Spirit Sister Dance
Date: October 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-59498-0909
Price: $17.00
88 pages
Direct orders: Barclay Press
Distributor: Ingram and Spring Arbor
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Links to online texts of poems in Spirit Sister Dance:
- "Still Dark”:
- “Stillborn Love Song”
- "The Hand in Mine"- click and scroll down
Spirit Sister Dance is available now for presale from Fernwood Press and will ship by Thursday, October 27, 2022. Click here for info and to order your early copy.
Reviews and Interviews
An Interview With the Author
How would you describe the process of writing Spirit Sister Dance?
I would say it was slow and steady, in a good way. The first poem, set when I was six, heard my mother cry upstairs, and my grandmother scold her, was one of my first poems (1971). These poems came gradually, over the years, even decades. Sometimes my poems come faster, in clusters, such as the Catholic Boy Blues (2015) poems which started to come night and day, fifty years after my abuse by a priest ended – I wrote 325 poems in twelve months, but eventually selected 130 of them for the book. I am glad to take poems that come either way. I have a motto: never say no to the muse!
What is one of the themes in Spirit Sister Dance, and how is it perpetuated in your poetry?
One of the themes in my poetry is paying tribute to women. I grew up in a rural, Catholic German community in which it often felt like some of my aunts were also mother figures. It was as if, as I said in my childhood memoir, The Ripest Moments (2008), there were clans in our community. I have an entire book of poems, Sweet Sister Moon (2009) that pays tribute to women: as mother, wife (Katherine reads and comments on all my poems, is also the subject in a number of them), sister, friends, songwriters, daughter, former students, ending with a cycle of Andrew Wyeth's marvelous Helga paintings. I have another manuscript that I've worked on for almost a dozen years, Ida Hagan of the Pinkston Freedom Settlement, which was open from 1857 until 1940 in my native Dubois County when the last member left, three years before I was born. My generation didn't know about it. Ida was an accomplished woman whose life deserves to be celebrated. This theme is partly perpetuated by my staying in touch with so many people in my life. I am about to turn 79. For 37 of those years, I taught literature at the college level here in Indiana, on Long Island, in England (one year), and in Germany (two separate years on Fulbright grants). I stay in touch with lots of wonderful people from the various periods of my life. Many are women.
What do you want readers to take away from Spirit Sister Dance?
When I was Indiana Poet Laureate (2008-10), I often read a few poems between sets in various house concert series in Indianapolis. One of the poems I sometimes included was that first Spirit Sister Dance poem. I'll never forget reading it for the first time. All of a sudden, as soon as the concert ended, many of the women started talking excitedly about that short poem. This is a subject that not many women or men easily talk about. The women in particular were grateful for that early poem and thanked me for writing and sharing it with them. I've had similar responses to my abuse poems mentioned above. In fact, I've done a workshop over half a dozen times with my friend Liza Hyatt, whose Wayfaring collection is coming out with Fernwood soon, on Writing about Difficult Relationships, including various kinds of abuse, mostly at Catholic retreat centers. I have a section about this workshop on my website. Readers can take away that it's very healing to share difficult, painful, sad experiences with others, by talking and/or writing about them.
Is there anything you would like readers to pay special attention to while reading?
Some people hesitate to read anything that deals with any kind of darkness. But in this collection they will also find light and uplift. It was healing for me to write these poems. Now to see them released as a book is also healing. The three blurbs by Susan Neville, William Heyen, and Liza Hyatt point out the darkness but also affirm the light in these poems. Dear readers, let the light find you as you experience these poems! Share them with relatives and friends!