Author Interview: Colleen Anderson and Vellum Leaves and Lettered Skins
Poetry, Rapunzel, and the Importance of Nature
Hello Friends and Fiends—
Today in The Madhouse, I’m excited to welcome poet Colleen Anderson to chat about her recent poetry collection Vellum Leavers and Lettered Skins (out now from RDSP). Anderson has been widely published across seven countries, with works appearing in publications such as Weird Tales, Cemetery Dance, Amazing, and Shadow Atlas. Rhysling Award winner for “Machine (r)Evolution” and a two-time winner of the SFPA’s dwarf poetry contest, she has been nominated for Pushcart, Elgin, Rhysling, and Dwarf Stars Awards. Based in Vancouver, BC, she is a recipient of the Canada Council, BC Arts Council, and Ladies of Horror Fiction grants. Her poetry collections include The Lore of Inscrutable Dreams, I Dreamed a World, Weird Worlds, and Vellum Leaves and Lettered Skins, as well as fiction collections A Body of Work and Embers Amongst the Fallen. Colleen freelances as an editor and edits for On Spec. She has served on the SFPA executive, as well as British Fantasy Award and Stoker juries. She lives in Vancouver, BC, where she searches for mermaids. www.colleenanderson.wordpress.com
I was honored to work with Anderson as her editor on this project, so this interview holds a special place for me for several reasons. So, please join me in the realm of all things fairy tale and magic. My suggestion? Make a cup of elderflower tea, grab a raspberry tart, and settle in for an enchanting time.
SMW: Hi Colleen! Welcome to The Madhouse Review. Since this is your first time joining us here, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what drew you to poetry in the first place?
CA: Hi Stephanie, thanks for requesting this interview. I was first drawn to poetry in my early teenage years. I guess as I started to question the universe, life, death, everything, I began writing poetry. I also came from a household full of trauma. I can’t say I had read much poetry—some Edgar Allan Poe and a smattering of other poems in school—but it was just a natural way for me to express myself and my feelings. I still have those poems, which are not that good.
SMW: What was your writing process/experience like for Vellum Leaves and Lettered Skins?
CA: I often ruminate a lot before I start writing anything down. Then I write out ideas or lines by hand. So, I wrote some of the poems in a blank book as the ideas came to me. I cleaned them up and edited as I transferred them to the computer. Then I needed to form the story arc and ensure I had enough poems for each section. I toyed with having a whole section of poems based off the books that Rapunzel reads. In the end I decided to just touch on these, such as with Sedna or Godiva, or other tales and myths involving hair. I also thought about the reality of living in such circumstances, the stages of growth and awareness and how this shifts as we move through life. The psychological effects of actually living a life as told in Rapunzel belies ever having normal experiences.
SMW: This manuscript focuses heavily on the fairy tale of Rapunzel. What drew you to this story/character, and how did your relationship with her and the narrative change the longer you wrote? Is there a certain iteration of the tale you find yourself returning to again and again?
CA: I think this idea to write about Rapunzel came from a couple of things. I had seen a picture by a photographer who combines people with nature and there was one image of a woman with long braided hair that becomes part of the landscape of plants, so you’re not sure where her hair ends and the grasses begin. I loved that image. I’d also written a story about Rapunzel becoming the Lady of Shalott and loved Loreena McKennitt’s version of Tennyson’s poem.
As well, I have always loved fairy tales, their mythic evolution and a long line of stories that shift through centuries. We don’t know all of the versions because they were part of a bardic tradition or even just tales told around the hearth, but they go back to Greek myths and before. When I researched Rapunzel, there were versions from other countries where she was called Parsiletta or Prunella. There’s even an Arab version, as well as a belief that the tale started with a father protecting his daughter during the fraught Middle Ages by keeping her in a tower.
