Interview with Ruth Williams

Special Feature: Interveiw with Ruth Williams

INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY BRYNLEE GIBBS AND GARY HUIZENGA WRITTEN BY MYRA MEYER

Ruth Williams is an associate professor of English at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri. She earned her PhD in English and Comparative Literature from the University of Cincinnati, and her MFA in Creative Writing, poetry from Eastern Washington University. As a professor, she has taught workshops in poetry and creative nonfiction. She teaches American, women’s, and ethnic literature, and she is an editor for Bear Review. Williams is the author of Flatlands, a collection of poetry that sheds some light on her homeland of Nebraska. The poetry showcased in her book turns something normally perceived to be flat and boring into something more lively and intriguing. In the Fall of 2019, Williams visited Waldorf University as a part of the Distinguished Visiting Writers Series. She read some of her work in a public reading held in the Salveson Ballroom and answered questions from students and community members. Prior to the reading, some members of the Waldorf Literary Review staff, Gary Huizenga and Brynlee Gibbs, were able to interview Williams to find out more about her work and her experiences as a writer.

Brynlee Gibbs: When you realized that you had a liking for poetry, did you just write it for the first time for fun, or did you read it first? I didn’t read it. I was young when I first wrote it. I started liking to write poetry with rhymes, so I was wondering if you read it or just wrote it. Ruth Williams: It was kind of a little bit of both. I had just had my first breakup in high school. I was so embarrassed to be such a late bloomer, but then I finally made it happen with not a very nice dude. He then summarily was like, “No.” Probably for my own good because he was not a good guy. He was like, “You’re way too innocent. I can’t ruin you.” But I was devastated and heartbroken, and a friend of mine was like, “Why don’t you write a poem about it?” I thought that was an interesting idea because I had only ever written stories, and I really loved writing fiction. I wasn’t that great at it, but I was like okay, I’ll write a poem, and simultaneously I was getting really into feminism, and I was checking out all these books about second wave feminism and

essays and things, and one of the books I checked out was a book of feminist poetry, and I was like, “Oh, this is so cool! Poetry by women!” And I remember I typed out all these poems, and I printed them and put them in this binder from this collection, and I read them. So, I wrote, but then I was very quickly getting really into reading as well. It went hand in hand, but the first spark of it was really the suggestion of a friend who was like, “You know you could do that. You could write a poem. Maybe it would help you,” because she wrote poems. It was nice.

Gary Huizenga: When you were pursuing higher education, was poetry the goal, or was there something else that you were pursuing? RW: It wasn’t really the goal, weirdly. When I got done with my undergrad, I continued to write poetry, not just to have like a nine to five job. But I always, in the back of my mind, wanted to go and get a PhD. Not necessarily to become a professor—that happened, which is wonderful, but I just really liked the idea of getting a PhD. I don’t know why—a nerd dream, I guess, but out of my undergrad, I was like, “I don’t know what I wanna do, but I think I wanna get this PhD someday, and I know I need to get a Master’s to do that, so what do I wanna do?” And I was really in my early twenties and not sure which direction to go, and I wanted to have an adventure. That’s all I knew. I wanted to not work as an administrative assistant anymore, and I was gonna move to Alaska to have an adventure, but one of my friends, when I was visiting her in Alaska said, “What if you just,”—cause I said I was interested in getting an MFA too— she’s like, “Why don’t you just get an MFA? That’s an adventure.” And l was like, “Well I might not get a job, and blah blah blah.” But then I realized, she’s right. It’s just an adventure, so I did it. And then, when I got to my PhD, I was trying to decide between literature and creative writing, and I found a good program that let me do both things—both scholarly and creative writing at the same time. And so, I was able to carry that poetry thing. So it’s weird, cause I wasn’t heading in that direction intentionally, but once I got into that direction, it was totally perfect. GH: Right, it just followed you through. RW: Yeah. That’s why sometimes I feel like I want to tell my students who are freaking out about not knowing or making mistakes. I don’t wanna suggest that their life is gonna be like mine, and that I hadn’t had the privileges and good things that have led me in this smooth path—not that it’s smooth, but it’s

worked out, right? GH: Right. RW: Sometimes I wanna say, “Not knowing is okay. Sometimes when you don’t know, then you stumble into something. It can work out.” BG: It’s an adventure. RW: Yeah. It can be an adventure, and it then can end up being the thing that you’re like, “Whoa, I really do wanna do this!” When you think about it, as opposed to kind of feeling pressure like, “I have to have something to do!” Then choosing something, and realizing, “Hm, I don’t know if I really wanted to do that.” I think having time between all of my degrees—I know that’s not for everyone, but I preach it to my students, “It’s okay to take a year. It’s okay to take two years. You don’t need to go to grad school right away. Live your life, go out with your friends, answer the phones and make copies, order the donuts.” That’s not exciting, but I got a lot of writing done, and I got to really realize how important it was to me because I never stopped doing it. I kept doing it even though I had that job, and I think that probably was telling me something even though I didn’t consciously know it. It’s kind of some advice— unasked for advice.

