Chelsea Henderson Answers Some Questions

by Jarrod Daegger and Bob Wolfley

Chelsea Henderson is in her third year pursuing her undergraduate degree in poetry-writing at the University of Virginia, where she studies with Rita Dove.

Southern Indiana Review: Is the Southern Indiana Review your first publication? If so, how does it feel to get published for the first time? If not, how did you discover the Southern Indiana Review?

CH: Yes, this is my first publication. I’ve since had other poems accepted elsewhere, but needless to say, it was a great feeling! I’d only been writing poetry for about six months when I first sent out to SIR, and I was fully prepared to be rejected on all fronts from everywhere I submitted to. I opened the letter in my kitchen and screamed. Maybe that wasn’t very adult of me, but hey, you don’t get published every day when you’re twenty.

SIR: What inspired you to begin writing and what influences your style of writing?

CH: The most important influence has been people. I learned to read at a very young age, and for as long as I can remember, I never loved to do anything more. So naturally, I wanted to write. I had certain favorites in elementary school that I read over and over, like Harriet the Spy or anything by Judy Blume or Roald Dahl. But I think the first book that impacted me in a more meaningful and resonant way was To Kill a Mockingbird, which I still read on a yearly basis. It’s astounding and wrenching—Scout is probably my favorite narrator in all of literature.

I didn’t stumble upon poetry, though, until my first year at UVA, when I met several students in the MFA program here who taught me to love reading poetry, and more importantly, taught me to write well. On the first day of my beginning poetry-writing class we read “Persimmons,” by Li-Young Lee, and I was so taken with it that there was really no going back.

SIR: In The Postcard, there is a lot of description referring to the sea and coast, do you enjoy the coast? If so, what is your favorite aspect about it and why?

CH: Actually it’s funny that you ask this, because I hadn’t thought of it in relation to the poem, but when I’m not at UVA, I live in Virginia Beach, about two miles from the coast. I love the coast. My favorite part of being on the beach itself is laying out and reading—typical, I know. But my favorite part about living there—ironically, because most locals hate this—is how crowded the grocery store gets on the weekends! To me, though, it just means summer has finally arrived when you have to stand in line for twenty minutes on a Friday night at Food Lion behind ten very sunburned tourists.

SIR: Majority of the poems that you sent me are related to nature, the outdoors, and the seasons. What attracts you to write about these certain themes?

CH: Once when Charles Wright visited a class I was taking, he said that “all nature is autobiography,” and it really stuck with me. It’s a concept he’s mastered in his own work, and one that I’ve somewhat tentatively attempted since—the idea that we project our thoughts and emotions on the world around us, until everything we see is a reflection of ourselves. So my interjections about seasons or nature or weather in my poetry have everything to do with establishing the tone of the poem.

SIR: What is the best criticism that you have gotten thus far in your writing career?

CH: In the first poetry class I took, my teacher advised me to keep in mind that in poetry, the unit we work with is the line—not the sentence. I guess I’d been relying more heavily on what my poems were accomplishing through sentences, rather than lines. I still think of that advice, though, when I write, and ask myself if each line is fulfilled and necessary. Simple, but also tactical.

SIR: What are your plans after you graduate from the University of Virginia?

CH: I’m in my third year now, so in the fall, I’ll be applying to MFA programs. The plan for now is to see how that works out and hopefully start my Master’s of Fine Arts in the fall of 2011. I think I’ll apply to Michigan, Iowa, UMass, maybe UC Irvine, Utah, a few other places. I want to go somewhere with good funding, but I’m also looking forward to getting off the East Coast and living somewhere completely different. My plan is just to apply to seven or eight places and see what happens.

SIR: If you wrote a “Bucket List” today (you may already have one), what are two things that would be on it and why?

CH: Well I’m not the skydiving type, so that’s definitely not on the list. I want to go to the Olympics! Not as an athlete—that’s impossible—but as a spectator. If I had to pick summer or winter, I’d probably pick winter, because my favorite event is figure skating, but either one would be incredible. Another thing I’d like to do would be to live in another country, even just for a few months. You don’t get to know a place or learn its rhythms and sounds and secrets unless you live there beyond vacation.

By secrets, I mean the things you have to experience firsthand to know about—things you can’t read in a book or hear about from someone else. A secret could be anywhere from a strange and charming coffee shop that you stumble upon one day to the particular way the sun colors a city when it sets or rises. In my own writing, I don’t necessarily try to convey secrets, but I do pretty regularly explore vulnerability, which can certainly be a secretive characteristic of someone or something.

SIR: In 10-15 years if you “Google” your name, what would you want to come up as the first couple of hits?

CH: I think once somebody bothers to make a page for you on Wikipedia you’re pretty much famous. If the day ever comes that I Google myself and Wikipedia for Chelsea Henderson pops up as one of the first hits (especially if it’s related to poetry), I’ll call that a success.