Prompt to Page with Lynnell Edwards === Carrie: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Prompt to Page podcast, a partnership between the Jessamine County Public Library and the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. I'm your host, librarian and poet, Carrie Green. Each episode we interview a published writer who shares their favorite writing prompt. Our guest today is Lynnell Edwards. Lynnell is the author of six collections of Poetry. Most recently, the Bearable Slant of Light, which documents the onset of bipolar disorder in her son. The impacts on the family, as well as constructions of mental illness as depicted in literature and history. She's Associate programs director for the Naslin-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University, where she mentors and lectures in poetry. She is also book reviews editor for Good River Review, Spalding's Literary Journal. Find her at lynnelledwards.com for more about her work, [00:01:00] including essays, poems, online interviews, and upcoming events. Welcome Lynnell, and thanks for joining us. Lynnell: Oh, I'm so glad to be here. Thank you Carrie. Carrie: So, as you mentioned in your bio, The Bearable Slant of Light documents the onset of your son's bipolar disorder, and you incorporate the language of medical assessments and medications into the book. So I'm just curious, at what point in the writing process did you realize that that was going to help tell your family's story? Lynnell: Huh, that's a good question. I would say at the point at which I realized, I think I have a book here. Because I had been writing poems, including the long first poem, which in the first draft didn't have the clinical assessments and discharge papers that you're probably thinking of included. Mm-hmm. I've been writing poems about it of different types, but when I realized I think this is gonna be a [00:02:00] book, I realized I think more context and more what I'll call recent archival information would really give interesting texture to this, and it would be a way to convey some kinds of expository information that otherwise didn't feel like I wanted it to be in a poem. I wanted poems to do a different kind of emotional work. And so including particularly, again, that long first poem that's in sections, which includes three sets of documents from the hospital that I just transcribed and had the book designer put in a different font that offer that information and explain. They offer one kind of narrative and then set against that is my attempt to tell the story in another kind of narrative form. Carrie: Mm-hmm. I think no matter what your journey through the medical system mm-hmm. You know, whether it's an illness or a mental health [00:03:00] issue mm-hmm that medical language can be so scary. And Lynnell: It is scary. And, I think that, as I've been exploring some work in narrative medicine and how that's used and practiced, the clinical narratives that, that individuals have told about them and which they have to listen and process this new story about themselves, that is full of this scary language. Those are hard, and it can leave people feeling relatively powerless. I know that, and sometimes folks ask me, well, what did your son think about this book? Right? I, he knew I was working on the book. He had seen a few poems. I gave him an early advanced review copy. 'cause I said, look, I want you to see this before this is out there in the world. And he was satisfied with things and he said, you know, there are parts of it that are really true. There were parts of it that were actually kind of funny. Mm-hmm. He said the hardest thing, the very hardest thing to read was that discharge [00:04:00] paper where he's referred to as "the patient exhibits, this, the patient does not respond. The patient has possible thought blocking." You know, and in that same document I'm referred to as "the mother said this, the mother said that, the mother reported," and it's, it's very hard. And he said that was the hardest because it is scary and you do feel powerless. Carrie: Yeah. Lynnell: The pharmaceutical poems about each one, about the, the little drugs, I mean, that kind of information is also my attempt to sort of push back against what otherwise you get on those tiny little folded up pieces of paper with tiny little six point font that explains what the side effects and the chemical construction and the intention is of all the pharmaceuticals, and you just don't even know what it is. So that is also language that pushes back on, in some cases, even just the name of certain psychiatric meds. Carrie: Right. And did you come to view that [00:05:00] language differently in writing the poems? Did how you experienced it change in any way? Lynnell: Yeah, I mean, I do feel like it gave me a measure of empowerment. I think particularly as I've shared this work with audiences that include clinicians and audiences that are primarily, say parent support groups. I've spoken with, you know, parents and support groups for adult children that have struggle long struggles with mental illness and it, it does feel, you know, empowering and I think, and, and yes. And so in that ways it also feels not quite so scary to me. Yeah. Carrie: Yeah. And how long did it take you to start writing about these experiences? Did you need some time to kind of process them or were you kind of writing all along? Lynnell: I think writing all along might be the best way to say it. This book, the poems in this book span at least the eight years from the onset to the point at which I had to turn in a manuscript and close the [00:06:00] door mm-hmm on the book. And in the meantime I had two other chapbooks published. So I was