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Poetry in two languages: Q&A with author, Margaret Noodin

The old ones tell us, “live as you are named.” / We sense the truth in our bones / if we listen.
~ from “Listening” in Weweni by Margaret Noodin

Last weekend, I attended the Mount Mary Publishing Institute in town, and during a workshop with Bridget Birdsall, I wrote a six-word memoir–not an easy exercise, but nevertheless, here’s mine: Mom, too introspective, my best feature. Introspection sends me down a rabbit-hole of worry sometimes, but it also adds layers to the understanding of myself, others, and the world around me. “Live in the layers, / not on the litter,” as Stanley Kunitz writes.

weweni_0Layers of understanding and meaning are at the heart of Margaret Noodin’s new book of poetry, Weweni. This is a unique book as each poem is written first in Anishinaabemowin (the language of ‘the People of the Three Fires’–the Odawa, Potawatomi, and Ojibwa”) and then in English.

I can’t speak a word of Anishinaabemowin, but I appreciate the complexity and art of the language. As Noodin writes elsewhere, “[Anishinaabemowin] words stem from the center, the way stories say life began with a spark of light and earth and was made from a speck of dirt. Meaning radiates from a central spoke of action, and diversity of interpretation is important.” I also fell in love with several of her poems as translated into English.

And, I fell in love with the cadence of Anishinaabemowin when I heard this traditional song, called “Nindinendam (Thinking),” sung by Margaret herself on Ojibwe.net:

 

Margaret Noodin teaches American Indian Studies at the university where I work–the day job has its perks, meeting professors who you discover are amazing poets as well as great teachers. I’ve read two of her books so far, and I’m thrilled to host Margaret here to talk about Weweni and her writing. As is my custom, there’s also a giveaway. Drop your name in the comments below for a chance to win a copy of her wonderful book of poems (winner will be chosen on Tuesday, October 6th).

Now, welcome Margaret Noodin!

CC: I should begin by asking you where you are from? Then, how does the word “Weweni” translate into English?

noodin_margaret_600MN: I am originally from Minnesota and have taught Anishinaabemowin in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.  I grew up in the Lakota part of the state in a town called Chaska, but my own relatives are from the St. Cloud area.

Weweni is a word we use to wish one another well and hope they are able to “take care” as they move along their journey in life.

CC: Your book offers readers a unique look at poetry as each poem is printed in Anishinaabemowin and in English. What do you hope others outside of the Anishinaabe culture will take away in reading these poems?

MN: I hope they will become curious enough to visit www.ojibwe.net and listen to the language, maybe even try saying a few words and thinking about the ways those sounds fall together so differently than English.  I also hope the translations help students confirm their progress and inspires readers to become students of the language.  Perhaps even a few other poets will try writing in Anishinaabemowin.

CC: In another book you recently published, Bawaajimo: a Dialect of Dreams in Anishinaabe Language and Literature, you explain that the Anishinaabe people are “a ‘woodland’ culture” as much as a community tied to the waters of the Great Lakes. You say, “One does not move from the mutable seas to the stationary pines without traveling the land between,” meaning perhaps that it’s impossible to separate the land from the language. Many of your poems, such as “Bizindamaang | Listening,” illustrate this idea. When you write your poems, are you inspired first by the language or the landscape around you?

MN: I am inspired by the systems all around us – water systems, forest systems, the way swamps evolve over time, all of the life that constantly changes and recharges everything that is connected.  I suppose, ultimately, all the old stories about “mishomis-giizis” and “nokomis-dibiki-giizis” (the sun and the moon) are at the core of it.  The fact that all of this life is happening across vast distances and inside tiny molecules reminds me of the way we put sounds and meaning together to make words that allow us to actually communicate ideas and perceptions to one another.  None of this is new, but taking time to notice all the influences of the universe certainly leads me to write.

CC: How does poetry influence other areas of your life, creative or academic (or vice-versa)?

MN: Building words and making connections is essential for using Anishinaabemowin and is the central approach to many of my poems. They often begin when a sound or piece of meaning echoes across a story or song into a topic I wasn’t expecting and I find myself wanting to follow the thread to see where it leads.  As a member of  women’s hand drum group I am always connecting moving  between poetry and lyric verse.

CC: Who is another poet or Anishinaabe author you would recommend (or insist!) we read?

MN: Kim Blaeser and Heid Erdrich are two poets who have worked with me to create poems in both Anishinaabemowin and English.  Each of them has a strong poetic voice readers might like to experience.  They offer different views of the land and history.  Jim Northrup is another writer who connects Anishinaabe language and culture to the land and seasons in his stories.  His book, Walking the Rez Road, weaves poems and stories together in a way the blurs the definition of each genre.

