Dominique Parris
ORP: What inspired you to begin writing or creating? Has that source of inspiration changed throughout your life?
Dominique Parris: I began writing as a young child, at the age of 7 or 8, and continued through my teen years. I had the benefit of incredible English teachers in school who were also poets and cultivated my love of reading and writing poetry. At the time writing was as essential as breathing, I couldn’t imagine life without it. However, as I got older and more “serious” writing eluded me. I stopped writing altogether for nearly 20 years. It’s only been in the last few months that I’ve managed to pick up my pen again, which feels like a miracle. Today my inspiration to write comes in part from a fear of losing my poet’s eye once more.
ORP: Does writing or creating energize or exhaust you? What aspects of your artistic process would you consider the most challenging or rewarding?
DP: When I am fortunate enough to be hit with inspiration, I need simply get out of the way of the poem. This is an energizing process. But most of the time I am planning for gold, toiling a long time and sifting through rubble in hopes of something of value to emerge.
ORP: What does vulnerability mean to you as an artist and/or writer?
DP: I often think of those few lines of “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver: “you do not have to be good” and “tell me about despair, yours and I will tell you about mine. ” One can find truth or even beauty in the ugly, the mundane, the shameful, the painful. Poetry allows, or even demands, a vulnerability from the poet to turn her eye toward that from which she might otherwise prefer to turn away.
ORP: What books have you read many times?
DP: Still Life with Oysters and Lemon by Mark Doty. I have returned to this book countless times at different intervals in my life, so much so that his stories feel like my own memories. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde. I often referred to Lorde as my “queer fairy godmother.” Reading Zami, I saw myself reflected in print for the first time, and in that moment realized I had been searching for that kind of representation my whole life.
ORP: What do you hope readers (or your audience) will take away from your creative work?
DP: For me, the sign of a good poem is one that you can feel. One that, upon arriving at the last line makes you express out loud its impact on you. I believe that feeling comes from the unique ability that poetry has to be both singular and universal. I hope readers feel that kind of connection upon reading my work.
