. Um, do you want to tell us a little bit about women in the waiting room that particular poem? Sure. Have a couple minutes left only.
Speaker 4 00:49:14 Yes, it's. Uh, um, as I said, it's a, a long poem in many sections, uh, and it tells the story of two friends. One of whom is facing treatment for breast cancer. Um, but really it's a long love letter to long friendships, um, conversation, uh, to the way that we can care for each other and help each other survive by listening and speaking.
Speaker 3 00:49:39 Yeah. If you loved this particular show, and I know you did gentle listeners, we have a podcast go and find us on Apple or wherever you get podcasts. I have no idea where these things live, uh, but it's a cool podcast to show. We'll be there. I'm Karen. Um, this is not your first book of poetry. Congratulations on your career, by the way. Uh, what do you have in mind? What's coming up next? What are you thinking about?
Speaker 4 00:50:02 Um, well, I'm always, you know, thinking about more poems, hoping for more poems, uh, and, uh, I'm sort of in the middle of, of a next book, uh, but I'm still in the stage where I don't know what I'm doing yet. Uh, so, um, it's all, it's all the exciting possibility and the wool during a sense that it might not ever come together. Um, but, uh, it's, uh, several of the poems, concern, paintings, um, and other forms of art. Um, so I'm working on that and on some translations as well.
Speaker 3 00:50:33 Oh, that's right. I read about that. You do translations good for you. Um, so when, when you, when you write poems, what do you do with them? Do you try to get every one of them published? Uh, do you keep them, do you show them around? How do you, what kind of life do your poems lead before they end up in a book?
Speaker 4 00:50:50 Oh, that's a good question. Um, well it varies, not all of them. Um, I, I try to publish, um, only the ones that seem best to me. Um, you know, I do show them to friends, trusted friends. Um, I think poach poetry does best in community. And, um, you know, having a group of writers that are, that you trust, um, really helps you see what you're doing. Um, I think a, a good, good group of friends or a workshop is like a mirror. You know, you can look down at yourself and see what you have on, but until you look in the mirror, you don't really know. Um, and so, uh, a good friend with a good, I can be that sort of mirror and help, you know, what's working or not working at home. So I do show them two dear friends. Um, and then the ones that seem best, I, I send some of them out. Um, so the majority of the poems that end up in the book have had a life in a journal somewhere usually.
Speaker 3 00:51:43 Great. Um, one more question. We're nearing the end. Unfortunately, we gotta do our outro, you know, we gotta get this show going. Um, so what parts do you love? What, which parts do you read? Okay.
Speaker 4 00:51:56 Ooh. Um, well, I, it depends what I'm working on often. Um, but the poets I go back to over and over, I would say our Hopkins, um, a number of, or do poets, uh, solid and near in particular. Um, I love, uh, Anne Carson, anything she writes, I find fascinating and interesting. Um, Elizabeth Bishop has been an important point for me, um, depending on what I'm working on, uh, you know, I'll go back to a Froster Gates. Um, it's really, it really depends. Um, and there's so many great contemporary poets. I'm working now that, uh, you know, it's an exciting time to be a poet,
Speaker 3 00:52:43 Including you, and they inspire you, your book, these boats inspire you. They don't scare you off. Right. They don't paralyze you.
Speaker 4 00:52:50 Uh, well it sometimes, yeah, sometimes you read them and you, you put them down and think there's no point in trying. Um, but no, mainly, um, I go back to thinking, how did they do that? Um, what if I try this, could I do something like that? Or just the, for the pleasure of trying it? Um, I really, um, you know, hope most people will, will read poetry for just the pleasure of it without trying to solve it as a riddle or, um, you know, master it in some way. Um, it's just, you know, give you great pleasure. Do you teach also Karen? I do. Yeah,
Speaker 3 00:53:26 I can tell that's great. You're I'm sure you're a great teacher. So I'm going to tell people who you are. One more time. It's <inaudible> it's women in the waiting room is your collection of poetry. Uh, it's been a treat and a pleasure to have you on our show. Thanks so much. I enjoyed it. Yeah. Bye-bye now <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:53:59 You are listening to right on radio on cafe 90.3 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Annie. I'd like to thank our guests tonight, Jacqueline Winspear and Kieran Kapore plus our listeners who make this show possible with your support and donations, you can find more news and info about right on radio plus listened to recent episodes on our newly launched podcast on Spotify, iTunes, or anywhere podcasts can be found.