Margaret Noodin has a PhD in Literature and Linguistics, an MFA in Creative Writing and is Assistant Professor of English and American Indian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. A contributor on Ojibwa.net (a website dedicated to saving the language), she is also the author of Bawaajimo: a Dialect of Dreams in Anishinaabe Language and Literature. 

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Don’t forget: leave a quick comment for a chance to win a copy of Weweni.

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Q&A (and giveaway!) with Ellen Urbani, author of Landfall

Somehow this web of women had become her storm shelter, her makeshift family, and if any part of it were to be salvaged she knew she needed to do it alone. ~ from LANDFALL by Ellen Urbani

In an article for The Atlantic, Julie Beck says, “Storytelling…fictional or nonfictional…is a way of making sense of the world around us,” and Margaret Atwood in Negotiating with the Dead says she writes “to bear witness.” We all have different reasons for putting pen to paper, but Ellen Urbani satisfies both of these ideas in her novel, Landfall: she writes on a real-world tragedy and paves the way to understanding such an experience through fictional characters.

Landfall-Cover-imageRose Aikens and Rosebud Howard live states and worlds apart. Yet in the days following Hurricane Katrina, they are thrown together in a car accident that kills one and leaves the other searching for answers and atonement.

I remember when Hurricane Katrina hit. Buffered by miles and privilege, I had no real sense of what it was like to be tossed into the fury of Mother Nature, politics, and racism. Landfall narrows in on the impact of such a storm and sheds light on the role tragedy plays in pulling us apart and bringing us together. I’m honored to host Ellen as she talks about her book, survivors, the walk between genres, and life and writing on a farm.

There’s a giveaway, too, so welcome Ellen Urbani and drop your name in the comments for a chance to win her book!

CC: Do you have a personal connection to Louisiana? What drew you to write a story set in the days leading up to and after Hurricane Katrina?

Ellen Urbani, 3EU: Though I spent much of my life in the South, it might be said that I have more of a connection to the act of disappearing than I do to any other element — be that place, or theme, or character – in Landfall. I have cultivated a long-term habit of letting go, dropping everything, racing off to some far-away unknown, yet I also know what it is to rebuild a life around someone else’s vacancy and soldier on with a persistence unique to the left-behinds. I have lived alongside the families of los desaparecidos (the disappeared ones) in foreign lands and learned their secrets. I have gobbled up reports of missing children, attuned to Amber Alerts and calls for volunteers to join the hunt. I have counseled survivors. Disappearances and resurrections fascinate me.

With respect for those who lost loved ones in Katrina and her watery aftermath – 1,836 people killed, 705 still unaccounted for – and with the understanding that nothing so earth-shattering has, blessedly, ever beset me, it is nonetheless a true statement to say that my first husband disappeared into the maw that was the wake of Hurricane Katrina. When he answered the call for first-responders to provide emergency services along the Gulf coast it turned into the trial separation we couldn’t bring ourselves to otherwise effect. From the wreckage, he phoned home on occasion and described to me miles of highway lined with decaying bodies of alligators, people seeking shelter beneath lean-tos constructed with repurposed slabs of roofs or automotive hoods. Only a fool could fail to notice the all-too-obvious metaphor for the detritus of our marriage. Within weeks of his return, he occupied one home and I another.

Much like survivors of more pervasive calamities, I rebuilt my world using the resources I had at hand. Which is to say that as my newborn and toddler aged up, and started preschool, I started writing again – on Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 9am-11am, the only time they were out of my arms – banking our future on the story of a storm. I imagined a girl, running from all she knew and losing herself along the way, only to encounter some alternate version of herself through which she might be guided home. And in that way, the fiction that is Landfall hews very closely to a reality I have occupied. I did not race from Louisiana under raging skies, but I know what it is to flee, to escape, to rebuild. To survive.

CC: Early on in Rose’s search for Rosebud’s family, Detective McAffrey tells her, “You can’t go interpreting coincidences as signs.” But everything about her quest is rooted in coincidence, from the timing of the car accident in Chapter One to a ripped page from a phonebook found in Rosebud’s pocket. Incidental clues along Rose’s path; messages from the Universe. I’m a big believer in signs (when I’m paying attention), and I imagine you are too. How do these kinds of tiny accidents work in your life as a writer?

