Lacey N. Dunham: One of my first writing mentors told me that no matter how accurately I record an event, the very act of retelling renders the experience fiction. Because you’ve said that “the presence of some level of Truth in [your] work is fundamental” but added that you’re “not afraid to embellish [or] fabricate,” how does capital-T “Truth” interact with the artifice of writing in your poetry?

C. M. Donahue: I rarely write completely fictional work, and when I do, the previous drafts are drastically different as well as true to my life. But the people, events, and places that I consider True are often fundamentally fabricated. For example, I will purposefully alter physical descriptions and events to suit the poem, and sometimes I use dream material involving actual people but false events created by my unconscious. I’m acutely aware of what is true in my work and I try to preserve it because I feel that, even just to me personally, the poem has a stronger emotional pull. But if I think the poem requires a minor alteration, I won’t hesitate to experiment with fictional elements.


LND: Do you find yourself searching for meaning behind personal events through your poetry or do you think the meaning pre-exists and, therefore, influences the poem?

CMD: I’m a very analytical and introspective person, and I definitely search for meaning behind personal events through poetry. I think my primary purpose is simply expressing an emotional response, but I also seek to create a sense of order in my life and to understand why things are the way they are.


LND: In your artist’s statement you mention that you place a considerable amount of temporal distance between yourself and a poem, from several months to several years. Have you ever edited a formerly “completed” poem only to revisit it after a time and found that you liked an earlier version better?

CMD: No, although I will make an exception for form. In a lot of cases, I play with various forms and will end up selecting one from an earlier draft. But almost always, once I move from one draft to the next, I notice the glaring flaws in the former draft more than ever, and I just want to push farther and see where it can go. I usually want to escape the earlier drafts because I know I can do better work. It motivates me, but it also disturbs me because this has happened with poems I considered “completed” at one point. Later I’ll look back on them and shudder. Generally this is because I wrote the poems in states of emotional unrest. That’s why I stressed that point of allowing my feelings to settle before pursuing a poem in earnest - otherwise, it tends to result in a melodramatic train wreck.


LND: What perspective do you feel this emotional distance provides your work, beyond avoiding melodrama? For example, the father in “Summer: Cape May 2009” vanishes for three months. The mother in “Postage Across the Atlantic” suffers an emotional ache at the physical absence of her daughter. The lovers in “Night of Numbers” are described as being unable to “remember / May. We breathe only empty June.”

CMD: I think distance as a theme in my work originates in my shifting literal geographical location. Last year alone I lived in four different cities, one of which was my grandparent’s house in New Jersey, where I worked over the past two summers. Because the place I live in shifts multiple times a year, it definitely causes a degree of unsettled feelings to manifest inside both myself and my poetry. I honestly really enjoy living in a bunch of different places each year because I get bored easily and like jarring my routine, but it clearly has some negative impact on my psyche as well. The way in which it may, or may not, impact my parents were the musings that inspired “Summer: Cape May 2009” and “Postage Across the Atlantic.” The temporal quality and inability to remember in “Night of Numbers” are crucial elements to that poem. The concept was a response to a dream I had while I was involved in an odd and short-lived relationship. The temporal quality of this relationship was intentionally meant to come through that poem. The fact that the poem originated from a dream only reinforces that element.


LND: Much of your poetry seems centered around themes of deep personal hurt experienced without a way to outwardly express the pain of abandonment, betrayal, and loss. Can you speak to the tension between the outside and inside worlds experienced by the people in your poetry?

CMD: As someone equally gifted and cursed with the skill of repression, I believe that this type of tension is so constant in my world that I must express it through poetry. Just the fact that I choose to write about these issues shows that I would rather internalize them than express them through a more assertive means. The people in my poems interact in this way because that is what is true to the events of our lives, or at least, my perception of them.


LND: In her book, Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time, the Irish poet Eavan Boland says: “It was that being a woman, I had entered into a life for which poetry has no name.” Boland specifically address the long tradition of Irish poetry but I think her statement is reflective of most poetry, particularly prior to the mid-twentieth century, where women primarily functioned as objects in works of art. Yet in your work, women are frequently the agents for the narrative within the poem. Can you speak a little to the decision - conscious or unconscious - to place women central in your work?

CMD: Women are central in my work, both consciously and unconsciously, because many of the important people in my life are female. As I’ve said, I draw a lot from my life in writing, and my poetry reflects my reality.


LND: Can you speak a little to the challenges - assuming you find it a challenge! - of pursuing poetry as a woman, especially when the form has been and largely remains a male pursuit?

