Christal Cooper
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*Article With Excerpts – 1,503 Words
All excerpts have been given copyright privilege
by Terri Kirby Erickson and Press 53
Terri
Kirby Erickson’s Poetry Collection
A Lake of
Light and Clouds
Terri
Kirby Erickson’s most recent poetry collection, A Lake of Light and Clouds,
was published by Press 53. (April 3, 2014).
The poems from this collection are focused on
Erickson’s family, her own reflections, her spirituality, nostalgia of a time
past, environmentalism, and victims of crime.
A Lake of Light and Clouds is
illustrated by Erickson’s uncle Stephen White.
“It seemed natural for me to ask Stephen to do
the paintings for my book covers, and as his only niece, I feel like I had a
bit of "pull" when it came to what his answer might be. He is an amazing artist whose work has been
in MoMA, so I feel grateful and blessed that his fine paintings grace the
covers of my books.”
IRISES
For
Stephen White
By the stone wall on top
of which my mother balanced as a child,
grow the purple irises
my grandmother planted, still blooming.
The house is there, as well, but the paint
is peeling, the front porch
collapsing.
The man inside carries
a baseball bat,
peers at us through the bulging screen
door like we’ve come to rob
the place, though we are not the trouble
he’s been waiting for – just a family
searching for the past, saddened
by what we see. That’s when Stephen
spies the irises. Then the once familiar
house, frightening in its strangeness,
takes on a kindlier air,
as if the woman kneeling by the walk
decades before, digging up the rich, red
dirt, pushing bulbs into holes
she made in the ground, is still there –
and we are all welcome.
Erickson describes her reading and writing
poetry as a sculptor with a piece of clay, an act some attribute to the creator
aspect of God. It’s not surprising that Erickson
is a Christian but never describes herself as a Christian poet.
“C. S. Lewis once said,
" I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only
because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." I don't write "Christian" poetry,
but because I am a Christian, everything I write moves through that prism of
belief.”
BLUEBIRD
Light as crumbs on a plate,
a bluebird perched on the porch
railing, cocking its head this way
and that, feathers
the indigo blue of a king’s hand-
dyed robe, or the sky
on its bluest day, drained of clouds
and concentrated in the bottom
of God’s drinking glass, which He
swirled and swallowed,
then breathed out this little bird,
now flying.
She’s been reading poetry since she was nine
years old, sitting on the floor beside her parents’ bookcase reading poems by
Robert Frost, the only book of poetry in the house.
“And of course, my
mother read all sorts of books to me before I could read, myself. I was blessed with loving parents who have been
married now, for sixty years, and a joyful childhood, which I can go back to
again and again for the length of any poem I write about it.”
HOSPITAL PARKING LOT
Headscarf fluttering in the wind,
stockings hanging loose on her vein-roped
legs, an old woman clings to her husband
as if he were the last tree standing in a
storm,
though he is not the strong one.
His skin is translucent – more like a window
than a shade.
Without a shirt and coat,
we could see his lungs swell and shrink,
his heart skip. But he has offered her his arm,
and for sixty years, she has taken it.
One year later when she was in the fifth
grade at Brunson Elementary School she wrote her first poem in which she
compared snow that had been on the ground for a long time to old newspapers.
“My wonderful and gifted fifth grade
teacher, Elizabeth Reynolds, (who to this day, attends my book launch parties
and buys my books!) praised my fledgling efforts to no end, which is what I
hope every parent and teacher will do if their children show any interest in
writing.”
FLOWER CHILD
Flower child, where did you come from?
Your hands are bigger than mine, stronger.
They are seldom still. Digging in the dirt, stringing beads
on a necklace, snapping your fingers to a
Beatles song-
you are always moving forward, dragging the
past
behind you like a streamer. You are happier barefoot,
dancing in the grass, than women
wearing designer shoes, jumping in a pile of
money.
Pierced and tattooed, silver bracelets
jingling,
you are as different from me as North
is to South. Yet wherever you go, my heart,
like the needle on a compass, follows.
She
attended Appalachian State where she was a Sophomore English Honors student,
but had to drop out due to complications from Crohn’s Disease.
By her twenties she was a divorced single
mother of her only child, daughter Gia: “She is 33 years old, and is the loveliest
"poem” I ever ‘created.’”
She earned a living in a variety of fields: copywriter for a radio station; worked on the
news-desk and researcher for the Winston-Salem Journal; assistant to
the Director of Vascular Ultrasound Research at Wake Forest University Baptist
Medical; and a contract technical medical editor.
By her late twenties she went back to
college at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina where she graduate
Magna Cum Laude with a B.A. in English Literature and Mass Communications.
“At
the time of graduation I was going to school full time, working part time at
the Winston-Salem Journal, and raising
my daughter as a single, divorced mother.
It was quite a rigorous schedule, but I was determined to get my
degree...and I did it!”
Meanwhile, the grasshoppers,
which can leap twenty times their bodies’
length,
are still on the move, mandibles packed
with brown juice like baseball players
chewing
tobacco, legs quivering from the hard
work of lifting from one side of the field
to the other, a creature that wears its
skeleton
on the outside like a coat, eats more than a
cow
will in a single day – but can also jump,
resembling tiny puffs of green air – as if
the earth
in spring is so content, it can’t stop sighing.
Excerpt, “GRASSHOPPERS”
In 2006, her first poetry collection, Thread
Count, was published by AuthorHouse in January 11, 2006). Two more poetry collections followed, Telling
Tales of Dusk (Press 53, August 13, 2009); and In the Palms of Angels
(Press 53, April 1, 2011).
It took Erickson three years to write A
Lake of Light and Clouds, which is the norm for most poets.
“Most
publishers require that at least a third to half of all poems submitted in a
manuscript be previously published in literary journals, it takes anywhere from
a year to three years and even longer, to produce enough viable work to create
a full-length collection. So, I write poems
and send many of them to journals in hopes of publication.”
She then makes hard copies of every poem
and stacks them on her dresser until she has eighty or ninety poems to choose
from, lays them on her living room floor, and determines the order the poems
will go in the poetry collection.
“I
take my time to decide which poems "fit" and which poems don't. And then, of course, you submit the
manuscript and your publisher will have some preferences and suggestions, also.”
Press 53 editor and founder Kevin Morgan
Watson accepted A Lake of Light and Clouds, her third book to published by
Press 53.
“Kevin Morgan Watson
works beautifully with writers. Kevin
and I are friends with a great deal of respect and admiration for each of our
roles in creating a book of poetry that is beautiful to look at, a pleasure to
hold, and hopefully, an unforgettable read.”
Erickson does most of her writing (essays
and poems) in the morning in her sunlit home office, which she considers a
haven: full of books, art work,
photographs and meaningful objects she’s collected through the years: a snail
shell from the ocean given to her by one of her readers in 2009; and a tiny
wind-up Merry-Go-Round gifted to her from her mother.
“I
have written in waiting rooms, in my car in between stoplights, and other
strange places. When a line comes into
your head, you have to get it down right away or risk losing it. The poems come when they come--I can't write
poetry unless I am moved to do so by something I've seen, heard, remembered, or
imagined.”
Erickson teaches poetry workshops and classes in
multiple venues, is a frequent guest speaker, and a member of Delta Kappa Gamma
International, an organization for key women educators. Erickson’s work
has been widely published: Garrison
Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, Asheville Poetry Review, 2014 Poet’s Market, and
many others. She has won multiple awards
including the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Nautilus Book Award.
She can be reached via email tkerickson@triad.rr.com and via Facebook https://www.facebook.com/terri.k.erickson