EU: I believe in the possibility of almost anything, and I have seen it come to pass in my whole life – not just my writing life – that the strangest and most unpredictable string of circumstances leads to an outcome I can best describe as miraculous. Albert Einstein said, “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous,” and if I could bring myself to believe in a God that would be a convenient theory. But I’ve long suspected life is not so simply explained. (And I don’t suspect for a minute that Einstein did, either.) Instead, like the esteemed man, I believe in mathematical probability, and in the environment’s tendency toward patterns and order, and in the verifiable fact that highly unlikely things happen in the natural world every day. Call it magic. Call it coincidence. Call it signs or God or karma or science. Regardless, it has been my experience that if we live with our eyes wide open and our hearts in the right place, if we shoulder life’s hardships without allowing them to hollow us, and if we learn from our mistakes and follow the clues they carve for us, we often land on precisely the path upon which we need to stand.

The storm that ended my first marriage birthed my second book. The storm responsible for claiming the life of one girl in that book gave new meaning to the life of another. Looked at one way, Hurricane Katrina might have gutted my characters, might have gutted me. Looked at another way, it might fill us up.

And as for the thousand small acts of happenstance between the end of the one thing and the beginning of the next, any of which, responded to differently, might have altered mine or Rose’s or Rosebud’s course in unfathomable ways? That simply would have been an alternate story, motivated by an alternate set of signs, leading us down an alternate path. Not necessarily better or worse. Just meant to teach us a different lesson.

CC: You have a wonderful essay in the New York Times Modern Love column, and your first book, When I Was Elena, is a memoir. As a writer, I learn so much more about the craft when I explore both fiction and nonfiction. What do you love most in writing across genres?

EU: The truth? I think of myself almost exclusively as a nonfiction writer, which is why I never intended to write Landfall. Instead, I wanted to write a book about my family of origin – I even had a title; a really good title – but my mother and sisters begged me not to do it. I’m happy to report there has been compromise over the years, but at the time, eight years ago, I believed myself barred from telling the truth and instead had to go and make something up. The idea of having to do so was remarkably intimidating, as I’m an utterly inept liar, and neither had I ever believed myself to be in possession of the imaginative chops requisite for writing fiction.

Nonfiction comes naturally to me. On a day-to-day basis my relatives and I, with a hereditary inclination toward the dramatic, provide sufficient material to inspire the literary oeuvre of a half dozen nonfiction writers. But fiction? It always seemed to me that fiction writers must draw from an alternate intellectual pool, a murky lake in which I’d never seen my reflection. But eventually the idea of trying something so novel as writing a novel grew on me. I craved the intellectual challenge, as I’d reached a point in my single parenting of two babes when I could actually feel my brain matter atrophying with each successive reading of Goodnight Moon. And I’ve always liked adventures tinged with risk, so despite this being my virgin effort at fiction I decided to up the ante: to try to write the kind of novel I so frequently crave but infrequently find. A high-minded pot-boiler; literary fiction with a twist.

Which brings us here, to the moment when Landfall makes…well…landfall, and a world of readers gets to determine whether they think I succeeded. But even if Landfall is a commercial bust, there will be a certain satisfaction in knowing I’ve met the personal goal you ask about here: I jumped genres, and wrote a book I wouldn’t have guessed I had in me. And in the process I learned that truth has many more variations and shades than I ever might have imagined.

CC: What are you reading these days?

EU: As I write this, I am sitting on the ground in the hay in a stall in a barn beside a llama at the Marion County fair. The llama’s name is Buddy. He is kindly tolerating my laptop, balanced on his back; he is perfect desk-height. Just outside the wide-open barn doors there is a U.S. flag flying. Children’s legs flick in and out of my view, dangling from a bungee-esque gyroscopic carnival ride, and Martina McBride wails “Let freedom ring!” from a powerful speaker system. Cushed behind me is Viv, Buddy’s sister. Cushed is a term that defines a lying-down llama, and specifically indicates the folded-leg manner in which llamas rest, close to the earth, without touching their bellies to the dirt. I learned there was a specific term for this unique positioning in the book I’ve been carrying around with me of late: The Camelid Companion: Handling and Training Your Alpacas & Llamas by Marty McGee Bennett. (Which also contains this sage axiom: “The greatest obstacle to good communication is the presumption that it has already occurred.” Clearly, communicating with llamas is not all that different than communicating with anyone else.)

The llamas belong to my children, equal parts pet and 4H project. The llamas took 3rd and 4th prize in the Showmanship Class at the fair before being abandoned to my care by the kids, who have dashed off in search of elephant ears and mechanical bull rides.