working on other things even as I was kind of beginning to pull poems about this together. And so. The other poems in the book, for instance, poems about our anxious world. And just being anxious about, for instance, in one of the poems near the end, you know, having to change my password a million times for, um, uh, things and the way that surveillance technology makes us anxious. You know? Mm-hmm. They're always. You know, it feels like there are always people that are watching your passwords and telling you to change them and locking you out of things and not letting you see your paycheck and all kinds of stuff. Mm-hmm. Or setting off alarms. And so also the poems about characters from literary history or from history generally, you know, those were coming together as my worldview was temporarily focused in another way. But it took, these poems were, this book was a while being built. And again, like I said, in the meantime, I had, you know, two [00:07:00] chapbooks come out, the one about glass blowing and then, this great Green Valley about Kentucky history. Carrie: Yeah, that's certainly the case for me too. I'm usually working on more than one project at a time. Lynnell: Right. Carrie: So what about, what about prompts? Yes. What role do they play in your writing process? Lynnell: So, I've been thinking about this for a while because I've been part of fewer workshops and writing instruction than you might think. So I don't really have a whole lot of experience writing to prompts I've been given. Mm-hmm. But I think ultimately as writers, we've got to have sort of internal prompts. I mean, a good a, a good external prompt can always, more often than I would like to think, actually give you a good poem. And in fact, there's one poem in the book that is very old called Pareidolia. And it was written to a word of the day prompt. I happened to sit in on a friend's workshop and that's what she did, word of the day. And I used this word of the day prompt , with some folks who were part of the poetry gauntlet with the Carnegie Center. And I said, you know what? This actually works. And I've got a poem in the book that was a [00:08:00] prompt and you just never know. In the case of the word of the day poem in the book, it is maybe the oldest poem in the book, and I wrote it, and I never knew what to do with it. In fact, I think that poem. It's at least as old as 2010 or so. It felt like a one-off. And I It never did fit into any of the other books, exactly. Little did I know it was lying in wait for a book that looks at anxiety and mental crisis and for it to suddenly play a starring role in what became a larger context for understanding struggles with mental health. So. I think they're always great. So to get back to that idea of you need these internal prompts, for me, other poems have been the best sort of prompt. If you look across my work, I wrote work in a lot of series, so I think in every book except the two chapbooks, I have [00:09:00] sequences and those have, usually the first one has been maybe inspired by something external and maybe doesn't even start out as the thought that this is gonna be a whole series of poems, one for every month of the calendar year. Mm-hmm. Which was the case in The Highwayman's Wife. I wrote, I think the first poem was for, was it ended up being for October, but it wasn't initially written as a poem for every month of the year. But when I wrote it and then I titled it, I realized, oh, I could write some more of these and I did. And then I set my little task of, okay, you can only write the poem for the month of the year. In the month of the year. So this is gonna take you exactly 12 months and you better write that poem. And I got superstitious about I cannot write the May poem in April. I must wait until May. But in other cases, the pharmaceutical poems in, The Bearable Slant of Light about each drug, that was actually a prompt that I [00:10:00] was presenting at the Kentucky Poetry Society gathering that pre pandemic was in person, and I was sitting in on what all was happening. And actually Christopher McCurry had a prompt of this is workshop is you're gonna write a chapbook. And so. I thought, okay, I'm gonna write a whole chapbook of poems in in an hour? Let's see what happens. And I started, I thought, what do I write about? What do I know about? And at that point, I knew a lot about pharmaceutical medications. And for each of those poems, each one led to another. Each po, each drug was a prompt from another. And initially, with those poems I gave myself. I let myself use the same first line for every one of them. This is the, this is the one that, whether it was Celexa or Depakote or Lithium, or Geodon, or Zyprexa, et cetera, A to Z. You know, I, I gave myself that permission, that first line, which was a really good sort of trigger for setting [00:11:00] up the action of the poem. This is the one that prescribed for this. This is the one that made him like this. This is the one. And boy, those things just spilled out. And again, each poem was itself the prompt. When I revised 'em, I had a reader say, you know, the same first line is getting a little bit, is wearing a little thin. And I thought, mm-hmm. Yep, it is. I'll keep it for a couple, but I'll look for more interesting places to start. I have a series of short poems. I think I really like short poems. I have cocktails, pharmaceuticals, and antiques in various books. In the case of, and all of them too, I think revolve around what I think we love as poets, which is new kinds of words and language. Mm-hmm. You know, that was what those clinical papers gave me. New ways, new vocabulary, new syntax, new stuff. The glass blowing book. Same thing in