Interview with Calgary Martin
Calgary Martin’s poem “In My Final Months as a Childless Woman I Order a Road Opener Candle” appears in Bluestem’s Fall / Winter 2020 issue. Martin is originally from Washington State but spent her formative years in Brooklyn, NY. She lives now in Illinois with her family. Her poems have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Salamander, Nashville Review, The McNeese Review, and others.
Did the concept of the road-opener candle inspire this poem, or was some of the inspiration for it already in your mind before this parallel was made to help cement the final format of the poem?
I had actually been struggling to write for most of my pregnancy—or maybe ruminating more than writing is a better way to describe it—and a lot of my poems actually arise after months of carrying on this way, out of a sort of a devil-may-care, “I’m just going to throw out a random line about a random object in my periphery” moment of flailing… and from that first line of this poem, I was able to finally process some of the restless thoughts I’d been having for so many months.
This poem emphasizes the parallel between the speaker and the road opener candle, repeating how the candle “carries a lodestone” and how, in a similar way, the speaker is carrying a child. How would you describe this conflict in the narrator, the implication of the candle having value for the crystal it holds and pregnant women often being valued for the child they carry, while they, and the speaker, would instead “like to be more than a house for a body?”
That’s a lovely parallel that I think arose more out of being subconsciously enamored by that verb “to carry” than anything else. It wasn’t fully intentional as I was writing although maybe I should not admit to that, haha. But you know, I don’t think I was fully appreciative yet of what you are describing there, while I was pregnant. Certainly, I was conscious that I wanted to remain a full individual after having a baby and that I wanted to be able to offer this, in a way, to my kid, to be a whole person and not only a mom whatever that means. It’s kind of a lofty abstract idea when you haven’t yet had the kid, in retrospect. So I had yet to go through the experience of having the baby and finding out that you are really left on your own in so many ways once that happens. Of course, for you as the parent, the focal point is your child especially at first and that makes perfect sense–but whatever else you’re going through in the background is something you often have to shout about to get acknowledged by others. If that’s not really your style, to announce your pain and existential crises, you might not have the opportunity to talk about it very much at all.
How have your perceptions of this concept changed since writing this poem, if they have changed?
I guess I sort of jumped the gun on this question in my previous answer. I do think it was a necessary expression of something I ardently wished at the time—but it does feel a bit lofty to me now. Of course, I have a very enthusiastic, extroverted almost-three-year-old Sagittarius who really takes life by the horns at this point, so I am just in that period of making sure we all keep our heads above water and can just find regular enjoyment in daily life whenever possible. It feels less urgent and less realistic to have arrived to my time as a mother as this perfect, accomplished, fully realized individual. I see it now as more of a process.
One of my favorite images used in this poem is the lodestone itself, and when the poem emphasizes that it is “a piece / of magnetite, for the curious – used for attracting / (lure or tempt or beguile or steal).” Can you elaborate on the significance of these lines to the central theme of this poem, or to you as a writer?
I think there is a lot of skepticism toward the self in those lines. There is the idea that some sort of spell would be required to conjure up the specific circumstances I had in mind. I know I was definitely incredulous with myself, like, “shouldn’t I have done all of these things and become of all of these things by now if I am bringing this person into the world?” So in that moment the road opener is definitely representing that wish to invite something in and perhaps I’m also being a bit self-deprecating using those synonyms, or questioning my own motives in the entire endeavor, if that makes sense.
What were you reading at the time that you wrote this poem, if you can remember?
I read quite a few fantasy novels with some crime thrillers mixed in while I was pregnant. I just didn’t have the capacity to sit quietly with anything so poetry was out. I can always rely on those two genres, though, to keep me reading regularly when it’s hard to focus otherwise and that helped with the restlessness I mentioned before. I remember that I read Red Clocks by Leni Zumas, at some point, which was really…not a spectacular choice for a person gestating a fetus, to be quite honest!
What are you currently working on in terms of your writing?
I write very, very slowly so I’m in the equally slow process of putting together my first book of poems. And just as slowly writing a novel that hasn’t quite figured itself out yet—doesn’t know if it wants to be YA or not, doesn’t quite understand its own world yet. I definitely feel in all of my writing right now that I’m in a place where some pivotal experiences of my early adulthood into my early thirties are starting to coalesce in a way that will bring closure to the time period—but there is still some mystery there as far as what the end product is going to look like. Which experiences will be poems and which are going to be siphoned into fiction. It’s nice to feel like things are opening up and revealing themselves more after finishing grad school in 2015 and feeling for several years like I had no idea what I was doing. I mean, I still feel that way to some extent, but the difference is that I did remember how to write somewhere in there and that’s something, something I don’t take for granted.