At the Multnomah County fair last month I also babysat the llamas while reading and writing, that time with Tracy Dougherty’s much-anticipated Joan Didion biography, The Last Love Song, in hand; I’d been tasked with reviewing it for The Oregonian. I was curled in a camp chair, using one hand to hold open the book, using the other to pet a goat through the open slats in the neighboring pen, when a cry suddenly went up to catch a loose llama. Turns out, Buddy escaped when I became so enchanted by the book that I failed to notice him pestering open the gate that the children had left unlatched in their verve to go snuggle a Sugar Bear. (Google ‘Sugar Bear,’ but only if you’re prepared to fall in love.) Long story short: I returned to the pen with the renegade llama to find a civic-minded passerby engaged in a wrestling match with the goat, who had eaten the cover off of Joan’s/Tracy’s book and was halfway through the first chapter. Goats, unlike llamas, will eat anything. (I later posted a picture of the stubby remnants of the devoured Prologue on my Facebook page, positing that the goat found the book as delectable as I did, and a relative of Joan’s responded to say she would love this story.)

The point of all this? What I clearly should be reading, but am not, is a self-help manual entitled How to Keep Your Children Better Occupied During Summer Break in Order to Get in Some Decent Reading. I’m particularly interested in the chapter, hidden deep within that book, titled “I Thought Farm Life Was Going to Guarantee Me More Time to Read and Write … So What the Hell Went Wrong?”

A free copy of Landfall to the person who can find me that book!

CC: What bit of writing advice do you turn to most often?

EU: I used to think I should have an answer to this question. I used to think I should follow all the advice: That I should write every day. That I should write early in the morning, before doing anything else. That I should make an outline. Or twelve. That I should write drafts and that I should be willing to throw them away and start over and over and over again. (Kill me now.) That I should write background stories for my characters that never show up in the book. That I should throw away my darlings.

But I’m finally able to admit that I don’t have any answers. Not to this question, and not to lots of others. I don’t turn to any writing advice. I do whatever I want, whenever I can, to the best of my ability.

But I do aspire to someday be smart enough and courageous enough to throw away my darlings.

Ellen Urbani is the author of Landfall, a work of historical fiction set in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and the memoir When I Was Elena, a Book Sense Notable selection documenting her life in Guatemala during the final years of that country’s civil war. She has a bachelor’s degree from The University of Alabama and a master’s degree from Marylhurst University. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times and numerous anthologies, and has been widely excerpted. She’s reviewed books for The Oregonian, served as a federal disaster/trauma specialist, and has lectured nationally on this topic. Her work has been profiled in the Oscar-qualified short documentary film Paint Me a Future. A Southern expat now residing in Oregon, her pets will always be dawgs and her truest allegiance will always reside with the Crimson Tide. 

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Check Ellen out elsewhere: on Facebook, on Twitter, on Goodreads and Instagram. And remember, a quick comment (emoticons welcome–really, no pressure) enters you into the giveaway! Winner will be chosen on Tuesday, August 18th.

 

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Q&A with Liz Prato, author of BABY’S ON FIRE

The island made its mark on everybody and everything.
~ from “covered in red dirt” in baby’s on fire

The simple quote above speaks volumes about Liz Prato’s new book, Baby’s On Fire (published by Press 53). Twelve short stories in less than 150 pages, rich in character and place; stories about women and men–siblings, lovers, parents–on the precipice of love, loss, forgiveness. Stories that strike at gut level and stick with you as characters face choices, look to each other for reprieve, study the sky. Take this from “a space you can fall into,” one of my favorites in the book:

EPSON MFP imageThose stars are still there, looking down at her, saying, Come on. What are you waiting for?

A breeze makes the leaves shiver. the smell of dill from her aunt’s garden whispers by, tingling Shelby’s nose. She wishes Janie was awake. Janie could show Shelby how she does it. How she spreads her arms. If she puts them out in front or to her sides. Whether she jumps or flaps or soars. . . .

This month marks the seventh annual celebration of Short Story Month, and I’m thrilled to round off these last few days of May by introducing you to Liz Prato and her amazing work. Even better, you can win a copy of her book! Just drop your name in the comments–a simple way to win a wonderful collection of short stories.

Now, welcome Liz Prato!

CC: Your book is filled with characters in search of relief, and in some of your stories you leave readers with an ending that’s satisfying yet wanting. I mean that in a good way. Caroline in “cool dry ice” and Shelby in “a space you can fall into,” are both at the edge (one figuratively and the other literally), and I wonder where they will end up. In some ways, I know, but I still keep thinking on it–a perfect ending, I say, as it keeps readers tied to a piece long after the cover has been closed. When do you know you’ve reached the last line of a story you are writing?