I knew the version, where before Rapunzel and the prince lived happily ever after—but first she’s banished to the desert to give birth alone and the prince is blinded. Somehow, while other fairy tales had already been pasteurized for modern sensibilities even when I was a child, that version survived longer. It is the one that stuck with me, thinking of a cloistered woman who spends most of her life alone and then has to live happily in a court of hundreds of people. If anything, that was a fairy tale for men—that you find a beautiful, untouched, maiden. She must deal with the birth by herself and then the prince wanders along to be cured by her loving tears and off they go. While I’ve not given birth, I cannot imagine anyone who has would think there is no trauma to being alone in a desert and birthing not one, but two babies and then trying to care for them and survive.
Because I wanted to keep the plant imagery that Rapunzel is tied to by the deal made before she’s born, I pulled imagery of flora and sometimes fauna which are Rapunzel’s only companions. It became a challenge to work within those constrictions. But Rapunzel is bound as surely as a tree needs its roots, though she is more a flower in a vase than a human with a full life.
SMW: In your poem, “Tower” you write: “This tower/ each stone each boulder/mortars me in/this cage.” Now fellow witchy woman to fellow witchy woman, let’s talk tarot! The Tower card represents sudden (often intense or catastrophic) change, a breaking of mirrors or illusions as it were. What does the tower symbolize for you in your relationship with Rapunzel?
CA: Yes, the tower is the most catastrophic card of change in the Tarot! We see the card from the outside, from the destruction it causes and sometimes there is a person falling from it. It removes the foundations we can depend upon. For Rapunzel, how she feels about the tower changes throughout this tale. As she thinks about what lies beyond, as books reveal other worlds to her, she begins to question the safety of her tower as it turns into a suffocating prison. Yet, as she lives her life, escapes the tower and sees the world, it becomes again her sanctuary and her prison. It is in fact, one of the foundational pieces that shapes who she is.
The tower is therefore both symbolic and literal. Years ago, I read Tarot a fair amount for friends and strangers. At one point, every person’s reading contained the Tower. I was very puzzled why this card was turning up with such frequency. Most of the readings showed that the people would weather what the Tower brought. It wasn’t until many years later that I realized it was the Twin Towers falling during 9/11. It was in fact a literal tower falling that had lasting percussions for so many.
SMW: In your poem “Godiva” you write: “My hair will flow through street, village/into valleys, curl in swallows’ nests/and tickle ears of sleeping cats/let the breeze play freely with the tendrils/in this way I too will know my lands.” Now, it’s impossible to talk about Rapunzel without bringing up her hair, and hair—as we know—as magical and mystical properties across cultures and occult practices alike. How do you think Rapunzel, and yourself, reclaimed (or used) Rapunzel’s hair as a feminist symbol throughout this collection?
CA: As fairy tales go, the only magical thing about Rapunzel is her hair, which keeps growing. Yet, in the fairy tale, it’s not really a commodity unless it’s just a coveted possession by the witch. So, I questioned, why? Why keep her, why not sell it, or highlight the hair to form a marriage contract to someone of power, the most common fate of noble women in the Middle Ages.
Rapunzel wonders too and her hair becomes a tool and a resource. Its purpose shifts in her journeys but it becomes the threads that bind her to her life and bring her salvation. In this way, she is not just a symbol of the beautiful woman used as chattel but becomes the resourceful person who sheds the constrictions placed on her.
SMW: In your poem “Descent,” you write: “A girl who was a goddess/loved the flowers/ their scents perfuming her world/she only knew of growth/ everblooming joy/ her watchful loving mother.” Themes of flora, fauna, and the elements feature heavily in your collection. Can you talk about your own relationship to nature and how it inspires you as a poet?
CA: I’m an observer. Whether I’m waiting for the bus or walking along the street, or driving in a car, I’m always noting what’s around me, the patterns and the colors, and especially how nature shifts and changes through the seasons. I love spring as pale green buds form and push through the ground. I love the opening palette of colours. I love summer too, for the richness and shifting of trees and plants, and the abundance of tiny life that lives within them.
