Emmy Newman
Oyster River Pages: How is your art or writing informed by current social and/or political issues?
Emmy Newman: I started writing about disaster and the apocalypse about a year ago when I became fascinated by earthquakes, especially the language that surrounds them and their various lasting effects. Now, suddenly living amidst the greatest disaster I could never have imagined, I've had to rethink a lot of
my relationship to imagining the worst. It no longer feels close but here, which presents new challenges. Right now, I'm writing more about the patterns that are made through disaster and what part our human "progress" has played in creating those patterns.
ORP: 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?
EN: At the most basic level, my writing makes me notice. How yesterday tasted different than today, when the dogwoods bloom, how anemones feel like touching the squishiness underneath your tongue. In a grander sense, my writing has brought me to this community that I feel so lucky to be a part of, this community that has become my home. On a Zoom call yesterday with everyone in my MFA program I felt sorry that I couldn't be with all of these amazing people in person but also unbelievably grateful to still have them in my life. To watch the boxes of humans I call my friends laugh and clap their hands in silence almost made me cry with joy.
ORP: If you could add a prelude, an epilogue, or an addendum to your piece, what would it say?
EN: Poetry has surprised me again and again but I would still never have guessed that I would write a poem that seemed to accidentally predict something that would happen. I wrote "Every Cruise Ship Has a Morgue" in February, about a month before a Princess cruise ship was deemed one of the first carriers of COVID-19 to the US. In some ways, this poem now only reminds me of that first terrible week when things started to feel shaky and dangerous, the slow cascade into the initial national lockdown. But reading it also makes me remember the before time, how humor spills through. This poem is concerned with pulling at the silty edges of an idea that sells itself as your own personal perfection. This poem wants you to remember your own hopes and not to live by the ideas being sold to you.
ORP: What do you hope readers or viewers of your piece take from it?
EN: In some ways, I feel like I do not have the right to ask this of a reader but I have already done so by writing this piece. Humbly, I hope that this piece makes readers think about their own relationship towards death not just in knowing that death exists and will come for us but more in the sense of building a relationship to the concept. I can't remember who it was who said that humanity will eventually crumble because of human beings' inability to accept death but that is something that rings true for me now.
To be clear, this statement does not mean that governments, universities, and citizens should be fine letting others die from COVID (my own university has refused to listen to the concerns and requests of faculty,
continuing to cite an overwhelming desire for in-person instruction without ever having sent out a comprehensive survey of the student body.) To me, these devastating administrative actions stem from an inability to accept the reality of death. And part of the relationship with death in my opinion is the respect for life not just human but animals, plants, fungi, etc; less hierarchy of living and more closeness of being. There is no magical death cure waiting in the wings, we are the only ones taking care of each other as communities, wearing masks and sharing produce and maybe offering poetry. There is only us with all our fear and humor and desire for a good life, a boat trip, something to love.
ORP: Do you believe that hope is a luxury, a responsibility, a danger, or something else? Why?
EN: I think hope is a muscle. It is intrinsically connected to your body but sometimes disconnected from your self. It can become atrophied from disuse and put out of mind for a long time as not needed, not useful. All muscles develop differently and on their own timeline. I have hated so much of the "hope is a responsibility" rhetoric that has been flushed through social media channels this summer, it feels so out of touch with reality. The things that remind me of a more muscular hope are a good walk through town, my partner making me laugh, being able to help my friend prepare for the semester, a new challenge with just a few steps illuminated running through.
Emmy Newman is a MFA candidate at the University of Idaho. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Witness, Yemassee, New Ohio Review, Cream City Review, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, and currently serves as the poetry editor for Fugue. Read her poetry here.