KARAN

Tarn, thank you for these intimate and searching poems that explore chronic illness with such nuance and grace. “She tries to keep her life spare, but she’s still a tourist of excess” – love this for how beautifully it captures how so many of us feel. Let’s begin with the process question. How do you start writing a poem? Does it begin with an image, a line, or an idea? Do you have a writing routine? And most importantly, what made you turn to poetry after your relationship with prose?

TARN

First, a thank you to you and Shannan for ONLY POEMS and your vision and efforts. You have cultivated such a vibrant, inclusive, heartful, and courageous space. 

I have spent my writing career developing my skills as a memoir and essayist. Then just before the pandemic, I was diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, a collagen production disorder. The next few years were difficult. As a high school teacher, I found myself exhausted by the demands of pandemic teaching and an illness that caused, among other symptoms, chronic muscle and nerve pain, fatigue, and brain fog. 

I’d always been a disciplined writer and tried to keep up with my regular routine. I put in the effort, but all my writing felt labored – like trying to squeeze a glass of water from a damp washcloth. I finally stopped trying, which was frightening for me. I didn’t know who I was if I wasn’t a writer. 

At the same time, the illness was also wrecking havoc with my sense of self. I felt as if I’d become old overnight. I could no longer run, backpack, lift weights, etc. I was stunned by the change and grieved my former self and the active future I’d imagined. Fortunately, I had the support of a skilled therapist who understood chronic illness and gave me hope that there was a different, but still meaningful, life on the other side of that dark time. 

The summer of 2023, I went on a road trip. I wanted to keep a journal, as I usually do, but also wanted to disrupt my habitual thought and language patterns. I gave myself an exercise, which I called “Pablo Neruda Takes a Road Trip.” I pulled nouns from Pablo Nerudo’s book-length poem The Book of Questions and listed them. As I wrote daily entries about the trip, I had to incorporate one of Neruda’s words per sentence – in the order I had listed them. I was delighted by some of the surprises, but even more powerfully, I found myself writing unacknowledged truths that had been hovering at the edge of my consciousness.  

When I returned, I decided to continue playing. I created or borrowed more exercises such as the one above. My only consistent rule was “Write true sentences.” I couldn’t keep any lines that didn’t feel true in my body, now matter how clever I thought they were. I’m not sure when the exercises morphed into something resembling poems.  

Now, I still write from prompts, invented and borrowed. I mine my abandoned memoir pieces. Occasionally, I hear a line in my head. When I hear or read something that moves me, makes me curious, or makes all my senses feel alert, then I follow that lead, sometimes incorporating research. I generally do a lot of freewriting until I have some lines that interest me and a voice seems to be emerging. Then I revise around those. Because I’m a new poet, I spend a lot of time playing with different structures, teaching myself the effects of different choices. 

KARAN

Your sequence “Coming to Terms with Chronic Illness” creates this incredible meditation through different lenses – keys, lies, electricity, fatigue, and more. What drew you to explore illness through these various entry points? How does this kaleidoscopic view help you understand and write about chronic illness?

TARN

I didn’t set out to write poems about chronic illness. Before I began writing poetry, I was in a frozen state, alternating between fear and denial. However, the writing led me toward what I needed to process, gently and at a pace I could bear. For example, “The Junkyard” was one of the first poems I wrote in the series, but not until embarrassingly recently did I realize – of course – it was about chronic illness. My body is that strange junkyard. Another early poem, “Keys,” began with this prompt I’d invented: “Write about spare things and stray things.” Only in the final revisions did I understand that I was exploring the connection between our personal history and the way we process illness. 

Those early poems helped move me through my resistance, through the heart of my grief, toward acceptance. Now I am more quickly able to realize when a poem wants to explore a facet of illness – although I rarely begin there. For example, the idea for “Electricity” began when I visited an installation of an artist who was allergic to electricity. I began freewriting about that and quickly made the link to my own body’s electricity. Likewise, “Little Mice” began when I read that the word muscle comes from a Latin word meaning little mice. I was charmed by the image of the Romans imagining little mice moving under their skin – I just had to play with that. As I explored, I quickly made the leap to my own muscular issues. (Then I was surprised by memories from my first marriage, about which I had done very little processing. Those tricky poems!)

The kaleidoscopic view has allowed me to pace myself in my processing, capture a range of emotions, and even be lighthearted as I explore difficult topics. For example, I’m terrified of not being able to think clearly yet felt mostly joy as I wrote “Brain Fog” and played with all the sounds and images. 