When I was growing up, we lived near the edge of the city and because home life was full of abuses, I would escape to an empty house lot, lay among the bluebells and stare up at the night sky, imagining other worlds. My mother also loved nature, so we often had trips to Drumheller (where the dinosaurs are), the Okanagan with its myth of Ogopogo, abundance of fruit and warm weather. Green makes me thrive and studies show that humans need it. By taking a walk in a park or a forest, it improves our health and mental wellbeing. I never want to live in a skyscraper where I can’t be near the earth.
I’ve been working on other poems and fiction that deal with eco horror. The environment and how we treat it is extremely important to me. I read James Lovelock’s book The Gaia Hypothesis when I was a teenager about how all species and the land are inherently connected. That has never left me, and I’ve always put nature and the environment as one of my top priorities.
SMW: In your poem “Ripening,” you write: “My belly swelling, a resplendent fruit/ I cannot escape.” Transformation, literally and figuratively, is the arc of the book. Would you say there’s an influence, direct or indirectly, of the triple goddess here? Do readers witness Maiden, Mother, and Crone in these pages?
CA: Well, now that you mention it… yes. The triple goddess, whether Celtic or Greek, is important to me, a manifestation of our own story arcs from past to future, as well as aspects of nurturer, taker, keeper, seeker. It is the conscious and the unconscious and the journey between the two. These beliefs are so much part of my psyche that I don’t always consciously realize that they’re flavoring my writing. I cannot speak to what readers will witness because they will all have their own experiences that will shade how they view the poems, but since the Triple Goddess shows the faces of transformation, then yes these aspects are there as Rapunzel loses her innocence and takes on the mantle of self.
SMW: You’ve worked closely with the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association in your career. Can you talk about your experience there and why emerging speculative poetry should consider joining?
CA: I mentioned above that my early poetry wasn’t very good. It was partly because I didn’t read much poetry but my older brother had left a wealth of SF when he moved out. I read a lot of books on fairy tales and SF. As I moved more into speculative poetry and fiction, I learned that the best way to know what’s being written about and to learn your craft is to read a lot and then write a lot. If you’re writing the same story or poem that has already been published, then you’ll not have much chance of selling the same thing.
The SFPA is a great way to learn more about spec poetry, read great works, get mentoring or advice and support a thriving worldwide community. The association is probably unique in all the ways it creates an active poetry family. There are awards for every type of poem length, from the very short to the very long, as well as the Elgin Awards for chapbooks and books of poetry. The SFPA also recognizes those with significant contributions to writing or creating opportunities for speculative poetry. There are resources, a blog, a missive, online and print publications, a great contest, and other ways to have your work noticed. The community is a large and diverse one.
I always believe in giving back to the communities that I’m part of. With the yearly contest, I enter so that it spurs me to write new works, to give some money to the organization, and to also possibly win, because, who doesn’t like to win? I served on the board as VP and president but I’m still helping out where I can.
SMW: What poets are you currently reading? Are there any collections you’re looking forward to adding to your TBR list?
CA: I have been reading for the Rhysling and Elgin Awards, so in fact I’ve probably read a hundred different poets’ works in the last two months. There are so many authors, and I find it a great joy every year to read for these awards as well as the Stoker Awards, to see what people are experimenting with and thinking about.
A few of the many writers I like are: Anna Taborska, Sandra Kasturi, Felicia Martinez, Adele Gardner, F.J. Bergman, Pedro Iniquez, Angela Acosta, Carolyn Clink, Lisa Timpf, Stephanie Wytowych, Cynthia Pelayo, Katherine Quevedo, Gerri Leen, Richard Magahiz, Vince Gotera, E.F. Schraeder, Maxwell I. Gold, Linda Addison, Mahalia Smith, Lee Murray. Really, there a poems I like from so many poets that I cannot truly name them all.
SMW: What’s next for your readers?
I have many writings in the works. To offset Rapunzel’s tale, I’ve been writing SF horror poetry and that collection will be coming out in a year or so. I’m putting together a collection of short fiction and have another that’s a mosaic novella of weird eco-horror at a publisher. I’m also thinking of doing a chapbook of speculative food-based poetry. I’m always working on stories.