Opal Palmer Adisa is an incredibly talented and committed multi-genre writer. She generously gave some times to share some of her insights on writing and her own process with me.
What is your biggest challenge as a writer?
I have given this question a lot of thought, and apart from the obvious, getting the work published and distributed, which still remains a challenge, since I am neither writing so-called popular literature, nor am I writing a new-age genre novel or poems that are experimental and esoteric, then where does my work belong. I have always been attracted to, and continue to write about the extraordinary people of the Caribbean, who, given the social strata, have always been marginalized, who live on the fringe, and every time I say I am going to cross-over, give the public and these editors and agents what they want, my hands are stymied. So I think that is still my biggest challenge, staying true to my core values of uplifting the community and advancing the culture, and wanting to write to make money, lots of it, and to have my books on the best-seller’s list. I want and deserve that, but I have yet to figure out a way to make it happen, given my specific stance. Also, there is so much I want to write, and so many things that happen on a daily basis that pull my attention, so often, sticking to one project and seeing it through, rather than working on many simultaneously proves to be a real task.
You are the renaissance woman of writing as an accomplished poet, novelist, essayist, playwright and journalist. How do you choose which form is appropriate for you to work with?
I began as a poet, and for many years I thought poetry was the only thing I could write. Then when I went to do my masters in creative writing, I took a prose course and discovered that I had stories to tell that demanded more room and space to stretch out, hence prose, and so the story goes with the other forms. I do not choose the form; the work dictates the form. For example, I just completed a play, Out of Control, about domestic violence that will be performed in St Croix in August. That just seemed like the right format. I did not write a series of poems, although I am sure I can and might on this subject, and although I have broached this subject in one or more of my short stories, this theme said drama now –a play seems more fitting to explore the complexities of domestic violence, and so it is. So I never worry about form, I let the work choose and since I am competent in all genres I have that freedom in which to work.
You are very much a woman of the Caribbean but also you have American, that is United States of American, sensibilities. How do you balance the two?
I am, and live a very integrated life. Where ever I am is home. I felt this way when I lived in Egypt and Brazil, three months in both places. I miss Jamaica, but I don’t feel exiled nor like an immigrant. I am home. I belong here as much, and maybe even more so, since I have spent most of my life thus far in the US. But since I was reared in the Caribbean, I am definitely a Caribbean woman, and the main subject of my works is focused there. However, I am also aligned with US sensibilities as you say, and my development as a writer is decidedly informed by this culture. I don’t feel as if I am balancing or juggling, I am being present to all of who I am and all the spaces and places that inform my reality.
If you could give two or three pieces of advice to the new writer who doubts her or himself, what would they be?
Write and write, and then write some more, and simultaneously, read and read, and then read some more, a diversity of authors and across genres, regardless of your specific genre.
Also, I have given this topic a lot of consideration and in my collection, Eros Muse. I do not have a copy handy, but there is an essay dedicated to this question, so I want to refer new writers to that text. However, I will add this, doubt is a good place to begin the introspection, but even with a pound of doubt, if you have something pressing to say, it will wash the doubt from in front of your door. The question every new writer needs to ask her/himself is: What do I have to say that I refuse to die with?
Tell us about your most recent collection of poetry? Did you break new ground? Did you accomplish what you wanted to accomplish?
4-Headed Woman (Tia Chucha Press, 2013) is my best and most fully realized collection to date. I believe with this collection, I made a break through. I finally realized the raison d’être of a collection. I am very pleased with the dialogue between the poems, the flow from one section to the other, the development within the sections, and how each poem advances the overall movement of the collection. Divided into four sections, the collection explores the complexity of being a professional woman, who is an artist, a wife, a mother, and more in today’s society, –how she juggles all these roles and what falls by the wayside in the process, including sometimes, her sanity. The collection is also a response to a few male critics who are always dismissing in a disparaging manner the works of female poets as being too domestic and emotional. So I take it on, the entire female canon beginning with the home with its breads and fruits, then moving to what can be considered the core of womanhood, the menses, then from there the mental breakdown as a result of juggling and buying into the feminist rhetoric, that we can do it all, then concluding with Bathroom Graffiti as an important public, political forum for women.
I definitely broke new ground with this collection, but as I reflect, I have always broken new ground with my collections, which are distinct, Eros Muse (Africa World Press, 2006), and I Name Me Name (Peepal Tree Press, 2008), both of which combine poetry and prose, but in very different ways. With those collections it was important to include the prose and poetic essays together in one collection as the genre divide is, in some ways so arbitrary and excluding, rather than seeing the marriage and possibilities that exist between these forms. So I have to say with those two collections I was breaking ground. And even with 4-Headed Woman, which is mostly poetry, the last dramatic poem in the collection, “Queen of Bathroom Graffiti,” is ostensibly a play that has been performed; and my goal for the collection is to have all the poems in the last section perform similar to the Vagina Monologues. Indeed I accomplished what I set out to and in the process achieved more.
Please visit Opal’s page to learn more about her, and read some of her work.
Opal Palmer Adisa is a Jamaica-born award-winning poet, novelist, performance artist and educator.