KARAN

I’m struck by how you use metaphor to illuminate the experience of illness. In “Brain Fog,” you write, “I'm trying to double-dutch but miss every jump. / The gears turn too slowly for the car to start.” Could you tell us more about finding language for experiences that often resist description?

TARN

I am going to change the question a little and begin with why poetry about chronic illness is important. Nonfiction such as scientific studies, books about the mind-body connection, spiritual books, and self-help books can all be valuable. However, they often contradict each other and include solution-oriented, forcefully-worded, authoritative advice which can offer false confidence and lead to self-blame. Illness memoirs, likewise, can be powerful companions and teachers but can be limited by a traditional narrative structure which demands a story arc, a turning point, and a moment of resolution – which is not generally the truth of the chronic illness journey. (Considering the prevalence of chronic illness, that experience is strangely absent from most fiction.)

All that to say, poetry fills an important niche. I’ll explain with a metaphor: One strategy to manage chronic pain is to pay exquisite attention to pain sensations and how they change moment to moment. To breathe into the waves of sensation. To release the stories you are telling yourself about that pain. To recognize what is actually happening in the moment. A good poem, with its fresh language, can help us disrupt the shortcuts and assumptions our brain makes and recognize what is actually happening. It can awaken curiosity and our ability to pay attention.

The crazy metaphors in “Brain Fog” evolved in an interesting way. At the time, I was reading Joan Didion’s memoir The Year of Magical Thinking. When Didion’s daughter first awoke from her coma, she told her mother her memory was “mudgy.” The word seemed to perfectly capture my sensation of brain fog. I made a list of rhymes, near rhymes, anagrams, and words that use the same letters. Then I started to write sentences that used those words. Then, because it’s so easy to get carried away by turns of phrase that please me, I made myself interrogate each line before it made the final cut with “Is it true?” 

KARAN

Memory appears throughout these poems both as subject and structure. In “Impossible Things I Remember,” you write about cellular memory, childhood memories, and things forgotten. How do you see the relationship between memory and poetry?

TARN

As I freewrite on a topic or revise a poem, I pay attention to any memories that arise – let them sit on the page next to their sometimes surprising associations. This helps me understand, and sometimes deconstruct, my personal mythology. 

Whether we know it or not, we are all writing in the soup of our collective memories: the history of our families, our communities, our species, and all beings on our planet. One of the roles of the-artist-in-all-of-us is to discern, examine, and make sense of those shared memories. 

KARAN

Animals appear as both companions and metaphors in these poems – from the bossy white rabbit to Martín Snowplow the mouse. In “Little Mice,” you connect this to the Latin root of “muscle.” Talk to us about your relationship with nature and how it influences you as a writer.

TARN

You are such a careful reader, Karan! As a young child, I lived a fairly isolated life in the British Columbian wilderness with my hippie parents where the trees were gigantic, the forest dense, and the animals ever-present. To me, nature is not primarily a symbol, but a presence, filled with distinct living beings in their own complex realities, often beyond the view of what our limited senses or self-involved egos can understand. I live in a dense urban/suburban area now, but still find that my eyes move toward the wild things: flowers coming up through the cracks, crows assembling on street corners. Poems are a place where I can offer them a little attention and acknowledgement and remind myself the universe is bigger than our human concerns. 

KARAN

This is a staple question for us and I’m always surprised by the range in everyone’s responses: There’s a school of poetry that believes a poem or a poet can categorize their work in one of these four ways: poetry of the body, poetry of the mind, poetry of the heart, poetry of the soul. Where would you place your work within this framework, if at all? And do you see your poetry moving in a different direction?

TARN

I love this question. Right now, my poems lean toward poetry of the body. For most of my life, I have been disconnected from my body, spinning in my mind and striving for a spirituality I thought was beyond and above body. These current poems, I think, are a corrective, what I need in order to notice, accept, claim, and have empathy for my embodied experience. (This is hard enough for me that in the beginning, I wrote all my poems in third person as a way for me to gently enter my own truth.) I predict I will pendulum back toward spirit-heart-mind, but hopefully with a new nuanced and embodied approach.

Or maybe my poems are poems of question-and-exploration, or poems of “hey-what’s-in-this-box?” 

KARAN

You write with such tenderness about the body’s limitations and possibilities. In “Electricity,” you describe “sheaves around my nerves” and learning “a new art.” How has writing about chronic illness changed your relationship with your body?

