Honoring My Life Through Poetry

Aug 19

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Mary Kay Rummel Author Interview

In Little River of Amazements, you invite readers to explore the human experience through your collection of poems featuring a variety of themes from travel to faith and religion. What inspired you to share this collection of poetry? 

As I began to work on this collection of new and selected poems, at the urging of my wonderful editor, Diane Frank, of Blue Light Press, I realized it was different from compiling my earlier poetry books. It was constructing a life in poems, a creation of a personal mythology. It took me a long time to complete it – more than three years. Fifty pages are new poems – the others are from my previous collections. I love doing readings from this book because it feels that I am honoring my life, the people, the experiences, the learnings that are its center. And I think much of it relates to universal experience.

Of all the topics you write about in your poems, what is the one that resonates most with you? Do you have a favorite selection? 

I can’t really choose one. Several themes unite the poems in this book and run through my life: the sacredness of nature and of the body, the lives of women in history — ancient, medieval, contemporary, the emergence of voice from deep silence and the spiritual silence we grow into, a lifetime search for meaning. My favorite poem in the book is a sequence of poems called “In the Margins of the Pages.” It originally appeared in my book The Illuminations from 2006 and came out of a study of the the Book of Kells, an eighth century illuminated manuscript on display in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. I loved responding to the medieval drawings with a woman’s interpretation. It pulls together so many of the themes that weave throughout all my poems – Celtic and medieval culture, architecture, symbolism, sexuality, interpretations of Christianity, visual art, immanence in nature. 

I have also written some wonderful love poems.

What is one thing you hope readers are able to take away from your collection? 

I began writing poetry as a response to life and a search for personal illumination. I hope my poems inspire others on their journey and touch people with beauty through the music of language.

Can fans look forward to more poetry from you soon? What are you currently working on? 

​I am always writing poems and making books. My challenge is to create beauty in new ways. That’s what I am working on.

I will end with a quote from poet Nicholas Gulig: In my experience, poetry, at its best, breathes life into communities because poetry is, in essence, a deeply communal act.

Author Links: Facebook | Website

Mary Kay Rummel grew up in St. Paul near the Mississippi and the corner where Montreal, Lexington and West Seventh meet near Highland Park. She was the first Poet Laureate of Ventura County, CA. Little River of Amazements: New and Selected Poems is her tenth published poetry book, her eighth full collection. Blue Light Press also published Nocturnes: Between Flesh and Stone, Cypher Garden, The Lifeline Trembles, as a winner of the 2014 Blue Light Press Award and What’s Left is the Singing. This Body She’s Entered, her first book, won the Minnesota Voices Award for poetry and was published by New Rivers Press in 1989. It was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award. She was a recipient of a Loft Mentor award. Her work has appeared in numerous regional, national, and international literary journals and anthologies and has received several awards, including ten Pushcart nominations. She was a co-editor of Psalms of Cinder & Silt, a collection of community poems related to recent California wildfires published by Glenna Luschei at Solo Press. Her poems have been published in many journals and anthologies centered in both California and the Midwest including Water Stone Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, MiraMar, Anacapa Review, Gyroscope Review, Conestoga Zen, Pirene’s Fountain, Salt, Askew, Spillway and as a frequent finalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize, in Nimrod.Mary Kay has read her poems in many venues in the US, England and Ireland and has been a featured reader at poetry festivals including in the Ojai Poetry Festival and San Luis Obisbo Poetry Fest. She has participated in numerous poetry residencies including Anderson House and Vermont Studio Center and performs poetry with musicians. She has collaborated with artists in the US and England, most recently at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. A Professor Emerita from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, Mary Kay also taught at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and at California State University, Channel Islands.She is a founding board member of the nonprofit Ventura County Poetry Project. She and her husband, Conrad (Tim), live in California and Minnesota, near children and grandchildren in both states. She can be contacted through email at marykayrummel.com

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