CMD: I honestly don’t find writing poetry challenging because I’m a woman. I find poetry challenging to write in and of itself. But I don’t think that my gender complicates my difficulty with it. I think, if anything, the stereotypically histrionic nature of being a woman gives me an advantage because I’m very much emotionally engaged in my life and hyper-sensitive to my inadequacies and flaws.


LND: In the same book, Boland also says: “There is the place that happened and the place that happens to you.” Again, she specifically addresses Ireland. Several of your poems are set in and around the Atlantic Ocean, Cape May, and the East Coast. How has the geography and culture of New England influenced your poetry? How have these specific locales as the places that happens to you shaped your work?

CMD: My New England roots have influenced my poetry greatly. I was born and raised in Connecticut, and I’ve been writing creative works since I learned how to write in first grade. From that point until high school, nature was my primary muse as an adolescent poet. I particularly liked writing poems about fall. When the leaves change, it still awes me to this day. Attending college in Boston has been strange because for the past three years, I haven’t experienced autumn in all its glory because of the lack of trees in the city.

The culture of New England permeates my work, and I enjoy contrasting it with my summer experiences in New Jersey. While it’s not all that far away - only about 6 hours by car - the culture of the Jersey Shore is really different from that of Connecticut. (And I’m not talking about MTV’s spin on that culture.) There’s the beauty of the beach and the Victorian houses, the commercial importance of seafood, and the tension between the locals, the tourists, and the summer employees. Living in Cape May provides me with the opportunity to meet people from all over the world. It’s a major tourist spot on the East Coast, as well as a place that many foreigners come to work for the summer. I’ve made a lot of friends that hail from Russia and Belarus in particular, and my cultural experiences with Eastern Europeans while living in Cape May is another theme I explore in my work. I find Cape May to be aesthetically and culturally stimulating, and working retail there has not only benefited me financially, but also poetically.


LND: In your artist’s statement, you mention that your poetry comes from a place of what I would call passive reflection, meaning that rather than actively sitting and developing a poem, the poem’s genesis strikes you at inopportune times: on the subway or in class. Do you think this is emblematic of our synced-up, linked-in, always-connected culture, where perhaps we are lacking those previously free moments of quiet meditation and reflection?

CMD: Wow, that’s a lot to think about. Well, I definitely think that the way in which I’m inspired to write poetry when my mind strays while on the subway and in class is somewhat emblematic of our linked-in culture. But at least for me, personally, I think it has to do more about situational inspiration. Yes, if I sit down and force myself to think of a concept for a poem, I can come up with some ideas and begin a draft. But the way I prefer to come up with a poem’s concept is by, for example, sitting on the T in Boston. Let’s say I notice an elderly woman with hot pink lipstick slicked on and perfectly curled hair. It might remind me of my grandmother’s and how she used to curl my hair every Monday when I was in kindergarten. I’ll then frantically pull out my notebook from my purse, jot that idea down, and put the notebook away. Maybe I’ll meditate on the concept more and come up with some specific words or lines I want to use while on this same subway journey. I’ll pull out the notebook again and add them to the page.

When I get back to my dorm room, I’ll add this concept to my legal pad list of poem ideas. Usually there’s about thirty of them at any given time. When I feel the urge to write, I sit down and peruse this list to decide what I want to write about. Sometimes while looking it over, I cross an idea off of it for good if I think it’s unusable. That’s my method for pre-writing.


LND: How do we create space for savoring, memorizing, re-reading, and treasuring poetry in our culture? And where do you anticipate poetry, in general, taking us in the next decade or so?

CMD: Poems are short and can be read during, say, the time it takes to go from one stop on the T to another, in most cases. The brevity of a poem is convenient in the way that a newspaper or magazine article is. However, the audience for poetry is minimal and the average person does not know the names of even the most popular contemporary poets today.

The Internet is great in that it provides access to a lot of great websites that publish the work of poets. However, this discourages people from going out and buying collections of poetry. I think there will always be a place for poetry in our digital culture, but I also think that poetry’s popularity will continue to dwindle and that poetry will be seen as a increasingly archaic art. As a BFA Poetry major, it depresses me to admit it, but I’m sort of resigned at this point. Even if I can get my work published as a collection in the future, it is highly unlikely that it will sell well or earn me a dime. I hope I’m wrong though, of course.


LND: Whose work as a poet do you particularly admire? Which poets would you say have most influenced your own poetry?

CMD: Oh gosh, these lists could go on forever. I’d have to say Sylvia Plath, Adam Zagajewski, and Kim Addonizio influence my own poetry the most.  I particularly admire Margaret Atwood, Billy Collins, Matthea Harvey, AI, Frank O’Hara, Tony Hoagland, Bob Hicok, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Alice Fulton.