TARN

Writing these poems has indeed helped me develop a different relationship to my body. (You are such an intuitive reader!) In my past, I was a very driven person, both in my work and in my relationship to my body. I was a distance runner and also went to the gym almost daily where I lifted weights and took exercise classes. I consistently tried to improve my performance and add new challenges. I was impatient with myself if I didn’t progress, didn’t understand the need for rest or nutrition, and was critical of my appearance. Losing my ability to exercise – which was my primary form of stress management and a source of pride – was an internal crisis.

Writing these poems, along with therapy, has transformed my relationship with my body. In order to function even marginally well, my body now requires great kindness. Like a toddler, it needs a lot of rest, water, healthy foods, and kind words. Harsh self-criticism causes tension which almost immediately translates into some physical discomfort. Writing about my body has both helped distance me from my body – I am not what my body looks like or what it can do – and helped me own it. It is my job to take care of it. Sometimes, I see it like an old beloved dog hobbling around. The dog is lumpy and gray around the muzzle, but still deserves loyal care. 

I am not exactly sure of the mechanism by which the writing creates empathy. The writing slows me down. That might be part of it. Slowness creates space for new insight, wisdom even. And poems themselves are little bodies. Maybe in the process of tending to them with care I am learning more respect for myself.  

KARAN

As someone who’s written extensively in prose, what does poetry offer you that prose doesn’t? What challenges or freedoms have you found in this form?

TARN

I am shy about taking up space, so writing long-form prose forced me to use my voice and elaborate – as well as grow in patience, discipline, and resilience. The genre required me to be clear, brave, honest with myself and others, and generous to my reader. 

However, I think the poetic mindset might be closer to my native way of being. To write prose, I had to place my reader in narrative time – which was a good exercise for me – but my mind actually organizes itself by theme and clusters of association instead of linear cause and effect. I also find it deeply soothing – as well as challenging – to play with the shape of poems on the page and tinker with sound and rhythm, a process more akin to sculpture or writing music. The process causes me to slow down and helps me access more unfamiliar parts of my mind. I feel poetry has more room for mystery and surprise, which is something I am craving right now. 

Also, because most poems are short, I have appreciated being able to move through the cycles of the creative process more quickly and become more intimately familiar with each stage: from the uncertainty and delight in the discovery phases, through the frustration and hyper-focus of revision, through the satisfying “click” of late-stage breakthroughs. And it’s so much less painful to abandon an unsuccessful poem than an unsuccessful book! 

KARAN

In “Lies,” you create this powerful critique of wellness culture and its promises. How do you think about writing about illness in a culture that often wants to capitalize on or “fix” chronic conditions?

TARN

Developing a chronic illness forced me to recognize that our Western culture, for millennia, has equated physical health, vitality, and attractiveness with virtue and worth. We also live in a culture that values control. Consciously or unconsciously, we believe that with enough discipline of our minds, bodies, and time, we can control all uncertainty and avoid suffering. I thought I was too evolved for such beliefs until I began to unpack (with the help of my therapist) the aggressive voices in my head telling me that I was a failure for having an illness and for losing strength and attractiveness. I even struggled with the suggestions that if I wasn’t able to contribute the same level of productivity, I didn’t deserve to live. 

There is much that is helpful in the wellness industry. However, confident voices with simple answers get the most air time – often with the underlying assumption that if you can perfectly control your thoughts, schedule, food or body, you will be free from suffering. If your suffering is not eased, it is your fault for not following the system, whatever it is, faithfully enough. But for many of us with chronic illness, there is no simple fix. 

Chronic illness can be isolating. We get positive feedback for being a “good” sick person: non-complaining and relentlessly positive. We sometimes hide our suffering from our loved ones so as not to cause them pain. Doctors, overwhelmed by their challenging jobs, can feel frustrated by our intractable problems or dismissive of the mysteries of our systemic illness. Illness can challenge our faith and eat away at our optimism. 

Honest writing can help build connection, community, empathy, and understanding and ease loneliness. 

KARAN

Tarn, as a prose writer who’s been writing poetry, what advice would you give to other writers who are a little intimidated by poetry?

TARN

When I started my experimentation, the words “poet” and “poem” seemed too solemn and intellectual. So I called my process “play.” Then, I evolved to calling my work “poem-thingies.” When I started submitting them, I had to call them poems, but I still snicker at that word, as if I’m getting away with something. 

