An Interview with Poet Hollie Dugas

Contributed

Penn State Behrend's Smith Creative Writers Reading Series continues through September with a poetry reading featuring Hollie Dugas.

THURSDAY, SEPT. 26

Hollie Dugas lives in New Mexico. Her work has appeared in Barrow Street, Reed Magazine, Qu,Redivider, Porter House Review, Salamander, Poet Lore, Mud Season Review, The Louisville Review, The Penn Review, Breakwater Review, Sixth Finch, Gordon Square Review, Phoebe, Broad River Review, Louisiana Literature, and Penn State Behrend's literary journal Lake Effect. Her poem "A Woman's Confession #5,162" was selected as the winner of Western Humanities Review's Mountain West Writers' Contest in 2017. Hollie has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and for inclusion in Best New Poets. Most recently, she was awarded the 22nd Annual Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize at CALYX, the Heartwood Poetry Prize, and was named as a finalist in Atlanta Review's International Poetry Contest.

Steviee Geagan, a senior in the BFA program at Penn State Behrend, interviewed poet Hollie Dugas in anticipation of her visit to Behrend as part of the Smith Creative Writers Reading Series. Dugas will read from her work on Thursday, Sept. 26, at 6:00 p.m. in the Metzgar building. For more information visit: behrend.psu.edu/readings

Steviee Geagan (SG): What poem, collection of poetry, or poet inspired you to write poetry?

Hollie Dugas (HD): Early, I remember checking out Shel Silverstein's A Light in the Attic from my elementary school's library and being particularly fond of a poem about a little bat afraid of the light. Truly, the first poem that hit me hard was Eliot's "Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock," which I read in my first year of college. From that point on, I began to consume poetry and classic literature with curiosity and zealous intrigue. 

When I read Plath's work, I not only fell in love but felt ultimately understood and thought, Now, here's something I'd like to do. My love for Plath grew much beyond that initial association as I spent more time with her poetry. Still today, as I read her poems, time and time again, she does not cease to impress me. Her work is not only incredibly emotionally charged and raw, but she has a knack for concise, controlled, and poignant language.

SG: How do you approach a poem? Is it an image or word that begins to unravel the work for you, or something else entirely? 

HD: My approach to poetry is always evolving. In the beginning, when I would have an idea or subject I wanted to approach, I would let it percolate, take that subject out into the world with me and let the tendrils of worldly experience stick to it. Sometimes it would take me weeks to get it on the page. As the act of writing poetry becomes easier to access, yes, I often do begin with an image or word as a jumping point and can, many times, get a whole poem out in one solitary attempt. Still, I find it very tempting to take even these poems out into the world to see what happens.

SG: Self-portraits are a recurring theme in your poetry. Is there a reason why you revisit this form?

HD: I was actually thinking about exactly this, recently, because of this upcoming reading. What am I even writing about? Yes, I think self-portraiture is an easy way to truly access the self — to speak about the self as something/someone else. However, after considering the topic with great introspection, I think the real reason that I am drawn to the self-portrait poem is because it's just so damned hard to be human.

SG: Some poets talk about how their work is informed by some kind of obsession, interest, or thought they can't shake off. Is there a particular obsession or idea driving your work forward?  

HD: I definitely think of poetry as an avenue of expression and communication — and I can say, with certainty, that it does feel like something I have to do. What I can't say is why. I've always been intrigued by the craft and wrote periodically from as far back as early childhood, but my real attention to it started in my last year of college when my father was diagnosed with cancer for the second time, and the prognosis was death. I was writing a paper for a capstone course before graduating, and my thesis was to describe how both Plath and Dickinson used death as a muse in their poetry. So, in reading their work, I began producing mine. When I look back, I feel like it saved me from something unknown.

SG: Love and intimacy are explored topics in your work, though each poem about these themes resists becoming simply an echo of your other poems. Each poem is its own unique work with its own unique perspective. How do you approach similar ideas differently?

HD: This question ties in directly with the poetic approach question for me. When I consider my manner of thinking, I definitely do "think" in images. Often times, I have an idea or image that may or may not be associated with love but it, somehow, gets there.

I read somewhere once that we are all ultimately writing about love or death — that passion and mortality are life's main motivators. I'd have to say, it's difficult to argue with that idea.

SG: Finally, what advice would you offer a poet about finding their voice or beginning to learn their craft?

HD: Read closely. Practice. Observe with sincerity. Find a community.