From Raw Emotion to Polished Book
An interview with poet Lindsey Royce about her new collection, The Book of John
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Lindsey Royce about her latest collection, The Book of John, a lament for her husband who passed away from cancer in his fifties.
We discussed:
Proprioceptive writing, where Lindsey’s poems start
Why she cut the number of poems in the manuscript in half
Braided structures: Ordering poems both chronologically and non-linearly
The role of collaborators and advisors in manuscript development
Lindsey Royce’s poems have been published in many journals, including Aeolian Harp #8, #7 and #5; Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts; The Hampden-Sydney Review; The New York Quarterly; Poet Lore; and Washington Square Review. Her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes in 2019, 2020, and 2021. Royce’s first poetry collection, Bare Hands, was published in September of 2016, and her second collection, Play Me a Revolution, published in September of 2019, won second place for poetry in the 2020 Independent Publishers Book Awards. Her third collection is The Book of John.
Watch the video below, or keep scrolling to read the interview. To hear Lindsey read poems from The Book of John, check out the video.
From Raw Emotion to Polished Book
Radha: In The Book of John, your poems have an insistence—on language and on the beauty of language—in the face of tremendous suffering. Can you describe the process that you went through to create this book? Was it different than for other books?
Lindsey: I have a writing group that met every single day at the time I was writing the book. I wrote it in three months. Every day I wrote a poem. The book was twice as long initially. I cut half the poems, not because some were not as good, but because some were simply repetitive gestures. For example, the “I wish I could bring you back” poem. And then another. The book didn't have the arc I wanted with those repetitions. It was very difficult. I enlisted the help of a friend to guide me objectively in what to remove and what was strongest.
The book just poured out of me. I know it's not popular to say that poetry is a kind of therapy. But this was—although the crafting thereafter took two years. I worked very hard on the crafting, but the poems had to be written. They were just going right through me. I almost had no control over them.
I didn't know what I thought about the afterlife. I didn't know what I thought about caretaking. The editing process helped me solidify my perspective of what might happen after death, and of the injustice of that I felt about my husband’s being taken at such a young age and robbed of what I think is about 30 years. It was crushing. The way that he suffered was the most brutal thing I've ever been through. A few months later, my best friend of 33 years died, and then my mother died within a month—so there was all this grief.
I went to people who were objective who hadn't seen any of the poems to help me shape the book, asking “Is this ordering effective?” I wanted an arc that would tell the story but not be completely chronological. I also very much wanted his personality in the book, for people to know who he was, to remember him.
In other books I have responded to the news. I have responded to social issues. And I might get back to that, but the poems in this book are primarily narrative. I got out of my own way and into the narratives. I didn't try to do a whole lot of other forms. I didn't try for abstraction, because the situation had no abstraction to me.
Radha: You have a thoughtful process around polishing work, dialoguing with others about what emerged in that generative space. As poets, we have moments when it's very easy to generate, right? Then, conversely, when it’s easier to do the polishing work. Those two modes allow the material to come through in a powerful way for writer and for reader.
Lindsey: My process typically starts with what is emotionally pressing on my heart, something I wish I could write. When I say that, people correct me and say, “Oh, no, you know, it's not just emotional dumping. It's not just therapy. It's crafted.” So I do want to acknowledge that it took me two years to craft these poems and sort through them. I appreciate your your clear sightedness about that. Thank you.
Radha: I appreciate the level of detail in these poems about grief. The emotional content is so well presented—contained by—images. The details are fundamental to the work of this book.
Would you share a little bit about the organizing principle you chose? How it went from 112 pages to 70ish pages?
Lindsey: I had two strands of thought and I wanted to braid them together. I wanted the reader to not only learn about the cancer, but to learn about who he was. I organized it into sections. The first section is an overview which gives the reader more and more information about him—that he was a Marine, that he was a fisherman and hunter, but he gave up hunting because he had this epiphany and he couldn't kill animals. Some poems fit chronologically into a story arc, others don’t but resonate with one another.
The second section is an angry poem against God. Why would God let someone suffer so much? And that applies to everything around the world? Why are their children you know, in places in poor places of poverty, whose stomachs are bulging from lack of nutrition, why? You know why?
The third section is after he passed, about my grief. But it also includes some poems that show he was full of shenanigans, practical jokes. The last section, the fourth section, is mostly about my idea that he's right there with me. You know, he's just on another side of the veil.
I worked hard to get a good mixture of poems about him and to present them not in a chunk, but spread out slowly throughout the book. I got a writer friend who writes poetry and fiction to help me with that. She was wonderful help. She helped me decide what to cut. Because, you know, when you're writing all these poems about the beloved, it's hard to let any of them go.
Radha: I appreciate how each of these sections function outside of chronology. You’re attentive to how the poems talk to one another within those sections. The braiding effect you described makes for a dynamic and organic reading experience.
I think it’s easy for us to get stuck in a chronological mindset. We’re all well trained to write chronologically, but that’s not really how we experience life. Sure, we're going through our day, but in that day we're thinking back on something that happened 10 years ago. Or we're projecting into the future. So, in a way, a less chronological structure feels closer to how we experience life.
Lindsey: It’s very hard to see and structure your own work. Sometimes you have to put it down for a while. Even when you use the principles that I described, it's good to have some help.
Radha: You mentioned in the beginning of our conversation that the poems poured out of you in this short time period. What was your approach to revising the individual poems?
Lindsey: I allow myself to put just about everything into a poem. If it comes to my mind, it goes on the paper. I wouldn't call it a free write. I do proprioceptive writing. There's a book by Linda Metcalf and Tobin Simon, about proprioceptive writing and finding your voice. I use that process to generate ideas. Then, in the writing group, we throw a bunch of words into a pot and we use all, some, or none. It creates connections and imagery I would not have thought of immediately. It adds a wildcard factor, which creates something fresh.
Next I highlight the best of what’s come out of that. It doesn't have to make literal sense. I make emotional sense first. Then I go back and I make literal sense. And then I polish for rhythm. I'm obsessed with rhythm and sound. I also like the way poems look on the page—shaping line breaks and stanza breaks. And then I just edit and edit and edit and edit, over and over again. I read every single line aloud.
It’s a long process, and it involves all the elements of poetry. What am I doing? Is that element measuring up?
Radha: I hear your attention to rhythm consistently throughout the book.
Lindsey: I've always been obsessed with rhythm. I studied with Alan Ginsberg and he referred me to poems and poets who were rhythmically obsessed. I'm not fan of direct rhyme. I'm a fan of near rhyme. You know, so I don't write the formal poems with the direct rhyme even when I write a sonnet.
Radha: Your poems lean towards that formal sensibility. I appreciate the skill that it takes. It sounds to me like you've honed your process over time, getting to know yourself and how you write as a poet?
Lindsey: Yes, it's very holistic, but it starts with the proprioceptive writing and the poetry game. I've gotten in the habit of writing very quickly, which I like, especially for this book, because it increases the urgency in the poems. I thought this book needed to have urgency.
Radha: It certainly does.
—
Learn more about Lindsey’s work at lindseyroyce.com
Upcoming Events / Poet to Poet Community
The Poets Circle: Drop-in Conversations
MAY: Flow & Modulation—On Variation
May 17, 12-1pm MT
How do you invite variation into your manuscript? How do the authors you admire work with the principle of variation?
JUNE: The Shapes of Things—On Form
June 7, 6-7pm MT & June 21, 12-1pm MT
How do you work with the principle of form in your poems and in your manuscript? Is form a generative force, a guiding principle for revision, or both?