GH: What are some common traps you see for young writers, and how have you gone about avoiding them? RW: I think that some of the young writers I work with don’t understand how important reading can be, and how they need to read for pleasure, and they need to kind of love some of what they read, and that when they love what they read, they should just take note because that’s the thing that you want to try and do in your own work. It’s not to say copy, but to be inspired by. What is it that really speaks to you? So I think sometimes my students see, you can read a poem in two minutes, and it can pass over you, and that’s okay. I mean, sometimes I read poetry that way. I’m just kind of looking through it, and I’m just reading it, and I’m just catching whatever I want, but there are also times when you need, as a writer, to read and really look at, ‘okay what’s going on here? What’s happening in this book or this poem?’ And I think that, if I were to say a piece of advice, I would say read and actually pay attention to what you read, and think about it as much as you can, and if that only happens in a class, that’s fine. It’s a good place to be forced into it, but you should still read for pleasure too. I think also, don’t be afraid of rejection and criticism. It

stings, and it sucks—even when you’re experienced—just to get rejected, but once you do it enough, that’s the work. It’s part of the work. It’s like what I was saying about exercises. You’re just exercising your submission muscle. When you send things out, they get rejected, they come back, you send them out again, and you just keep the process going, and I think that it’s really hard to get into that mindset when you’re young because it can feel more like “oh, this is an indictment of everything I’ve done, and I can’t come back from this,” or “if someone says that they don’t like this or it’s not working, then I can either give up or ignore everything they have to say.” Neither of those is really good. So, I would say welcome critique, welcome rejection. It’s what you have to do to cross the line between amateurs who can show their work to their friends and their parents and their grandparents and get high fives versus somebody who’s going to be able to show their work to a wider audience and get the high fives from that audience.

BG: So, I was going to ask, obviously besides Nebraska, do you relate poetry to anything else? I relate poetry to music, that’s where I get most of my inspiration from, specifically Billie Eilish and Lana Del Ray, that’s my girl right there I love her. She’s actually releasing a poetry book or a collection and her stanzas are very poetry like. So I was just wondering if there’s any specific artists or songs or anything that you relate to poetry? RW: I do listen to music a lot, and I definitely listen to music when I’m writing. I don’t know if there’s one artist, like you were saying. I actually just listened to Lana Del Ray’s new album the other day because I was curious about it. There was a kerfuffle online with a music critic who is a wonderful music critic of feminist and women’s music, and she had written a review very much praising the album, but she had a line in there that was basically like, “Some of Lana Del Ray’s lyrics are not as great as Joni Mitchell’s lyrics.” Lana got pretty annoyed and tweeted about it, and that created this whole thing, but I do listen to music, and I do find music to be something that kind of can get you in the mood. I also, and this is not necessarily other art form, but I also find that more and more as I get older, and I get less time to get into the mood, I have a mechanism to basically just force myself to write and that is like having a series of things where I’m always doing the same thing to start. For a while there, I was writing these little prose poems where each one had a title that was like “The (Blank),” and then I would just write it. If I don’t have anything

to write about, and I couldn’t get in the mood with some other kind of art or music or TV or movie, I would just force myself to write using the little device like, “do this one thing, have the same title, the same form,” and somehow that helps. But I do think imbibing in other kinds of art is a really great way to stoke fires and creativity because you see what other people do—whether it’s in music or in visual art, and it just kind of gets you excited about art.

BG: You touched on it earlier, but I am a super extreme closeted feminist. I don’t really speak out about it, but I write about it a lot. Lana Del Ray, that’s one of the things I love about her. She is very for women, and I love that. [She] and Miley Cyrus both. I just feel like I do write about it a lot, but I don’t really turn it in per say so much because I like to stay away from the political side of things. So, I wondered if that is something you ever think about when you’re writing. Like if you think, “Oh I’m not going to publish this because it is so political,” or “I don’t want this to see the light of day.” RW: No, no I don’t, but I also don’t write any super explicitly political work. love reading political work, but I don’t write super explicitly political work. I think there may be some themes in some of my work, and I do have one project that is kind of documentary and has some more critic of US expansionism, but it’s not in your face. I do think though, that it can be challenging to own a poem that says something—I think the only times I’ve hesitated are when it’s about someone else, and it’s something that maybe I know, but they haven’t explicitly given me permission to talk about, so that’s more when I get that feeling of “ooh, I don’t know if I should send this out,” but usually my inner writer overrides my ethical friend. It’s just this is a good poem, and I just want to get it published. And you just hope it’s published in a print journal and not an online magazine where the person can find it. BG: There’s no names, no worries, no names. RW: But, I think exploring political themes and exploring the value of an identity or the value of a stance—that’s a worthy thing to try whether you ever show those poems to anyone else because, even if all they are doing is helping you refine your own views of what you value, I think that’s worthy and eventually, hopefully you will say, “I am a feminist.” Whatever people say about that or whatever hangs up they have, those are actually a sign that feminism is necessary, so if someone says, “Oh you must hate men,” or “You think that women are better than men.” No. Those are the messages that you receive to

scare you from become a feminist BG: That’s your own masculinity blocking your eyes. RW: Right, and sometimes I think young women say that too, especially if they are heterosexual. What is the worst thing you can be if you are a straight woman? Unattractive to men. And you don’t want to squelch that or squander it, so you’ll say, “I don’t want to be identified as something that could potentially turn a guy off,” and really, yes you do want to be identified with something. If the guy is turned off by that, that’s a sign. That’s not a good thing. But I think exploring those things even if they don’t never get further than your desk, that’s a worthy thing. As much as I am trying to get my work out the door, I also think that sometimes just the practice is important for me as a person. BG: Just to get it off your chest. RW: Yeah, absolutely. And I don’t know if you can relate to this but writing helps me understand what I think. Sometimes I don’t know what I think about something until I write about it. Or I don’t know what it means to me. I would not have articulated the themes in flatlands. I don’t think I would have articulated those things about Nebraska, but now that I have written those poems, and I talked about the book, it’s much easier for me to understand how I actually feel about it.