A Lion Bridge Publishing Interview with Rachel Nix, Author of I Don’t Go Down That Road Anymore
When exploring sensitive or touchy memories of growing up, do you see them differently than you would have before writing about them?
Absolutely. Memories sometimes arrive recklessly, especially when they’re not of better times. I think of the poem as the seatbelt when driving: I could get where I need to be without it, but would I arrive safely?
Poetry, for me, has always been about processing things, whether it’s grasping with grief, digesting anger, or reaching for the truth by acknowledging my own part in things. A memory may pop up that disturbs me and I’ve learned it’s best to tackle it with structure. I break it apart and try to see angles within the memory, how it can be explored to make sense. This also helps when I have a hole in my memory, something my mind has blocked out for whatever reason. The hole drives me nuts but the structure of a poem organizes my thoughts and whatever it is I’m reaching for finds its way to me – then I just let the poem do what it needs to do. All that’s to say: I believe my understanding of the past is far more accurate after writing about it.
How do you balance being open but still respecting your own boundaries within your writing?
While I’m not the biggest fan of Virginia Woolf, I abide by this bit of advice when writing: “If you cannot tell the truth about yourself, you cannot tell it about other people.” To go a bit further, I think poetry can be an exercise in telling the truth about yourself to yourself. Sometimes we need a creative way to find our own truth. In that sense, boundaries become arbitrary. They change when we do and I find them constrictive for the most part. They get in the way. I think vulnerability is where power is kept.
To borrow another quote, this time from French poet and philosopher Paul Valéry: “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.” I agree with that. Some of the poems in this collection were written twenty years ago. They served their purpose at the time but were maybe only as far as I could go back then.
While there is no exact chronological order to the poems, the sequence reads almost like a narrative. How did you choose this order, and what is its significance to you?
Time isn’t linear and neither is trauma. The past can invade the now and often does. So while the poems aren’t in chronological order, they’re progressions of what came before them. The direction they take acknowledges a pattern of behavior that could have destroyed my self-worth if not for the autonomy my mother and maternal grandmother coaxed and protected. I wanted to project an attack/repair rhythm. What was done to me by one side of the family didn’t compare to what the other side of my family did for me.
I was working towards “Erudition” and “Absolution” for the most part. They’re the poems where I grasp fault is ultimately irrelevant and waiting for an admission of it won’t heal anything. After that, “Semantics” is the light against the darkness in the introduction of the book. That’s where I am now. Ending with “I don’t go down that road anymore” is taking the power back, pointing to the exits if I ever need them again.
The “Road” is a central object in your book, often representing your childhood and the home you grew up in. What inspired you to focus on the “Road” in your poems? What, in your own words, is the significance of the “Road”?
Roads prove where we start doesn’t have to be where we end. When I turned sixteen, I still had a heap of confines to stay within but I could drive to my Maw-Maw’s house and get a coffee cup full of advice. She’d undo damage and fortify my confidence before sending me back home. Driving also gave me the opportunity to spend time with my uncles, my mother’s brothers. They showed me men could be tender. They also fed the fire my mother started in me.
As for the poems, I listen to music when I write and always have. Certain albums put me in the headspace to write. For these poems, it’s always been “Vs.” by Pearl Jam – specifically “Rearview Mirror” on that record. So I guess in a way, I was always looking in the rearview mirror to write.
Because the collection focuses on inherited traits, be they physical or psychological, when you look at yourself in the mirror, who do you see? And has that changed over time?
Oh, for certain. When I was younger, emotional abuse triggered insecurities regularly. These days, I see the people I most admire in my features. My sister and I have never looked more alike. We both have our Momma’s eyes, though one of mine slants like my Maw-Maw’s did when I smile. I see curiosity and mischief, the traits that the women in my family have always honored. Mostly, I see the person I was lectured not to be and I’m quite proud of that.
