An Interview with Poet Julie Danho

Contributed

Julie Danho will read from her collection of poetry for the final public reading of the semester in the Smith Creative Writers Reading series at Penn State Behrend.

THURSDAY, APR. 17

Julie Danho's first full-length poetry collection, Those Who Keep Arriving (2020), won the Gerald Cable Book Award from Silverfish Review Press. Her chapbook, Six Portraits, received the 2013 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Award, and her poems have appeared in journals such as Pleiades, Alaska Quarterly Review, Blackbird, and New Ohio Review and have been featured on The Writer's Almanac, Poetry Daily, and Verse Daily. She has been awarded fellowships from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and the MacColl Johnson Fund. Julie has an M.F.A. from Ohio State University and works as an editor in Providence, Rhode Island.

Cyrus Pagan-Wilpan (CP-W): What initially inspired you to become a writer?

Julie Danho (JD): I've always loved to read, and writing felt like a way to be part of the conversation. I wrote my first poems back in elementary school, and I still have some of them, including ones on how much I hate eating fish (which is still true) and how much I love playing Barbies (not as true). In high school, I started reading Denise Duhamel's poetry and realized that she had grown up not far from me in Rhode Island. That made me feel like being a poet was a real possibility. Back in 2018, I heard her read at a Rhode Island literary festival and met her briefly during the book signing. A few weeks later, I learned that my book, Those Who Keep Arriving, was going to be published and that I had to ask poets for blurbs for the back cover (an intimidating task). I contacted Denise Duhamel and asked if she'd consider writing a blurb. She was incredibly kind and agreed right away. It's really wonderful to have her words on my book, because her poems helped inspire me to become a writer.

CP-W: What was the difference between the process of writing your first published work and most recent?

JD: I wish I could say it's different, but it's really not. While I've learned a lot in that time—particularly about line breaks and rhythm—my process is still to write a terrible, sprawling first draft and spend months revising it. I usually write about something I've actually experienced and then find that the draft takes me someplace I didn't expect. 

In my first published poem, I wrote about "Erased de Kooning Drawing," an artwork by Robert Rauschenberg that I saw at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. I was intrigued that Rauschenberg tried to erase a drawing by the artist Willem de Kooning, and the poem started by exploring whether that act of erasing should be considered art. It ended up also being a direct address to an ex-boyfriend, using the painting to reflect on our relationship. One of my more recent published poems was about a pair of pink flannel pajamas covered with dozens of images of donuts. My mom had won them at a church fair and gave them to me, and I, as a grown woman, thought it was ridiculous how much I loved these pajamas. I began with that premise, and it turned into a poem about my grandmother and her loneliness at the end of her life.

CP-W: What is one of, if not the most, difficult challenges you face while writing?

JD: I'm a really slow writer, and that is definitely my biggest challenge. I often spend months working on poems and sometimes even put them away and come back to them years later.

CP-W: I'd like to ask about two specific poems of yours. What inspired "Ode to My Pink Bathroom" and "It's Terrible What's Happening There."

JD: Our house is from the early 1950s, and when we moved in, the upstairs bathroom was covered in pink and cranberry tile. I really didn't like the colors. However, it was in perfect condition and contained high levels of lead, as we learned during our inspection. Our real estate agent had said we could easily have it painted, but we learned that wasn't really true. We didn't have the money to redo the bathroom just to change the color, so I tried to make myself like it. I researched why so many bathrooms in the 1950s were pink and learned it was a trend started by First Lady Mamie Eisenhower. Their family moved so much when President Eisenhower was in the military that she used to carry around a paint stick with her favorite colors—including pink and green—to make each place they lived feel like home, including the White House. A paint color was actually named after her: First Lady Pink.

At the conclusion of the poem, I write about the color of the bathroom I want but won't get: blue trim and Harbor Grey. I did actually feel better about the bathroom as a result of the poem! But the week after New Ohio Review accepted the poem for publication, we learned that there was a leak behind the wall that could only be fixed by removing the tile. So after several months of construction, we had a blue and grey bathroom.

As for the second poem you ask about, I wrote "It's Terrible What's Happening There" at a time when the horrors of the Syrian civil war were often in the news. I'm Syrian and Lebanese, but it was my great-grandparents who came from Syria, and I don't know much about them or if we still have relatives there. Other than eating Arabic food and knowing a few words of the language, I'm not very connected to my heritage. So when I read about the atrocities happening in the war, I felt sadness, disbelief, and anger—as anyone would—when seeing people suffering and dying. The poem grapples with the distance I felt from where my great-grandparents lived and my guilt that their move to America has allowed me to be safe and, often, oblivious to what's happening in their home country.

CP-W: When did you realize you wanted a career as a poet, and what has that looked like for you?

JD: My parents have always been incredibly supportive. I was the first person in my family to go to college, and when I chose to major in creative writing—not exactly a practical career path—they were all for it. I didn't expect to support myself as a poet when I graduated. I thought maybe I'd go into journalism or publishing and write on the side. Instead, I went on to get my MFA in poetry at Ohio State. And when I finished grad school, I knew I couldn't get hired as a professor without a book publication, and I didn't want to move to New York or Boston to try to get one of the few jobs at a magazine or publishing house. So I moved back to Providence and started working at a health insurer as an editor, and I've been there for more than 20 years. I get up early in the morning and write poetry before work, then start my professional writing job. It's worked out really well. When I won a fellowship about 10 years ago, I became the first person in my company to take a sabbatical, and that time helped me finish my book Those Who Keep Arriving.

I'm also very lucky to have the support of my husband, David O'Connell, who is also a poet—and my amazing in-house poetry editor. We met at our MFA program at Ohio State. Dave is from Erie, and his parents and sister still live here, so we come to visit once or twice a year. He just won the Felix Pollak Prize for Poetry from the University of Wisconsin Press for his second book, At Some Point, which is really exciting. 

CP-W: Is there any advice you'd offer an upcoming writer who has yet to publish their first work?

JD: It sounds simple, but my best advice is to keep reading, try to write every day, and find people you trust to give you feedback on your work. All creative writers face a lot of rejection, so it's important to expect and accept that as part of the process. I've had poems rejected by 25 journals before they were finally published. And it's not uncommon to send out a book manuscript for years before it wins a contest or is taken by a press. It took me more than a decade to finish writing my first full-length poetry manuscript, and it went through several versions—and lots of rejections—before it won the Gerald Cable Book Award from Silverfish Review Press. That made all the rejection worth it!

I'd also suggest applying for fellowships and grants from public and private organizations. It often costs money to submit your work to journals and to book contests, so that additional funding can help with those costs as well as offer opportunities to attend conferences and take classes to continue to build your skills. The funding I received before publishing my book helped me financially, and it also boosted my confidence in my writing, which was just as important.

Cyrus Pagan-Wilpan, a student in the BFA in Creative Writing Program at Penn State Behrend, interviewed poet Julie Danho in anticipation of her visit to Behrend as part of the Smith Creative Writers Reading Series. Danho will read from her work on Thursday, Apr. 17, at 6:00 p.m. in the Metzgar building. For more information visit: behrend.psu.edu/readings