#442 Backstory of the Poem “To My Mother on Her First Anniversary” from the poetry collection SPLITTING OPEN THE WORLD by Carolyn Martin; published by Poetry Box on March 8, 2025.
#442 Backstory of the Poem “To My other on Her First Anniversary” from the poetry collection SPLITTING OPEN THE WORLD by Carolyn Martin; published by Poetry Box on March 8, 2025.
https://thepoetrybox.com/bookstore/splitting-open
Can you go through the step-by-step process of writing this poem from the moment the idea was first conceived in your brain until final form? I had already written a number of poems about my mother to whom Splitting Open the World is dedicated, and I was still working through my grief at not feeling grief a year after her death. As earlier poems pointed out, I had moved from relief—I was happy she finally got her wish to move on––to regret for things I never said to her. Now I was starting to feel her loss when her first anniversary rolled around. Hence, this event inspired me to write the penultimate poem in the collection.
Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. I write all my poems at my round, glass kitchen table where I can view my tree-lined yard out patio doors and I can hear the meowing of my feral cat when she wants to eat and be petted.
What month and year did you start writing this poem? I started playing with this poem in early 2024 and finished the final version in September 2024.
Were there any lines in any of your rough drafts of this poem that were not in the final version? And can you share them with us?
Since I don’t keep rough drafts—I revise directly on my computer—I don’t recall any deleted lines. Of course, I must have had some along with tweaks here and there for refine the rhythm and flow: my usual practice.
What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? First, that memories of the rituals you shared with a deceased loved one—in this poem, the weekly phone calls between my mother in New Jersey and me in Oregon––are triggers. To this day, when 9 a.m. on a Saturday rolls around, I catch myself wanting to pick up the phone. And my mother’s been gone for over two years now.
Secondly, that even though a poem has been published, it can still be revised. This poem wanted to grow as I grew—and I’m grateful I had the time to affirm that.
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Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why?
The last nine lines. The poem originally ended with “Yours––like tracking / rowdy clouds through flowering chestnuts / kissing golden oak––sometimes surprised with poetry.”
Luckily, I had the time before my final manuscript was due to my publisher, to recognize I’d grown in this complicated relationship with my mother.
Has this poem been published? And if so where? This poem was first published in its shorter form in Loss: Lifespan Volume 9, (Pure Slush Books Anthology Series).
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About the Carolyn Martin: From Roman Catholic Sister of Mercy and English teacher in New Jersey to international management trainer; from author of business books to poetry collections; from work addict to devotee of the Spanish proverb, “It is beautiful to do nothing and rest afterwards,” Carolyn Martin is blissfully retired–and resting–in Clackamas, Oregon. A lover of gardening and snorkeling, feral cats and backyard birds, Martin embraces poetry as her way of interacting with the world¬¬–in images, rhythms, sounds, and intensities of language. That is why she’s settled into the joyful task of translating experience into as few words as possible.Her aesthetic is found in Galway Kinnell’s statement, “To me, poetry is somebody standing up…and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment.” With little concealment, her poems grapple with this challenge. Martin’s poems have appeared in more than 200 publications throughout North America, Australia, and the UK. The Poetry Box released her second collection, The Way a Woman Knows, in 2015; a chapbook, Nothing More to Lose, in 2020; and her fifth collection, The Catalog of Small Contentments, in 2021. For more see: www.carolynmartinpoet.com
