Emma Wynn
Oyster River Pages: What inspired you to begin writing or creating? Has that source of inspiration changed throughout your life?
Emma Wynn: My father was a musician & song-writer who loved to read poetry and literature aloud to me—he started with Edgar Allan Poe, Flannery O'Connor, James Baldwin, and other adult writers, even when I was in elementary school. He loved to write and kept notebooks full of song lyrics and poems that inspired him. I don't have his gift with music, but he inspired me to appreciate beautiful language and write for myself. I was homeschooled up until 5th grade, so I spent a lot of time wandering the woods of rural Pennsylvania, learning about the animals and plants that made their home there. My connection to that land and its creatures continues to echo throughout my work. I'm inspired to write by the need to understand what it means to be human and live in this world.
ORP: Do you write or create with an audience in mind? If so, how do you consider the relationship between that audience and your work throughout your creative process?
EW: I would write even if I weren't read by anyone else—I write because I need to. It's the way I process my experiences and make sense of them. I do think about clarity of expression, because creating that clarity on the page allows me to create it in my mind as well. I trust that if I have written something as clearly and truthfully as I can, someone else reading the piece will stir to that truth.
ORP: What does success as a writer or artist mean to you?
EW: I measure success based on whether or not I have been able to achieve what I wanted to when thinking of the poem. I am often thinking on two levels—first, am I describing a specific experience clearly, using unpretentious and beautiful language? Second, what is the abstract concept or idea that I want reading about this moment to evoke? A truly excellent poem should have both levels—it shouldn't just share an abstract idea or paint a picture of a scene. So perhaps I am writing about eating Jewish food and the idea I want to evoke is claim that "home" is a place we feel we fit but also a site of trauma and constraint. I have to think about how to describe the experience of eating that evokes the sense of comfort and unease, through the words and images chosen, without stating it outright. My language needs to feel natural, so that it becomes transparent and lets the experience come to life. If I'm able to do that, I feel I've achieved what I set out to.
ORP: Who do you consider to be your creative ancestors and contemporaries for your art and/or writing? How does your creative work converse with theirs?
EW: Mary Oliver, Galway Kinnell, Leslie Feinberg, Simone de Beauvoir, Gary Snyder, Ada Limon, Naomi Shihab Nye, Karl Ove Knausgaard. I'm inspired by writers who push themselves beyond the ego's usual defenses to be honest about their experiences and the realities of the world without falling into the trap of thinking that being honest about the darkness of our world means that there is no light.
ORP: Does writing or creating energize or exhaust you? What aspects of your artistic process would you consider the most challenging or rewarding?
EW: Both. I often feel a pressure in my head and a driving force to finish a poem once I've started it. I like to finish poems in one sitting because of that. If I get stuck, it can be difficult for me to go about other things and stop thinking about the poem.
ORP: What books have you read many times?
EW: "It" by Stephen King, "My Struggle" by Karl Ove Knausgaard, "American Primitive" by Mary Oliver, "Ancillary Justice" by Ann Leckie, "Song for Arbonne" by Guy Gavriel Kay, "The Collected Stories of Sherlock Holmes" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "Redwall" by Brian Jacques, "The Book of Nightmares" by Galway Kinnell, "Zhuangi: The Complete Writings" translated by Brook Ziporyn, "Good Omens" by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett.
ORP: What do you hope readers (or your audience) will take away from your creative work?
EW: It is possible to choose joy.
