Words that matter: Coffee with Holly Wren Spaulding

Photo of Holly Wren Spaulding by Jo Chattman

From staff reports

The Glen Arbor Arts Center’s Coffee With the Authors is a live, conversational interview with local and regional authors about the writing craft and process. This series continues Sunday, July 30, at 1 p.m. with poet Holly Wren Spaulding in a conversation about keeping and banning words. GAAC gallery manager Sarah Bearup-Neal will lead the discussion.

Spaulding, a northern Michigan native now living in southern Maine, published her third book of poems, Familiars, in 2020. It was a response to the 2015 deletion of words by the Oxford Junior Dictionary (OJD). The OJD‘s deleted words list includes names of flora and fauna, in order to make room for newer words from the world of technology, such as “chatroom” and “bullet point.” Familiars is full of poems about “trees, flowers, magic, touch, memory, erasure, power, and [Spaulding’s] grief over the changing climate.” Spaulding’s work reflects her long, close association with the natural world. In her July 30 conversation, Spaulding will talk about the power of words, choosing them with care, and the ways in which she works to keep language vital through her writing.

Coffee With the Authors is offered without charge. The GAAC is located at 6031 S. Lake St. in Glen Arbor.

The Glen Arbor Sun interviewed Spaulding prior to her upcoming coffee date at the Arts Center.

Glen Arbor Sun: What are you hoping arises during your Coffee with the Authors conversation with Sarah Bearup-Neal at the Glen Arbor Arts Center?

Holly Wren Spaulding: The form of the conversation is such an enjoyable way to be together, and to think out loud in public. Especially as I’ve had fewer opportunities to gather in person these past few years, I’m looking forward to whatever happens when we are all in one place in real time. Co-creating a space in time where inquiry and reflection happens feels fizzy and fun and interesting to me. To answer your question, I hope to be surprised by whatever unfolds, and to see some old friends.

Sun: What inspired you to focus on deleted words in your book of poems, Familiars?

Spaulding: The project that preceded my book called Familiars, was called Lost Lexicon, and it involved a collection of letterpress prints with very short poems—little essences—inspired by a list of “nature” words that had been removed from a popular children’s dictionary. The Old Art Building in Leland had invited me to be their 2017 Ann Hall Artist in Residence, a position which up to that point had always been awarded to visual artists, so I let the invitation guide me toward a project that I would not have been able to do without their offer of a space to work, invitation to teach and present an artist talk, and most significantly, the opportunity to exhibit work in their gallery.

Around that time, I remembered an article I’d read a couple of years prior, having to do with a controversy surrounding the latest edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary. In order to make space for the words we use nowadays (e.g., broadband, chatroom) the editors had removed those that are falling out of use (e.g., chestnut, clover, heron). In a sense, I wanted to recover those words by writing poems that used each one of the words that had been deleted. At first it was a puzzle for me to solve; a creative constraint that provided a way to focus my attention. Over time, it became an occasion for inquiry into my relationship with the natural world, and a way to wonder about what these beings might say if they could speak. How would Brook or Heron or Sycamore advise or admonish me, in this time of species extinction and so forth?

After the exhibit in Leland, I kept writing and a book emerged. Its roots lie in my concern about what happens when we displace elements of our culture and landscape that belong to all of us, not as resources to be exploited, but as shared commons. Other roots include my childhood in northern Michigan, plant magic, climate anxiety, and Buddhist ethics. More and more I am transmuting my love and concern into art as an act of personal, spiritual restoration.

Sun: Why are words about natural places so important?

Spaulding: I might rephrase this and think in terms of why natural places are so important. What kind of natural or wild places will we have if we do not speak of them, or advocate for them in the face of disregard and outright exploitation? As a writer, words are essential to my artistic response to whatever I’m paying attention to, and in this particular case, they allowed me to express some of the tenderness I feel for the places and flora and fauna that give my home—our shared home— much of its character and meaning. The sycamore’s summer shade and wild brook where the water is still clean enough to drink from your hands. The scent of clover. The appearance of poppies in June. Words are a bridge, a way to get closer, and become more familiar with our actual surroundings. To testify, to advocate, to wonder. I’m most pleased when I hear from a reader about how one of my poems has inspired something along these lines.

Sun: And as we use more words about technology, how does it change our language and the way we speak?

Spaulding: That’s an interesting question to ponder. For one thing, we sound less like people of a specific place and more like people of the internet, which has a homogenizing effect on our speech patterns and our imaginations. Increasingly, our diction reflects the “virtually real,” and the realms of media and spectacle, but says less overall about our natural surroundings and habitats.

Sun: You grew up in northern Michigan. What does this place mean to you now? How often do you visit, and how do you spend your time during visits?

Spaulding: I’ve lived in many other places, including in Europe, and more recently I’m living in Maine, but the Leelanau Peninsula remains my spiritual home. My family lives here, and I come back at least once a year to see them, and occasionally to teach at Interlochen or in other artist-run spaces. Some of my favorite ways of spending time here include hanging out in my parent’s garden, walking and swimming in the park, picnicking, canoeing on Lake Michigan, cycling the Heritage Trail, and visiting galleries to see what local artists–some of whom are my friends and family–are doing these days.

Sun: Where do you go for muse—both thinking and writing? Where are your productive places?

Spaulding: In 2022, I designed a studio and worked with a builder to make a space for Poetry Forge, the online creative writing school I founded a decade ago. Most of my writing happens in that space, or in my flower garden, but whenever I’m offered an artist residency, that’s sort of the romantic ideal. That said, space matters less than the pace at which I approach whatever I’m doing. It’s hard to think and write well if I’m moving too fast, or feeling overcommitted. My muses show up reliably if I sit down most mornings with a notebook and some unstructured time. It’s really that simple.

Sun: What are you working on now?

Spaulding: Another collection of poems. A zine. A course called Infinite Imagination, about prolific iteration as a compositional method. A handbook for aspiring poets and secret poets. Clay vessels. My flower garden.