Poetry lovers! Let me get right to the point here, in case you are lingering over coffee, pondering what to do today.
Christopher Willingham, a very interesting and original poet, is reading from his new collection of poems, “Always Already,” at World Eye Bookshop at 2 p.m. today.
Willingham, who lives in East Longmeadow now but spent many years in Greenfield, won the Poet’s Seat prize in 2004 with his poem, “Still Life.” The poem is unusual in that it is divided down the middle by a thin white space that creates a poem on either side of it, as well as a poem that can be read left to right, with your eye perceiving the white space as a pause in each line.
“I’m really interested in this idea of a form that can be read as three separate poems,” I say. “How do you start that? How does that come together in your mind?”
Willingham smiles. “Well, it’s interesting, it doesn’t come together in my mind so much as my mind comes together in receiving the piece after it’s on the page,” he says.
“I’ll have to describe a little bit about my working method. On the one hand, this will sound like a classic artist’s evasion, and on the other hand, something that I think all artists can relate to, regardless of discipline: I write my way to the poem.”
When Willingham says “regardless of discipline,” he knows what he’s talking about. Willingham is a musician as well as a visual artist and a professor of visual art at Holyoke Community College. He’s exhibited in New York, Boston, Germany, Turkey and throughout western Massachusetts. He paints; he makes collage; he draws with ink pens mounted on a drill; he draws with smoke.
“It’s really fugitive,” he says of that last method.
The cover image for “Always Already” is one of Willingham’s abstract paintings, titled “Fire-imbibed, Thy Sanctuary.”
Willingham describes the process of composing — whether he’s writing or painting or playing music — as “an emergent process.”
“I’m not starting in a top-down way with an idea I’m trying to illustrate or with a particular form in mind, so that I’m manipulating elements towards a preconceived end,” he says. “I’m simply immersing myself in the process and dealing with whatever the constituent pieces are, whether it’s language or color or mark, and exploring relationships.”
He begins by entering “a certain state of receptiveness to the medium,” and only once the elements he’s working with begin to emerge, does he look for an overall structure.
That said, the poem “Still Life” began as a response to structure.
“The origin of this particular poem is, for me, kind of beautifully random and circumstantial,” Willingham says. “I was rooting through the poetry section at the Montague Bookmill shortly after it opened, so I’m not even sure of the year: 1990 maybe? And I saw a poem in a book. I don’t recall the author — it wasn’t someone from the canon — and I noticed there was a divided poem.”
Wellingham retreated to one of the Bookmill’s upstairs reading rooms, sat down with his notebook and attempted to create a similarly structured poem.
Willingham recognizes some of the images in the poem as having been inspired by staring out the window at the Sawmill River. The repetition of words and sound sprang from the same source.
“Obviously the repetition in the poem served as a way of navigating through the words and images while I was writing,” he says.
“One of the things I tell my students about drawing and painting — and this is certainly a modernist idea — is that works of art are, among other things, snapshots of process,” he says. “And there’s something beautiful, and I think very eloquent, about preserving those passages in the completed work.”
Willingham will often generate lots of images and ideas when he begins to work.
“Some of it is sometimes a very facile playing with language,” he says.
Then he’ll edit and pare away anything he deems inessential.
The form of “Still Life” asks us to revisit the words in the poem three times, assembling different meanings as we go. I find this oddly wonderful.
“I’m glad you feel that way,” Willingham says with a laugh. “Because I guess I’m concerned that it might be an obsessive demand. But I think works of art really do require that (revisiting).”
“Howard Gardner, the great psychologist who developed the theory of multiple intelligences and has done so much for education and creativity, has talked about one of the hallmarks of a great work of art is its capacity to inspire revisits,” Willingham says. “And he’s talked also about speaking for the cause of the arts and humanities as an essential part of education, something that’s unfortunately, and I think scandalously, under attack.”
In our culture, reading great works of literature, encountering great works of art or asking philosophical questions are often considered acts of privilege, Willingham says.
“Do you mean ‘privileged’ in the sense that it’s not practical?”
“Yeah, it’s not practical and doesn’t lead to a concrete outcome,” Willingham explains. “But it enlarges our humanity to do it.”
“So in that sense, it’s not a privilege but utterly essential,” I say.
“I do think that,” Willingham responds.
“Because our humanity needs expanding,” I continue.
Willingham nods in assent. “It certainly does.”
World Eye Bookshop is at 156 Main St., Greenfield. Contact: 772-2186 or www.worldeyebookshop.com. Books will be available for purchase and signing.
Trish Crapo is a writer and photographer who lives in Leyden. She is always looking for poets, writers and artists to interview for her columns. She can be reached at tcrapo@mac.com