Romaine Washington is the author of Sirens in Her Belly (2015, Jamii Publications). She is a fellow of The Watering Hole, South Carolina and the Inland Area Writing Project at the University of California Riverside. She is an active member of the poetry community in the Inland Empire, through the Inlandia Institute and elsewhere. Romaine is an educator and a native Californian from San Bernardino. Her new book Purgatory Has An Address is out April 15th and available for preorder now. The book boils down Washington’s talent of sifting out the superfluous without sacrificing the beauty of language.
Purgatory Has An Address reads to me like an economical autobiography. You write in a number of the poems in the book about a little girl that I am assuming is you, about your Mom and Dad and brother.
Yes, most of the poems in the book are autobiographical based on family experience. A few years ago my mom died and left a packet of photos that allowed me to put together her homegoing program. These photos were evidence of the many life stories she shared with me. Sifting through her snapshots spun me into a place where I could give myself permission to ask questions and voice ideas that I had previously kept at bay. Some emotions spun around like a car tire stuck in the mud. Other feelings expressed themselves as these long meandering journeys that walked around old neighborhoods.
Yes, most of the poems in the book are autobiographical based on family experience. A few years ago my mom died and left a packet of photos that allowed me to put together her homegoing program. These photos were evidence of the many life stories she shared with me. Sifting through her snapshots spun me into a place where I could give myself permission to ask questions and voice ideas that I had previously kept at bay. Some emotions spun around like a car tire stuck in the mud. Other feelings expressed themselves as these long meandering journeys that walked around old neighborhoods.
Your poetry is not built to be a reflection of the reader, a mirror. There are not pluralities of “we” referencing yourself and the reader, it is an unabashed portrait of you. I think about how welcoming it is to the reader though. How the coldness and starkness of what you write in some of your verse is often presented between a curious naked painting of emotions without frills. It is incredibly effective and moving. Are you consciously boiling down these memories in verse to their base?
Yes, in my editing process I try to remove extraneous words and capture the truth of the experience. I have a writing friend and we share our writing on Google doc and read each other’s work. One of her mantras is “vulnerability”. I have a tendency to get lost in the music of language. At one point the Meditation in Dissolving Boundaries was almost about a jazzy cow going to high school and gossiping as the girl in the poem uses her imagination to meld with the cow to become a happy heifer. My friend’s response was – I like all of this, but what happened to the original flow and rhythm of the poem?
Another instance of conscious distillation of the emotions in the poems was with Decommission, Norton AFB, 1994 poem. It was a long rambling four pages of colliding senses and emotions. I brought it to a workshop and the wonderful facilitator’s suggestion was to write the poem as a letter to Norton AFB. Following her advice brought me to the core of what I was really feeling. Some of the poems in this collection were new and others were five years in the writing and revising process.
There is a grouping of poems halfway through the book that are about the Inland Empire of your youth, my youth. The Chino winds, the horseflies, the baked dirt. South Carolina and San Bernardino County have a lot in common. That these writings are in this intensely personal book seems to point to how much your surroundings shaped you.
Yes, I do believe that the rituals we adopt as part of our way of seeing and navigating our surroundings is based on where we live and they become a part of who we are. For certain, it is the setting of all of our personal narrative. For example, because my father was in the military, Norton Air Force Base wasn’t just a place of economic stability for San Bernardino, but for our family. When my father died, the air force base was a constant that I, like many residents, thought we could rely on.
When we talk about images of black children and women in stories and movies, the last thing that comes to mind for many people is not the life of someone who lives in a middle-class home next to a farm but this was my lived experience. It is not glamorous nor profane, it is not urban-dangerous, edgy or sexy. My memory of place and the everydayness of hopes, disappointments, and searing boredom are part of my life’s snapshots.
Religion and magic are given equal time in your book filled with minor or missed miracles, resurrections, performers on stage with wands, wizards behind glass withholding sealed documents of origin and the dissection of a couple of disappearing acts. You do not fall on the side of one or the other but utilize the attributes of each of them in the place of loss. Could you speak to that?
I love this observation because faith and hope are so much a part of our existence, whether we are Christian, Catholic, Jewish… As we know, life is a series of choices and walking through or running from their consequences and the residual effects. Things happen, either by choice or design and oftentimes, there is very little we can do to change or control it. The opening poem asks, “What’s Your Story?”. Our stories are embedded in our faith in and hopes for and being able to even speak to the event or events, requires perseverance and sometimes a reframing of our experiences to support our perceptions, real or imagined.
Inside a Burning Building is one of the last poems in the book written during the full bloom of Covid-19. Like other good writing, this poem could be about any mental or physical malady. There is a striking final stanza that relates to your life in the poem about imploring a friend to write, suggesting that writing is life. You have dedicated your adult life to teaching, to other writers, and the writing that you do. Can you give advice to young writers about how to find their unique voice?
That is an interesting question. I am often asked what advice I can give to young writers and I really want to say that any advice about writing could actually be shared with writers of any age. Writing is one of the few things that we can do at any age. So, I offer the same advice to young and old: read for enjoyment, write honestly, and go to workshops so you can be around others who enjoy writing, receive prompts, and feedback.
The person I wrote that poem for was a writing workshop participant in her 60’s who was just starting her personal creative writing journey. So, my best advice is to start writing and keep writing. Know that it can help you discover what you feel and can help you add meaning to your life and the lives of your readers.