Alfred Fournier

Oyster River Pages: We often think of ourselves as writing or making art, but the process often changes or makes us as well. How do you feel like your writing or art makes you?

Alfred Fournier: For me, writing is an act of self-discovery. Whether I’m writing about an event from my past, the natural world, my family or other people, I discover intimate connections to some part of myself. The writing process enlarges me. It hones my awareness of others and the world.  

ORP: If you could add a prelude, an epilogue, or an addendum to your piece, what would it say?

AF: While I generally prefer that a poem speak for itself, it might be helpful for some readers to learn that I am not the speaker in this poem. It can be an instructive act of compassion to put ourselves into another person’s skin and think about how we would process their experiences.

ORP: What do you hope readers or viewers of your piece take from it?

AF: I hope some readers may feel in this poem a close linkage between joy and loss. How quickly time evaporates, and yet certain moments and experiences remain a part of us, interwoven with who we are. Maybe this makes loss more tolerable.

ORP: How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed your relationship to art and writing, either in the creation of it or the consumption of it?

AF: I feel like I am moving slower now as writer/creator, swimming through thick water. I don’t mean this in a bad way. I am more mindful and patient with myself. I am focusing more on process and less on product, and that is a good thing for me at this stage. As a consumer of art, it has been wonderful! There are so many opportunities for online workshops with great artists, journals opening up their online achieves, and the like. It is so important to support the journals and artists we love, to the extent each of us can.

ORP: Do you believe that hope is a luxury, a responsibility, a danger, or something else? Why?

AF: I love this question. When I was younger, I would definitely have said it was a danger. I was afraid of risk and loss. But now, I would say hope is more essential than ever. Hope is why I do what I do. It has to be, if what I do is to matter. Hope as a responsibility—I like that a lot. It means that hope is more about community than the self, and this is true. Without a sense of community there is no future worth living.

ORP: If you could choose one writer or artist, living or dead, as a best friend or mentor, who would it be? Why?

AF: The poet William Stafford. His poems often contain an extra element beyond the world he’s describing and the speaker of the poem. I experience it as a spiritual presence in the background, whether he is describing a woman in his town dealing with cancer (in “Bess”) or pushing a dead deer off a narrow mountain road (in “Traveling Through the Dark”), somewhere hovering in the background is this calm, watching presence. It makes everything in the poem feel sharply focused and important. If he were alive, and we were friends, I would ask him to show me how he does that.

Alfred Fournier is an entomologist and community volunteer living in Phoenix, Arizona. He coordinates poetry workshops and open mics for a local nonprofit. His poetry and prose have appeared in The New Verse News, Deluge, Plainsongs, Lunch Ticket, The Main Street Rag and elsewhere. Check out his poetry and hear him read his poem here.