by Rebecca Childers

MFA Alumna Kelly Moffett and her dog

Kelly Moffett is an Assistant Professor of English at Northern Kentucky University and a graduate of the WVU MFA program. She has a new book coming out in the spring, and I recently was able to sit down and email her about it.

What was the inspiration for your title?

Kelly: It has been a productive time (and Lord knows this is rare for me!).

I’ve had a chapbook released, Ghost Act, through Dancing Girl Press.

(We talked with Kelly last August about Ghost Act. Follow the link to read all about it.)

My father passed last March. He spent all of his money killing and then stuffing animals from Africa (zebra, elephant, warthog, water buffalo, etc. and etc.), so my inheritance came in the form of a 21-year-old, white horse. She arrived in KY soon after his memorial service, and the poems came from my healing process—particularly, how I healed and dealt with father issues via the horse. I thought of the horse as my father’s ghost. Also, I’m in love with the work of Ann Hamilton and her installation titled Border Act. I borrowed that a bit and titled the collection Ghost Act.

Two full-length collections will be released the next academic year.

Kelly: When the God of Water enters your Basement, Bow will be released at AWP next year (Salmon Poetry). The poems were written during regular retreats to Trappist monasteries. Trappists monks take vows of silence, and a retreatant must honor that and not speak too. The silence not only helped me with meditation, but it also allowed me to literalize the white (silent) space of the page. I wrote the poems over a four-year period of silent retreats at Gethsemani Abbey in KY and St. Benedict’s in Colorado.

Bird Blind will be released Fall 2013 (Tebot Bach). The title reflects my other passion: hiking. On a few of the trails I found bird blinds. A person can hide in a bird blind—a small wooden building with slots cut out (kind of like those made for guns in forts) for viewing wildlife (namely, birds) without the wildlife noticing it is being watched—kind of like a camouflaged space to witness without being seen. Most of those poems were written during a month period when I stayed in a one-room cabin by a lake in Maine with only my Irish Wolfhound and the loons for company. I thought of it as my Thoreau cabin, my Merton hermitage.

You have been through the publication process before. Is there any advice that you can offer to current MFA’s on how to avoid stress during the process? Or how to deal with the stress you cannot avoid?

Kelly: For me, the first two years out of the program (the post-MFA blues?) were the hardest. I no longer had Mary Ann and Jim and a community of readers who made poetry the center of their lives as I did. Also, I was writing terribly for some reason. It all clicked into place nearly at the two-year mark of being out of school. Suddenly my subject matched my idiom and the work started to make sense. I sent that book out (and I think only ten poems came from my thesis) and the first press I sent it to accepted it: Cinnamon Press. So, I guess my advice is to hold on and keeping pushing forward and to care for yourself during those rockier times (if you don’t, who will?).

Oh, and rejections get easier. They really do. When I receive one, I think “oh, that just wasn’t the home for my work,” and I really believe it. Publication is really about finding the right home, the right audience. It takes time and lots of rejections to figure that out.

Are there any people or pets that you would like to thank?

Kelly: Of course, the amazing WVU poets, Mary Ann and Jim—where would any of us poets be without them?

Finn, my Irish Wolfhound. Manana, the old, white horse.

Most importantly—of course—Joe and Devon (my husband and son—the ones who had to let me go for long periods of time so I could write—I know that wasn’t easy).

Any other tips you would like to offer, or information you would like to share?

Tips:

Keep in contact with those in the workshop who you can trust. You’ll need those readers when you leave.

Don’t forget to take care of yourself. Exercise, eat, and meditate.

Enjoy the MFA while you are in it. Give all of yourself to the work. Humility was the greatest lesson for me (and the most important for my work and my life); and the workshops taught me it.

Information:

I’ve started a blog about contemplative creativity and poetry. One of my contracts stated that I need to create an online presence, and the blog has been more fun than I ever realized it could be. Read Kelly’s blog here. I’d suggest blogging to other poets. (Who would have thought?)