LizPrato_AuthorPhotoLP: Well, that’s part of the fun of writing a short story – your ending doesn’t have to wrap it all up. It can leave some questions unanswered, some situations unsettled. But I feel that an ending should be a place where the character—and the reader—can, at least momentarily, rest. It’s not usually something I’m consciously aiming for, but often know when I get there. Like Shelby and Caroline standing on the edge. Like Jude and Spencer eating waffles. Like Sabrina resting against Kort while he sleeps. None of these characters’ problems are all solved/everything’s great/let’s ride off into the sunset. But they have taken a journey that brought them to that point where they can rest.

CC: Where do you find inspiration most often when it comes to writing short stories? Do you start with a word, an image, the seed of an idea?

LP: It’s often a situation. For example, I had a college friend whose house burned down right before he returned from a semester abroad his senior year of high school. His family told him about it in the car ride from the airport. I wondered what that would feel like, to return home only to find out your home had been destroyed, and started the story “Baby’s On Fire” with that question. Ultimately, that took me somewhere else entirely, like my original musings most often do, which is kind of great. I mean, how boring, if the path a story took me on was predictable?

There are also three stories in the collection that were inspired by longer works. The stories were either compressed (like in “When Cody Told Me He Loves Me on a Weird Winter Day”), or featured characters that had to be cut from a novel and were re-imagined in their own story arc (“Cool Dry Ice” and “I See You in the Bright Night”).

CC: In your interview with Steve Almond on The Rumpus, you talk about a few editors who said yes to your stories, even when they recognized you had more work to do on them, because they wanted to help you make a good story great. “That’s the most generous thing any editor can do,” you say. You are an editor as well an an author. How does one job inform the other, in your own work or in working with others?

LP: Several years ago, I read a review in the New York Times of Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson that said, “So it’s not a perfect book; but then, a perfect book would be perfectly safe, and I don’t have time for that.” That was a hinge moment for me: art shouldn’t be perfect. It can’t be perfect. But what it should be is moving and daring – whether it’s the story or the voice or the structure or the characters. If I’m moved by a piece of writing, if it takes chances, if it comes from the heart and soul, I’m way more likely to work with an author to even out the choppy parts. Because smoothing out a sentence or a plot bump is something an editor can do. Creating passion and voice isn’t.

When I was editing The Night, and the Rain, and the River, there was a submission by Scott Sparling with a voice that stopped me in my tracks. But it had a couple of narrative issues. I just knew, knew, knew that if I rejected this story and saw it published elsewhere later, I’d feel like I dropped the ball. So, I asked Scott if he’d like to work on it together, and it was an unbelievably fulfilling process. I’d point out places that weren’t working and ask questions about what he was going for, and Scott would respond thoughtfully and without defensiveness, and through the back and forth, he strengthened and tightened up the story without ever losing his original vision, or his voice. It’s still a magic experience for both of us.

CC: What are you reading these days?

LP: I’m super ADD when it comes to reading, so I’ve got a few things going right now: I’m reading the manuscript for Margaret Malone’s forthcoming short story collection, People Like You, that comes out in November from Atelier 26, and I just started Jenny Offill’s The Department of Speculation, and I’m re-reading Lolita, and from time-to-time I dip into The Touchtone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction (how’s that for a mouthful of a title?). And I’m always making my way through the latest issue of Discover Magazine, because science makes my heart and my mind explode.

CC: What writing tip or mantra stays with you as your favorite?

LP: “What story would you tell to a dying person?” I might be paraphrasing, but I remember this as something Tom Spanbauer said. You would want it to be worth their limited time, right? It doesn’t matter if you make them cry, or laugh, or think of life in a new way—whatever—you want your writing to provoke genuine emotion. Surprise, even. That’s the best we can do—surprise each other, surprise ourselves, with the quality of mercy and grace.

~

Liz Prato’s short stories and essays have appeared in over two-dozen literary journals and magazines. She was the Guest Prose Editor for the Summer 2013 issue of VoiceCatcher, and edited the fiction anthology, The Night, and the Rain, and the River (Forest Avenue Press, 2014). Her awards include the 2010 Minnetonka ReviewEditor’s Prize, 1st place in the 2005 Berkeley Fiction Review Sudden Fiction Contest, four Pushcart Prize nominations, and a Scholarship to the 2012 Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She began teaching at the Attic Institute in in 2008, and has taught creative writing for several literary organizations throughout Oregon.

Liz lives with furry feline friends and her best friend/husband, who is a bookseller, musician, and writer. And, yes, she dreams of palm trees. Every day. 

Baby’s On Fire is available for purchase from Press 53. You can also enter the giveaway to win a copy by leaving your name in the comments below. Deadline is midnight on Tuesday, June 2nd.