10 QUESTIONS for Lisa Beech Hartz

- By Amal Zaman

"When she asks me to remove
my spectacles, I am wary, feel
as if she is asking me to reveal
a wound. The lenses
a closed window between
what I have seen..."

—from "Portrait of José Clemente Orozco, Doris Ulmann, New York City, 1929" which appears in the Fall 2016 issue out now! (Volume 57, Issue 3).
 

Tell us about one of the first pieces you’ve written.

When I was a girl I wrote vast treatises on my plan to save the world. It was the early seventies. My plan was pretty much everybody should love each other. Also peace. Peace was a good idea.

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?

I’m scaring myself to death right now writing prose poems that are little scraps of memoir, something I have never done. Writing honestly about yourself is hard, and books like the stunning, An Abbreviated Life, by Ariel Leve are very helpful. I’m also reading a collection of interviews with memoirists, Why We Write About Ourselves, which keeps me going when I’d rather be writing about anyone else. I’m almost always reading an Irish writer (Colum McCann at the moment) to keep my writer’s ear in tune.

What other professions have you worked in?

I’ve been a teacher in a wide variety of settings – elementary school, university, community writers center, city jail. I co-founded that writers center, and was a director there until I founded Seven Cities Writers Project, a non-profit which brings creative writing workshops to underserved communities. The work at the jail continues to be the most meaningful thing I’ve ever done professionally.

What did you want to be when you were young?

A civil rights lawyer or a documentary filmmaker. 

What inspired you to write this piece?

This poem is part of a collection exploring the life and work of the photographer Doris Ulmann, a wealthy Manhattanite who took up photography at the turn of the last century. She started out in portraiture and was renowned for her patience with her subjects, waiting for the moment of revelation. The portrait of Orozco is a perfect example of her artistry. Miss Ulmann might have remained in the city, photographing important people and enjoying her privileged life. Instead, she took her big box camera and glass plate negatives up into the hollers of Appalachia and to the Gullah communities of Carolina to record those disappearing people. She was never in robust health, and died in her early fifties. I admire her so much, when poems from the manuscript find a home, I am so pleased for her.

Is there any specific music that aids you through the writing or editing process?

Lately I’ve got into the habit of listening to classical music as part of my process. It seems to trigger something – I lose myself and my awareness of my physical surroundings. Hmm, could that be the “place…imagined”?

Do you have any rituals or traditions that you do in order to write?

I put my youngest child on the bus, take the dog for a walk to clear my head and listen for a phrase or scout for an image to get me started. I try to stick to a schedule, writing in my planner “draft” or “edit” or “submit” on days I’m assigning myself to complete those tasks. Something about committing it to the calendar forces me to stay in the chair until I get it done. Before I write, I read. Usually a poem. Something familiar like Eliot.

Who typically gets the first read of your work?

My poor husband who, though he was the editor of our undergraduate literary magazine (and my first publisher!) can only seem to say: It’s great! Which is all I really want to hear in the early stages. I’m in a place now where I don’t want a whole lot of input. I need to own the work completely before I send it out into the world. I’ve stayed away from writers’ groups for a while now. They have their time and place. Just not now and not here.

If you could work in another art form what would it be?

I’d be happy to write songs and sing like Bonnie Raitt. That would be just fine.

What are you reading right now?

I like to have several books going at once. I just started the Springsteen memoir and it’s like an anthem on the page. Gorgeous. I’m fascinated by the intersection of poetry and visual art and City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O’Hara by Brad Gooch is a brilliant exploration of that. I’m about to crack open Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann who just gave an entrancing reading here. And I’ve just finished Edna O’Brien’s The Little Red Chairs, from which I will never recover.

Lisa Beech Hartz directs Seven Cities Writers Project, which brings creative writing workshops to underserved communities, some of the work produced can be seen here. Her poems have appeared in Blackbird, Redivider, Mud Season, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. She lives in the Tidewater region of Virginia with her husband and four sons.