Advice? To keep a playful, non-judgmental spirit, find ways to access your kid-brain: Use prompts to make the process a game. Maybe write by hand and spread your words all over the page, big and small, straight or windy, upside down. Use a colored pen. Add a drawing. Follow delight. Follow something that feels true. Follow something that feels scary. Or take a journal entry and pull out interesting sentences. Arrange them in a poem with long lines. And three stanzas. Or short short lines with no stanzas. Take the end of the poem, put it at the beginning, and start over. Challenge yourself to repeat a word three times. Challenge yourself to add some weather, an animal, some music, a kitchen utensil. Read a lot of poems. Copy your favorite lines and write something inspired by them. Read your best lines to a friend who will be delighted by them. 

KARAN

We always ask our poets for a poetry prompt at the end. Would you provide a prompt for our readers, to help them kickstart a poem?

TARN

The poem “Lies” grew from this prompt: “Write a poem with a lie in every line.” Try to incorporate a list of random words you have gathered. 

Here’s another one:  The Answer Poem

Make a list of ordinary and wild questions, about five in past tense, five in present tense, and five in future tense. Examples include: Where were you born? What underwear were you wearing? What was sitting at your back door? What is your road like? What is falling out of your suitcase? What animal is in your chest? What will you be chanting? What will you be riding?

Trust the answers that pop into your mind, no matter how surprising. Arrange only the answers into a poem. (If you find your answers are too pedestrian, challenge yourself to incorporate random words. Or work with a partner and create questions for each other.) 

KARAN

We’d also love for you to recommend a piece of art (anything other than a poem) — perhaps a song, a film, or a visual artwork — that you find particularly inspiring or that you think everyone should experience.

TARN

Recently, I was moved to tears at the traveling exhibit 25 Million Stitches. In order to draw attention to the plight of our world’s 25 million refugees, textile artist Jennifer Kim Sohn decided to crowdsource a project: She asked volunteers from all over the world to hand-embroider panels, with the aim of reaching 25 million stitches. She achieved her goal in under a year: 2300 artists from all 37 countries and all 50 American states participated. The panels grace the walls and hang like flags from the ceiling, the professional artists and newbies all made equal by their shared desire that every human have a sense of home, community, and safety. 

KARAN

Finally, because we believe in studying the master’s masters, we would love to know which poets/writers have influenced you most so far.

TARN

Although I read her work differently now, my first love, in my late teens, was Annie Dillard. I loved–still love–the rhythm of her sentences, her ability to surprise, and the way her sense of mystery and holiness feels like a living presence in her writing. I find Virginia Woolf’s sentences and observational skills (of both the inner and outer world) transcendent. I was fortunate enough to have the late Judith Kitchen as a mentor, and when I feel myself drifting from my truest self, I return to her gem of a lyric memoir The Circus Train, which she wrote after she had received a fatal diagnosis.

Sonya Huber’s lyric memoir Pain Woman Takes My Keys gave me an example of how to write in a deeply honest way about chronic illness. The book is funny, clever, angry, smart, specific, and personal–and helped me claim a wider range of my emotions and look more acutely at my actual experience, not just the stories I was telling myself.

Since turning to poetry a year and a half ago, I have mostly been schooled, not as much by the complete works of individual poets, but by literary journals, such as ONLY POEMS, that do such a beautiful job of curating the most interesting work being written today. I have also been moved by the career of  poet Kasey Jueds, who I first met when she was a beginning poet and have had the privilege of watching grow into the award-winning author of the poetry collections Keeper and The Thicket. Not only are her poems exquisite, but she is such an example of how to live a mindful, generous literary life. 

I do have a stack of poetry books next to my bed, but the two that I found myself studying, pencil in hand, are Kelli Russell Agodon’s Dialogues with Rising Tides and Turn Up the Ocean by Tony Hoagland. Agodon has such a fascinating, flexible mind that moves in such interesting ways–combined with a fierce honesty. Likewise, Hoagland continually surprises me with his choice of details, his juxtapositions, and the direction of his poems. These poems were written just before his death and assembled afterward and are a powerful glimpse into how he used poetry to process his last days. Both Agodon and Hoagland have this gorgeous combination of intellect, imagination, curiosity, emotional authenticity, honesty, and wildness, all contained in a thoughtful structure just strong enough to hold together all that pulsating energy. 

Thank you, Karan. I doubt I will ever have more thoughtful, interesting, and insightful interview questions or a more careful reader. ONLY POEMS is a real gift to the community.