An Interview with Heather Hartley
Heather Hartley is the author of Adult Swim and Knock Knock, both from Carnegie Mellon University Press, and was the long-time Paris editor at Tin House magazine. Her short fiction, poems and essays have appeared in or on PBS Newshour, The Guardian, Slice, and other venues. She has presented writers at Shakespeare and Company Bookshop in Paris and has taught creative writing at the American University of Paris and the University of Texas El Paso MFA Online program.
What life experiences do you draw your inspiration from? How do they impact your writing?
Travel, without a doubt. It’s been an integral part of my life for many decades and I can’t imagine my life without it. I’ve lived abroad for over twenty years — in Paris for over fifteen years and now in Napoli for the past four — and to see family and friends and often for my writing and editing work travel is essential.
I was very lucky: My first trip abroad was in junior high school to Switzerland, Austria and Germany. (I happen to be in Switzerland now for the month at the Château de Lavigny writers’ residency — a very special and inspiring and absolutely beautiful place and experience.) My love for and fascination with travel started as a teenager and has never stopped. It’s informed my work, who and how I read, what languages I speak (for right now French and Italian and a little bit of Neapolitan — very little)!
One of the wonderful things about being a writer is that all you need is a notebook and a pen to get to work so there’s no excuse when I’m traveling to not write. I always carry a notebook and pen with me, whether traveling across the Atlantic or across the street.
But far away travel is not always possible and I think of a quote by the consummate Marcel Proust: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” (Le véritable voyage de découverte ne consiste pas à chercher de nouveaux paysages, mais à avoir de nouveaux yeux.)
And I would say that this goes for having new eyes on the page, every day, wherever you find yourself.
Which writers or artists would you regard as the most influential to your journey towards becoming an author?
There are so many! Charles Baudelaire comes to mind first. He wrote, “Always be a poet, even in prose.” “Sois toujours poète, même en prose,” and it’s a sentiment that stays with me as I write, whatever the genre may be.
There’s Virginia Woolf and Pablo Neruda. Sylvia Plath. Marcel Proust. Comtesse de Ségur and Madame de Sévigné with her proclivity for gorgeous letter writing and novelist George Sand. E.B. White. Deborah Levy. Oscar Wilde. Rainer Maria Rilke.
Venetian Renaissance poet Gaspara Stampa and her vivid and dazzling and very modern sonnets. Arthur Rimbaud. Elizabeth Bishop. Italo Calvino.
Dr. Seuss. Patti Smith. Jeanette Winterson. Djuna Barnes and Jean Rhys. Honoré de Balzac and Gustave Flaubert. Homer and H.D. and John Keats. Lewis Carroll and the astonishing Emily Dickinson. And so many more whom I turn and return to.
With artists I would say Odilon Redon for his dreamy haunting visions on the canvas. Brilliant Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi. Jean-Michel Basquiat. Helen Frankenthaler. Alexander Calder for his playful, poetry-in-motion mobiles. Portrait painter Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun. Georgia O’Keefe for being Georgia O’Keefe. Giotto for his singular blue. And Auguste Rodin, always Rodin for his extraordinary capacity to render the beauty of the human form in all of its nuances. (One of my favorite places in Paris is the Musée Rodin with its magical sculpture garden — Le Penseur, The Thinker, right in front of you!)
Of all of your publications, do you have a favorite poem? Is there something that you would regard as the paragon of your career?
“Syrenka,” the final poem in my second and latest collection, Adult Swim, I think represents the scope of my work and serves in some ways as an artist’s statement. It’s a poem about a mermaid but it’s also about fitting in, about belonging, about being comfortable with yourself, and about finding home and being comfortable there, also in the sense of being at home with yourself.
What is the biggest obstacle that you have faced during your career? How have you worked to overcome it?
As my first poetry collection Knock Knock was coming out in early 2010, I had just been diagnosed with breast cancer a few months earlier and was already undergoing intense chemotherapy when my book was published. (I was treated in Paris and the care was, and is, absolutely incredible.)
Overnight I had to find a way to balance medical treatments with the rest of my life, my life that had just come apart at the seams. I was determined to not let cancer take over my artistic life because having that life — my writing — was essential to survive, and even though it may sound strange to say in a life-threatening situation, it was also essential to thrive. Cancer didn’t stop me from doing my book launch in Paris at the marvelous Shakespeare and Company bookshop. It didn’t stop me from traveling from the East Coast to the West in the States giving readings and discussions and lectures later in 2010. It didn’t stop me from signing books with joy in my heart knowing that my first book was out in the world and that I had the incredible chance to share it. And, above all, cancer didn’t stop me from writing.
On a totally other different level, a big obstacle for me is when the coffee runs out. I always try to have some extra on hand in the cupboards.
When writing, do you think about the intended audience of your works? What kind of people do you envision reading your content?
I’m happy for anyone read my work. It’s really great, at some of my readings over the years, audience members have ranged in age from about eight to eighty, and at one reading that I did in West Virginia, where my family lives, my great-step-grandmother came, and the age climbed up to ninety-five! I really like the idea of a continuum of readers.
When I’m writing, I work on focusing on the piece at hand, and concentrating on the writing and finding the best way to tell the story or articulate a thought.
How has your writing routine evolved over time? Are there any tips for writing that you can share with less experienced writers?
More coffee these days, for sure. That, and I get up earlier. (The better to have even more coffee.) Gertrude Stein wrote, “Coffee is a lot more than just a drink; it’s something happening . . .” and for me it’s key to my writing to have coffee happening in my cup. And good coffee or espresso is never far in Napoli.
On a more serious note, sitting down at the desk every day, that consistency and regularity, I find essential in writing. It’s amazing and somewhat miraculous when inspiration happens, but what I’ve found over the years that the routine of writing is crucial and necessary.
The other day a writer friend said to me, “Rituals are important.” It may be that you always use the same sort of pen or OD on a plethora of Post-it notes stuck all over your desk or have a particular cup for your coffee/tea/chai, because it seems to me that this idea of habit, of routine, can be one that is ultimately inspiring, that can help bring your voice and vision forward and into focus.
And I’d like to finish with a quote from tremendous poet Anne Sexton, “One of my secret instructions to myself as a poet is: ‘Whatever you do, don’t be boring.’”
And I’d like to invite you to cultivate your own secret, hush-hush unboring instructions and routines as a writer . . .
Hannah Rose Teeters is a junior Psychology major at Middle Tennessee University with a minor in English. In her spare time. She serves as a senator for the Student Government Association and on the leadership council of several campus organizations.
