Chrissy Rikkers, the Featured Poet for Issue #2 of The Basilica Review, answers five questions.

Have you always wanted to be a poet? What were your previous aspirations?
When I was little, I always thought I'd be a diplomat. I have no idea why.  It just sounded nice.  The precise, reassuring sound of the word diplomat.  Dip. lo. mat.  Then in fourth grade, a woman came into our classroom and taught a poetry unit.  Her name was Kalpana Guttman.  I remember writing about selling units of scented air, about the sound of my sister's laugh.  I remember walking home from school and stopping randomly to stare at a patch of flowers.  I don't remember what I was thinking about, just that I stopped. A desire to write was forming in my head, but it was only a vague desire until the moment I started taking the reading of poetry seriously in my teens.  Frost and Whitman were my introduction, and I fell hopelessly in love with Whitman.  I started writing then.  Part of my inclination towards writing might have come (genetically?) from my mother's side of the family. Many of them were writers and bibliophiles, and my great-grandfather was known to greet guests entering his home with a booming recitation of Edgar Lee Master's poem for Anne Rutledge: “Out of me unworthy and unknown, the Vibrations of deathless music..,” or with whole speeches from Shakespeare's plays.   At any rate, I kept writing poetry through my college years, went on to work in publishing, and then took some time off to earn my MFA.  I suppose ever since Mrs. Guttman's fourth grade poetry lessons, little by little, I've been wearing in my 'poet' shoes. Hopefully, they'll take me on a pretty long and interesting walk.
 

Do you draw inspiration from poetry alone, or do you get ideas from movies, music, and fiction as well?
Oh, I think I've been inspired by all of those things, and many others  – I'm inspired by my family, by traveling, by listening to other people's conversations. I really enjoy eating alone at cafés, and I make an effort not to tune out the conversations going on around me.  Sometimes I sit at home with a pile of poetry books and read for a long time, then run into my fiancé's office to recite one of my favorites.  I usually ramble on about how I wish I could write something like that.  And then I'll go and try.  One poem in particular was written as I was watching a documentary film about a monk.  The guy was so compelling, and I just felt like there was a whole story behind the story that wasn't being told.  So many, many things inspire me.

What are your views on the modern poetry scene—specifically the emphasis on university training as the primary route to establishing oneself as a poet?
Well, I think it's all tied up in how poetry is perceived by the general public. In “Can Poetry Matter,” Dana Gioia talks about the existence of “a large professional class for the production and reception of new poetry comprising legions of teachers, graduate students, editors, publishers, and administrators. Based mostly in universities, these groups have gradually become the primary audience for contemporary verse.”  It doesn't matter whether being established means being seen as a “legitimate” writer within and without the university sphere, or if it simply means having people (within and without) know your name and your work.  Either way, if the means to establish yourself as a poet is to work within that sphere, it makes sense that a lot of people will head that way.  Because poetry and literature matter so much to writers, of course they are going gravitate to wherever they feel literature is valued most. 

I see nothing wrong with working among people who love writing as much as you do, and after you're done with your degree, continuing to work among those people and in the service of writing. But if it's true that hardly any of our “general readers” out there read contemporary (or any) poetry, then the problem must be that contemporary poetry only circulates within that small circle, and hardly ever makes it outside.  That university training has become the primary route to establish yourself as a poet seems to be simply a result of where poetry's value and poetry's readership have migrated. 

I've heard enough people say they don't “get” poetry to wonder if the poetry itself is the problem.  Is the  problem that poetry's audience has retreated to this inner circle of poets and scholars?  Or is it that contemporary poetry has become less attractive and understandable to the general reader?  The Canadian poet Carmine Starnino writes, in an essay on Poetry Foundation's website, against the idea that “everything would be different if our stuff wasn’t so difficult, or obscure, or highbrow, or introverted, or solipsistic, or autobiographical, or experimental, or academic, or postmodern.” He goes on to say that “there is no once-popular style and subject that, if brought back, will stop poetry’s sliding poll numbers. There is no traditional link between poetry and the public that, if repaired, will turn things around. That’s because reestablishing the public’s trust in poetry would be like reestablishing the public’s trust in Latin.”

The question of why the link between poetry and the public has been (according to Starnino) all but severed invites a whole different chicken-or-egg argument. But I think it's at the heart of your original question. The emphasis on university training – the MFA -- is only part of the equation.  We all know remarkable poets who never formally studied poetry (went the university route.)  And remarkable poets who did. I don't know nearly as much as I want or should about the history of poetry, and its relationship with the “public.” I do wonder about the perception of poetry today, and whether or not we have cause to be so worried about it.  Despite how it's perceived or distributed, I don't believe that poetry will ever stop being produced.  Maybe it's just one of those things that falls in and out of public favor.  I find it really funny that over four hundred years ago, Sir Philip Sydney felt the need to “make a pitiful defense of poor poetry, which from almost the highest estimation of learning is fallen to be the laughing-stock of children.” 

What is your writing process like?
I can't work in silence, so if I'm at home I have music playing.  At a coffee shop, I'll pick the loudest, busiest one.  I need people, and life, around me.  I usually get a line or a few words dancing around my head, and I'll get it down on paper.  Then I kind of stare at it for a while.  I think of real experiences, possible experiences.  I create a story in my head, and most of the first draft of the poem happens all at once.  Sometimes, I'll go back and read poets that I love to remind myself of certain techniques, or sounds, that are particularly powerful.  I often grab a line here or there, or part of a line, from a poem I love and throw it in the mix.  That particular line might be cut out in later drafts, but it helps move things along and feed the poem.  One of my mentors, Ilya Kaminsky, was big on “stealing” from other poets, in the sense that you can, and should, borrow language, technique, form and sound from them because it's a natural part of the literary conversation – not because you can't create great work on your own.  But no matter how the poem gets formed, the seed of it for me is always a mix between a few beautiful sounding words and an image that just won't fade in my mind. 

If you became a poet of Emily Dickinson or Sylvia Plath's status, who would you want to play your character in the movie version of your life?
Wow.  I guess it would be Charlotte Gainsbourg (daughter of the famous French musician, Serge Gainsbourg).  She's got this great mix of intensity and quirkiness and quiet confidence.  Sometimes she can look very plain and masculine and other times, very delicate and feminine.  She's like a chameleon. A very elegant chameleon.