Cleopatra Mathis
Black Walnut
Artist Statement: Talking & Listening to Plants
My relationship to the natural world has been intense and on-going since I was a child growing up in Louisiana. When I began to write, the trove of images available to me were intrinsically bound up with the events of my life. More than a backdrop or easy metaphor, the complication of plant life endlessly attracted me and preoccupied me. I was a lonely child, fairly indifferent to what adults had to offer and distrustful of others around me, preferring the dependability and resourcefulness of the nature I explored almost daily. It was my solace, my companion, and when I began to write, it provided me with the means to say what I felt.
I’ve always objected to what I consider “pasted-on” metaphor. The genesis of my work is most frequently something that’s caught my attention outdoors. As I work on a poem, rather than search for likely images, I am more likely to start with my fascination with the plant or animal life itself and work from there. Strict observation will yield far more than a casual look. When I revise, I tend to augment or complicate what I see with research. I find that study tends to send me in different or in more interesting directions than what I originally intended in an earlier draft of the poem.
CLEOPATRA MATHIS was born and raised in Louisiana, and has lived in New England since 1981. She is the author of eight books of poems; the most recent is After the Body: Poems New and Selected (Sarabande Books, 2020). Awards for her work include a Guggenheim Fellowship, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and two Pushcart Prizes. Her poems have appeared widely in magazines, including The New Yorker, Threepenny Review, The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, Ploughshares, and Best American Poetry. The founder of the creative writing program at Dartmouth College, she lives in East Thetford, Vermont.