Interview with Connie Gutowsky

The newest collection from Sacramento poet Connie Gutowsky is Play. In the word "play" lies the Middle Dutch root pleien for "leap for joy, dance." Connie has brought her delight in words, word-play, music, image and meaning to my workshops on creativity, poetry memorization and Day Poems through the years. She's also invited me to work with her on polishing poems. Putting our heads together over her luminous poems while sipping coffee at an outdoor cafe are treasured times. 

Below is a poem from Play.

Read on for an interview with Connie, an attorney with keen attention to detail and broad experience with people. 

CHICAGO
August 2013

Hand-in-hand along Michigan Avenue, we stroll
past giant sculptural heads with human faces— 
fuchsia, fern, & other floral hairdos popping
out their tops. 

Bareheaded in the windy city, we walk my husband’s 
historic high school campus, enter what once
had been his father’s fire station, stop for deep-dish pizza, 
work museums, & later take the river tour.

Of we seven, four leave for Wrigley Field.
Three—taxi to afternoon tea at the Drake Hotel.
Hailey, brown-haired, brown-eyed, ten-year-old, 
selecting words from the menu, 

pencils a quick poem before ordering. Lined up 
on a banquette, the waiter snaps our photo before I flip 
my Chocolate Opera petit four;
bittersweet frosting smears my white cuff—

Clumsy fingers that I lick! Protocol for high tea: 
steep, rest a strainer on the cup’s lip, 
then pour. For the second cup, I forget the strainer, 
my mouth awash with dark leaves. The harp plays on. 

I’m stirred to fuchsia reflections—
a string of perfect days
clad in terra cotta, 
ginger plum red. 

A window into a poetic mind

1. The title of your collection is Play. Why "play"? 

I chose the book title Play because as I organized the poems into sections, I noticed the word “play” appeared in at least one poem in each section. I was hoping to evoke the many meanings of “play” in my title.

2. Does play come into your writing process? How?

My practice of poetry includes reading, writing, and bringing poems to study groups for critique. It feels like “play” — endemic to our species— in that it is absorbing, outside routine life, a kind of performance requiring practice, imaginative and brings happiness.

3. When did you start writing poetry? Why?

I began studying and writing poetry seriously in 2002 after retiring from the practice of law. I had leisure and the opportunity to pursue an interest first aroused when a was a young student.

4. You paint as well. How do painting and poetry influence each other in your work?

Painting and poetry influence each other in my experience by calling for attention.

5. How does your background as an attorney influence your poetry--subject matter, style, other ways?

As a criminal defense attorney, I became enured to the importance of communicating with clients, judges, juries, family, and colleagues in clear, persuasive often creative but plain-spoken language. I learned to become capable of my fears and limitations. 

6. This past summer, you participated in a Day Poems workshop. How did that process affect your writing?

Participation in the Day Poems Workshop affected my writing by expanding my intention to pay attention, to take time, to play with and in the present.

7. What poets do you enjoy reading?

I rarely re-read poets right now. I’m so involved in workshops which introduce me to new-to-me poets. I try to find something to like in every poet I read. Some favorites are: Szymborska, Whitman, Moore, Haas, Hall, Eliot, Jon Davis, Levertov. Too many to name.

8. You travel. What's the most poetically inspiring place you've ever visited? Why is it inspiring?

I tend to be inspired wherever I travel. Europe in my 20's, Chicago-always, NYC always, even my home town and anyplace in Oregon. I am inspired when I travel because my mind-set shifts in unexpected ways.

Play by Connie Gutowsky (Random Lane, 2013)

9. You've studied poets and their biographies. If you could invite a poet, dead or alive, to dinner, who would it be? What would you serve? Why?

I’d invite Wislawa Szymborska to dinner and serve her a pork chop with sauerkraut because she wrote an essay, “Nervousness,” in her book Nonrequired Reading, about seeing Czeslaw Milosz in a restaurant when she was a young writer, horrified that he was relishing a serving of a pork chop with sauerkraut. Years later, she found herself dining out, glanced over to unexpectedly find the great poet there also; both having ordered that same dish.

