16 Questions with EMILY KENDAL FREY
1. Hey Emily, as a therapist, what’s something that poetry can do that traditional therapy can’t?
Poetry and therapy are borne of the same star and absolutely work in concert, as stars will. There’s nothing a poem can do that unraveling the wrinkles of the self cannot and, conversely, what is a self without language or metaphor to shape it? We are made of the meaning we make! A poem knows this, and so does any aim toward self-knowledge, toward healing.
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2. Hey Emily, we were introduced to your work through ADN contributor J.W. Marshall. We love poetry friendships. How do you know John?
I grew up in Seattle, in the University District, and so I started going to Open Books (when John and Christine were the owners) a loooong time ago. I cheated and asked John recently what he remembered and he reminded me that we (John, Christine, and myself) really gelled at a Filter reading in maybe 2006 or 2007, in Seattle. After that I read at the store, and eventually we made a chapbook together, Baguette. (Well, John really made it. I just contributed some strange poems.) I feel a kinship with John and Christine that is rare. I’m so interested in who they are – all of it – they’re just the most fabulous people.
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3. Hey Emily, got a favorite writing prompt?
I like using images (images on postcards!) as writing prompts.
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4. Hey Emily, what’s something you’ve learned from an editor?
There’s more room for originality than there is for likability.
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5. Hey Emily, which foreign language poet do you most wish you could read in the original?
Emily Dickinson. Kidding (sort of). A poet writing in Chinese, definitely. I know a little Chinese but I wish I could read the whole range of (ancient to contemporary) Chinese poetry in the original. Maybe Zhai Yongming.
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6. Hey Emily, do you carry a notebook? Got a phrase dashed in there that you just can’t shake?
Did for most of my life, now I voice text poems into my phone as I drive.
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7. Hey Emily, what’s something poetic about Portland?
All the white people, yelling at other white people about how good they are? No, that’s not poetic, that’s just sad. A poetic thing about Portland: there’s a dead volcano in the middle of the city.
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8. Hey Emily, any advice on how to remain vulnerable as an artist in a political atmosphere where it can be dangerous to be vulnerable?
I really like this question. I don’t know the answer, but I made it into a poem:
How do we remain
open when
the art we make makes
a world crushing
us closed?
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9. Hey Emily, what’s your submission process like?
Oh gosh, nonexistent. I wish I submitted more. For years I had charts and docs and endless NO and YES acceptances tracked. Gah, how weird that our work is “accepted” for publication. For a long time I championed Ink Node, a magazine that invites folks to self-publish. The editors only intrude to select (maybe only once a week or month?) from amongst what authors have elected to post themselves and elevate it to the home page. You can subscribe to poets who use Ink Node and receive notice when they post a new poem. https://www.inknode.com/
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10. Hey Emily, do you collect anything?
Another great question! I don’t think so? I collect resentments, and then I burn them off. I really want to give away my resentment collection. I find it hard to throw out written correspondence, so in that way I suppose I do collect it.
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11. Hey Emily, what’s your favorite word?
Mint.
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12. Hey Emily, where can we find you on the web?
instagram.com/emilykendalfreypoetry or ekfreycounseling.com.
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13. Hey Emily, what’s the last non-poetry book you loved?
I just re-read Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison as the inaugural book for a Toni Morrison book club I am a part of. I was and always am in awe of Toni Morrison. I consider her to be more important, more generous, more influential, more intelligent, more seeing, more loving of humans, more precise in her symbols, more everything, than god.
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14. Hey Emily, what’s the last great poetry book you read?
I read ten or so poetry books out loud on a road trip this summer. One I loved was Look by Solmaz Sharif. Truly incredible.
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15. Hey Emily, could you tell us about the first poem you wrote?
I think it was called “The Dolls,” maybe 5th grade or so? Oh wait! I wrote an acrostic using my name before that, I think, in 3rd grade? But the dolls poem was intended, I remember very specifically, to get everyone in my family to know how lonely and strong I was. Ha! It’s a poem about a girl with a lot of questions who gets no answers until she asks her dolls the questions, and they tell her what she’s been yearning to know.
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16. Hey Emily, what’s best piece of writing advice you ever got?
I took two workshops with Sharon Olds and at the end of one of them she told me something like, “Emily, I think you want to write about the world.” I think that meant “Stop retelling your old narratives and look wider, look beyond the story of your suffering and harness instead your curiosity about the world.” I really try to do that!
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[This Q&A was conducted in December 2019 and first published, via Facebook and Twitter, in January 2020]
A Dozen Nothing 