Derick Burleson
teaches English at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and creative
writing in the low-residency MFA program at the University of
Alaska-Anchorage. He completed his PhD at the University of Houston and
holds an MFA from the University of Montana-Missoula as well as an MA from Kansas State University. His second book Never Night is available from Marick Press (2008).
Derick, can you tell us a little bit about Never Night.
I think of Never Night as
a voyage from childhood back to childhood, from a home in the South to
one in the North. The book begins with poems out of first memories and
ends in a child's first attempts at language. Elizabeth Bishop is one of
the books tutelary spirits. Should we have stayed at home, wherever
that may be?" a traveler writes in a notebook at the end of Elizabeth
Bishop's "Questions of Travel." The poems in Never Night ask
the same question as they travel textual geographies from wheat farm to
boreal forest, from a cave become fallout shelter to a spy satellite's
view of a wrecked oil tanker, from a gold mine's tailings to a child
burying a dead guinea pig. Whether investigating a derailed train, a
two-headed moose fetus or a melting glacier, these poems reveal wounded
earth giving birth to shimmering form, death held at bay without
artifice in the meditations of a child's new words.
from title poem Never NightYou’d like it here where
it’s never night, where the sun
circles, rather, until it ends
up where it started from,
east or west, rises, sinks
but doesn’t ever set […]
Never Night explores language and the development of language. What do you remember of your own development as a reader?
I remember learning to read in first grade very clearly. The book was Fun with Dick and Jane.
That wasn't the astounding part. What amazed me was that suddenly those
symbols everybody had been talking about all this time went together
and made sense. Told a story! I was immediately hooked on reading, and
haven't stopped since. My daughter's first word was "book." She's grown
up surrounded by them. And seeing her make the connection between the
thing and the sound, and take tremendous joy in this discovery, was just
as powerful. Learning to speak and read are two of the most powerful
things we can do as humans, and I wanted to play with that in poetry.
Do you recall when you first started writing poetry?
I remember when I
first started reading poetry. I was a sophomore in High School and the
homework assignment was to read John Keats "Ode on a Grecian Urn." I
didn't realize anything had happened until the teacher asked the next
day what did we think of Keats' poem. Then I had an out-of-body
experience during which I babbled about the power and beauty of the ode.
When I came back to myself the teacher and all the kids I'd gone to
kindergarten with and would graduate with in our small Oklahoma town
were staring at me open-mouthed. Some power had touched me, and me
alone, in a room full of people. I didn’t know how or why, but I knew
then that someday I wanted to try to make something as powerful as
Keats’ poem. I had discovered how poetry changes lives. And it was a
secret only I understood. I began trying to write poetry after that, and
haven't stopped since.
Glad you
survived that episode! As you began to write more poetry, what poets
and/or writers inspired you to work on your craft?
In Never Night,
I especially had Elizabeth Bishop in mind. She's an important poet for
me: her unique way of seeing the world, the care she took over many
drafts to sound perfectly off-handed. There are too many important poets
for me to mention here including, for example, Shakespeare, but I
definitely try to be in conversation with dead poets and the tradition
of poetry in my own poems.
I notice
you don’t just speak to the tradition of poetry but you also look to pop
culture and other modern references in your work. Do you think that
helps you relate to a wider audience?
I think one of the
things poetry does is to provide a time capsule of the moment the poet
was alive. We can learn a lot about Milton's world and time as he
experienced it by reading Milton. Since Star Trek and other cultural
phenomenon are part of my world, I think they should find their ways
into my poems. People are surprised when they encounter "Enterprise" in Never Night,
a sonnet about Star Trek. But they're even more surprised when they
learn I've stolen the first line of that sonnet from Shakespeare, and
the last from Milton.
Did you always think you would work in academics?
No. I had no idea,
at least not in the beginning. I grew up in a farming family in a small
town, and while I knew that I liked writing, I wasn't at all sure what
to do about that. My first degree was in journalism, and while I'd
always written poetry, I was planning a career in newspaper reporting.
The opportunity came up to go for graduate work in creative writing and
literature came as a surprise, but once I had a taste of being in
academics, I quickly discovered I loved it, and was lucky enough to be
able to continue.
Outside of teaching and your own writing (as if that isn’t enough!), how else are you involved in the larger poetry community?
I've worked as a
preliminary judge for the Tufts Prizes in Poetry for the last six years
and have had the chance to read many of the poetry collections published
during that time, and that's been an amazing opportunity for me to keep
up with what's been happening in American poetry. Closer to home, our
writing community in Alaska in both close-knit and far flung. Alaska is a
big state. The universities and conferences bring wonderful visiting
writers to the state, and we delight in talking about writing while
sharing the place we live and write with others.
What advice would you give to other poets?
Read as much
poetry as you can, old and new, from all over the world. Then reflect on
your world and time and life and write. Repeat until dead.
That is
great advice and phrased very well. I might just have to borrow it! Is
there anything else you would like to add? Perhaps a favorite quote?
***A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching will be naught.
- WB Yeats
Jessie Carty's writing has appeared in journals such as The Main Street Rag, Iodine Poetry Journal and The Houston Literary Review. The author of two chapbooks, her first full length collection, Paper House, is now available from Folded Word Press. Jessie is also a photographer for and editor of Referential Magazine. You can find her around the web but most often blogging about anything from housework to the act of blogging itself at http://jessiecarty.com.