10.  You are active in Sacramento poetry workshops. What is the role of local community in shaping a poet?

The role of the local community in shaping a poet: support, inspiration, introduction to the vast world of poetry and guidance therein, camaraderie, mentoring, play. We in Sacramento are lucky to have a rich poetry community.

11. What's your favorite poem from your collection? Tell us the story behind that poem.

In one of my poems, the lines “our mother instructs each one of her eight children/You are practically my favorite child." I feel that way about each poem in my book. There is a story behind (and within) every one.

A Time for Reflection and Renewal

I'm honored to present a "Day Poems" workshop at the April 2014 National Association for Poetry Therapy conference in Arizona. Here's why.

In 2002, when I moved from a Mojave mesa with a sweeping view of Joshua Tree National Park to a drafty house on a noisy corner of Bakersfield, I sank into a tangle of emotions. I knew I'd reached the nadir of misery when I yelled at my dogs and they cringed in confusion.

Days stretched into weeks and I couldn't find a job. I gardened, cooked, walked, met neighbors, read, wrote...and every afternoon the walls closed in on me until I couldn't breathe. One day in 2003, at loose ends, I browsed the internet looking for anything poetry related. In the weird way of the web, a site popped up, the National Association for Poetry Therapy. I'm not the first or last person to be drawn in by the organization's logo, pegasus on a purple background. I missed the stars I used to see from my desert patio and the winged horse, mythical creature and constellation, filled a need.

The organization was holding a conference in Miami. My mother, worried about my sorrowful state, offered to pay my way. Gratefully, I went. The conference sessions are a blur, but I remember the attendees--friendly, curious, committed to using words conscientiously, hopeful, sincere, smart, witty. A woman who knew the city took me by taxi for Cuban food and a night walk on the beach. I joined early risers for yoga under the Florida sun. The following year I attended the Costa Mesa conference where keynote speaker Li-Young Lee changed the way I think about silence.

In the year between conferences, inspired by the example of others bringing poetry to unlikely places, I offered writing workshops at Bakersfield's main library. Some of my students became friends.

When I moved to Sacramento in 2004, the arts community opened the door wide for me and I enthusiastically entered, working as a teacher and as a teaching artist in schools and a prison. I concentrated on writing, editing and publishing and let my relationship with NAPT lapse. But I missed it.

I'm dedicated to poetry as an art of skill and imagination: I've been exploring poetry for as long as I can remember as a student and teacher of literature. I'm also intrigued at how reading and writing poetry makes space in life for wonder and possibility and well-being.

My wants are simpler than 12 years ago. I read and write poetry, practice yoga, and help others read and write poetry and practice yoga. The Day Poems workshops are at the heart of what I believe is our welfare as individuals and members of a species: the ability to listen and notice, to engage empathetically with the human and non-human world around us, and create something from our experience that helps us understand ourselves and another.

Hope you can attend!

Daily Prompt: Statements of Beauty

Last Tuesday, I joined thirteen other artists for a focus group sponsored by the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission and UC-Davis Extension to generate arts-based solutions for businesses. The businesses sought input on employees' communication skills, adaptability to change and creative thinking.  We dancers, actors, painters, musicians, poets and arts' non-profit leaders shared ideas on how the skills we've developed in our studios and classrooms, at our desks and on stages could apply.

After I explained Day Poems, another participant, a dancer and choreographer, revealed that she uses a similar assignment. She asks her students to identify "Seven Statements of Beauty" over the course of a week. The statements of beauty are movements, not necessarily dance movements, but movement that strikes them.

The process of paying attention, whether to movement, information, images or sound, helps a person define his or her aesthetic and priorities. And enhances creativity.

Daily Prompt: Look for Seven Statements of Beauty. In autumn, movements abound in wind and shadows. Notice.