the case of Covet, I have, two sets of poems that are written as little [00:12:00] stories embedded in the language for describing antiques. In this case, it was a big antique show in Louisville at Locust Grove, and I started getting interested by the kinds of keywords and specific words that are used to describe a particular piece of furniture from the 18th century and what the other story might be about a candlestick or a cupboard or glass prisms. And I was interweaving those and they're very short, and I thought, okay, these have to fit on this. Now I'm making a, a visual motion that no one listening to a podcast will see, but, you know, a little card, they have to fit on that, and each one was a prompt for another one. Mm-hmm. So I think that those are my prompts. And I had a few things that I've, I've done this with, with students, in the MFA at Spalding in terms of making your own poems prompts. And these are, I think, more directed at narrative kinds of poetry, but there's some things that [00:13:00] you can do. You've written a poem, you really like it. Could I write more like this? Could this poem be its own prompt? And I think there are some ways to do that. So I'll just, articulate a, a couple of those. One would be to find a place in the poem where another voice breaks in, give that voice its own poem. Find a place in the poem where someone asks a question and or a question is raised. Maybe the speaker raises a question, answer that question in another poem and another poem. Find a simile or a metaphor in the poem. Use that figurative language as the first line In a new poem. Do some research about the history of a place you are writing, including the historical, natural, and mythological histories. I have a short series of poems about Red River Gorge in Covet. And I had made some notes about poems while I was in fact hiking in the Red River Gorge. But then I went back into a couple of sources and there's a lot of great sources on the Red River Gorge, for instance, that gave me information and language again [00:14:00] about like the geological history, you know, what kind of arch is this really? What, what is that language? So all of those, I think using the poem as the prompt will often generate more poems and give you if not a series, maybe a little suite of poems that go together. Mm-hmm. So that's my prompt. Carrie: Yeah. No, that's great. So, and I think also that, you know, that wouldn't necessarily be limited to just poetry, like Lynnell: Right. Carrie: You know, if you were working on, well, you know, Ross Gay's Book of Delights. Lynnell: Right. Carrie: Or, you know, something like that. Or even short fiction. So I think that having. I mean, I am a fan of projects myself and my Lynnell: yes you are Carrie: in my poetry. So, and then I think that's the purpose that it serves, for me. Lynnell: I, I agree. And I mean, we could probably both think about, though not here on the spot collections of linked short stories, the ways in which characters in, you know, someone like Faulkner's [00:15:00] work come in and out of, novels and stories in a particular place. Mm-hmm. Absolutely and short form. Ross Gay is a great example. Amy Nezhukumatathil has a similar work. It's a thing now. You do these short form, even hybrid kinds of writing that are broadly in a sequence or thematically or subject grouped, and it's marvelously generative, I mean, mm-hmm. To do that. Carrie: Yeah. Lynnell: And for me, it's always felt a little bit more grounded in some ways than word of the day. Although, there's obviously nothing better than a good word of the day to prompt a poem that you never know where it will become at some point more important than it felt like at the time. Carrie: Absolutely. Yeah. You never know, like you said. Lynnell: Exactly. Carrie: So do you have any final tips that you'd like to give? Lynnell: Only that I seem to be a little bit adrift now. In my writing, which I don't think is [00:16:00] uncommon when you kind of close the door on a big project. And so I have got lots and lots of what feel like right now, one-off poems that I probably would find useful to go back into and see what else is there using some of these very strategies I'm espousing now, for some of these poems and see, see what I've got that I could write more of and begin to give shape to the I don't know, 20 or 30 good poems I've written since about 2020. When did I close the door on this? I closed the door on this in 2023. So the 20 or 30 good poems that I've written since then, probably there's some material there, and that's, that's what I need to do to start mooring myself to some body of work that would look like mm-hmm a new manuscript in a couple of years. Carrie: Yeah. Well, we look forward to seeing that. Lynnell: Me too. And I really appreciate the chance to talk a little bit about [00:17:00] this. This is, you know, we talk about some kinds of things like this in the, in the MFA setting, but it's really fun to be able to talk with you and to share these reflections on that. And I think you've got a, a terrifically practical craft production here. I know reaches a lot of people. Carrie: Well, thank you, and thanks again for joining us. Lynnell: All right, wonderful. I hope to see you soon. Carrie: Thank you for listening to Prompt to Page. To learn more about the Jessamine County Public Library, visit jesspublib.org. Find the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning at carnegiecenterlex.org. Our music is by Archipelago, an all instrumental musical collaboration between three Lexington based university professors. Find out more about Archipelago: Songs from Quarantine Volumes One and Two at the links on our [00:18:00] podcast website.