BCC Shines a Light On: Susan Kay Anderson
Name of the piece published by BCC:
When/where was it originally published:
Square One, 2006, University of Colorado-Boulder
Tell us more about your piece! What is the background of the piece? What led you to write it? What’s your process?
“Missouri” is a poem about Nome, Alaska, where I lived when growing up, in grades 2-5. We moved from Colombia, Missouri to Nome in the late 1960s. My dad was a social worker for Public Health. He sought out adventure his whole life and loved the idea of living in places isolated from mainstream America.
Nome is a beautiful place. The beauty is in the landscape, animals, sky, and people of the Arctic region. Since we moved around so much while I was growing up, as I look back now, I see that I found similar opportunities for art/expression in each place.
I was also replaying my mom’s story (instinctually) half-way burying myself to feel safe. My mother immigrated from Germany, she lost half her family to Allied Force bombing. Her stories alerted me to the fact that safety is non-existent. I wrote this to remember the time of living in Nome. My process is to write new poems from a springboard poem. In this case, I had written a poem called “Nome Dogfights” that was published by Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies in 2003. This encouraged me.
How did you feel when it was first published and how have your thoughts or feelings on the piece changed from then to now?
When “Missouri” was first published in Square One, I was surprised and amazed that it was accepted. The editor, Jennifer Dunbar Dorn, is my friend and widow of Edward Dorn, who I studied under for my master’s degree. My manuscript, The Body of No Moment, won a Jovanovich prize in 1990. Since it was long after I graduated and several moves later, and a decade and-a-half later, I thought there might be too many people submitting their work to Square One for my poem to get in. I saw that it was placed right next to Roger Echo-Hawk’s work, and this intrigued me. Since that time, I’ve become friends with him and he has supported me in many ways. I have his book and follow parts of his life on social media and elsewhere.
Now, when I look at “Missouri” I see that it expresses what I always write about. I write about being in between things or about the in between places of suspension, void, that sort of thing.
Is there a specific message you would like readers to take away from reading this piece?
Just because a place might seem like it is in the middle of nowhere, it could be a destination, a center of the times, not only of timelessness. When I lived in Nome, Jaques Cousteau gave a speech in the middle of the town. Kathleen Kennedy (Robert Kennedy’s daughter) and her friend stayed with us when they were traveling around Alaska. These well-known people visited Nome as well as thousands of tourists in the summer months. Our baby sitter and foster sister, Elvina, was from a small village and went to boarding school for high school in Nome. She and her friends and community members would hang out at our house listening to albums and watching the T.V.’s one cable channel. Now, with the Iditerod Race and recently renewed gold interests, Nome is not exactly thriving, but still hanging onto the edge of the continent. I learned that places that seem to be in the middle of nowhere are destinations as well as centers of communities and have been for thousands of years. This is for various reasons, but these places have a feeling of home even though they may look desolate, abandoned, broken down.
What else would you like to tell readers about your writing? (Doesn’t have to refer only to your BCC piece)
I have two books that are published—links below. Also, I have forthcoming work in Cascadia Zen II, and recently in The Los Angeles Press Volume 10, and tiny wren lit. Blue issue. Thanks so much for reading my work!
Where can readers find more of your work? (Website/social media, etc)
https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/mezzanine-by-susan-kay-anderson/
https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/susan_kay_anderson
https://twitter.com/SusanKayAnders2
https://www.instagram.com/susankayandersonpoetry/
https://www.facebook.com/susankay.anderson.1
https://hawaiiteacherdetective.blogspot.com/
