‘Stifled by the truth’: Tina Barry in conversation with Michelle Elvy about her imaginative new collection, I Tell Henrietta

 

Michelle Elvy: Kia ora and thank you, Tina, for sharing your new book with us! Let’s start with where you start: the swan. Can you begin here and tell us how this creature took shape?

Tina Barry: Thank you, Michelle, for this interview, and for letting me share I Tell Henrietta with your readers!

The swan is a good place to launch. I admit that I once had a swan obsession. I started drawing them, and then became obsessed, sketching them constantly, even waking up in the middle of the night to add details. I wrote about those months in ‘My Year of Drawing Swans’, the poem on the book’s back cover. That happened in the mid-eighties; I hadn’t really given a lot of thought to swans after that. But in late 2021, a close family member suffered a serious health issue that shook our family.

Early in the writing of the Henrietta pieces, a swan surfaced again, and then the swan possessed me again. I found the bird’s re-emergence in my life comforting and curious. I didn’t understand at first why swans appeared, but they did, one after the other.

So, why a swan? I’ve asked myself that question a lot. I’m a former visual artist, so of course I’m attracted to the bird’s beauty: that glittering eye, the long curved neck, the gorgeous shape and heft of its body. I refer to a swan in the poem ‘The Swan Returns, This Time With a Russian Accent’, as a ‘feathered yacht’. I know swans have a dark side too, how bitchy they can be to other fowl, their take no prisoners owning of whatever water they inhabit. But it’s more than beauty and a dark side. I’m still figuring it out.

ME: And, from there, how did you go about writing these pieces? What was the inspiration behind them, and did you write them towards a specific collection of thoughts, characters, themes and ideas?

TB: I started writing the Henrietta pieces when I was in a dark, frightened place. Many of the first poems seemed too primal, too raw to publish, and they fell out of the group. Themes emerged, though, as my relative regained their health: Even before the swan, was the character of Henrietta, who became a kind-of portal to channel the stories through. Then the theme of water, its ability to heal and to drown surfaced. Water in pools, lakes and oceans flows through many of the pieces. The first poem that launched Henrietta as well as the water theme was ‘Questioning the Lake’:

…Why did Henrietta’s question evoke the lake,
its image lodged now like the shadow of a lover’s hand?
Perhaps to cling to pleasure after months of famine,
to feel the lake’s fleecy bottom,
how its cool fingers circled my neck
but never let me drown.

There’s also the theme of sexuality, the pleasure of it, and how it changes as one ages. And mothers – being a mother, having a mother, and how aging upends the mother/daughter relationship.

I’m making I Tell Henrietta sound very dark, but what I hear from readers a lot is, “I didn’t expect to laugh that much.”

ME: This book covers so much ground between hauntings and living, in small moments. One could also say this is a lesson in brevity: each piece shaped with purpose, whether micro in prose form, or poetic with line breaks. Did you write the pieces included here with their shape in mind, or did you trim to bring them into focus? For example, where the poem ‘And wonders about old lovers’ sits opposite the micro ‘I tell Henreitta about Rusty’. 

TB: The goal with these pieces is to use action that happens in a few moments, to reveal a lot of history.

Except for a few of the pieces that started with line breaks and stayed lineated, such as ‘Questioning the Lake’ and ‘The Swan Returns’, the poems were written in prose form. I really love that gray area where I can take leaps in time. And then there’s lots of trimming. Regardless of the paragraph form, I thought of the pieces as poems, or prose poems, or hybrid poems/micros. And I tried to employ the same attention to image and sound as I did to the lineated work.

I didn’t work in groups, writing say five poems with a particular theme. I wrote as the ideas came, and then when it was time to create the manuscript, I grouped them according to a narrative arc, themes, etc. So, I didn’t tinker with either “And wonders” or “I Tell…Rusty” so they would have a kind of thematic conversation; that happened in the sequencing.

ME: ‘Unclassifiable’ – why are you proud to hear this said about this book?

TB: Because I have to agree with Nathan Leslie, who called the pieces ‘vividly unclassifiable’ in his blurb. So much of the writing could be called prose poems or micros or flash. I’m often at a loss as to what to call them, and what category to respond to when I submit them to literary magazines. I guess that I’m proud because I never tried to force the pieces into a form; I just let them be what they needed to be. And who wouldn’t love ‘vividly’?

ME: And related to that, can you talk a bit about the line(s) between real life and what you create on the page?

TB: One of the reasons that I stopped writing memoir pieces is that I felt stifled by the truth. I want to be able to play with my writing, to start from real lived experience, and then leap into something unexpected, that excites me and hopefully excites the reader. So, while most of the pieces in I Tell Henrietta are grounded in the truth, I take a lot of liberties, a lot of ‘what ifs?’ If I give examples, though, I’ll take the mystery out of the pieces and ruin them, so I’ll leave it at that.

ME: We’d love to hear more about the collaboration with Kristin Flynn – adding what you have called ‘visual magic’. How did the addition of her artworks come to be?

TB: Kristin and I met when I created and curated the collaborative exhibit ‘The Virginia Project’, in 2018-2019, in a gallery in the Hudson Valley where we both live. Kristin, who taught fashion design at a nearby college, brought her class to see the show. We became friends. I admired Kristin’s paintings and drawings immediately, for their dark viewpoint with flashes of humor, not to mention her stunning color sense and ability to render anything. She liked my writing for many of the same reasons. We wanted to work together on a project, and when I was about a year into writing the I Tell Henrietta pieces, I mentioned the work to Kristin, and we were off and running.

I’d send a few pieces at a time to Kristin, who chose whatever resonated. She’d send a few sketches, and it was always, Oh! Because I hadn’t envisioned the characters and setting as she did. Lots of unexpected, happy surprises, even when the images were dark and strange.

ME: And finally, the ending – we come to the swan, again, and the haunting image: ‘Two clouds join and darken.’ We also note the touch of colour here, and the thematic joining that occurs in these last lines.

TB: I wrote the poem with no intention of tying all the thematic threads together. A few years ago I was working on a collection that I had hoped to turn into a novel, I still might, but as I was doing research for the main character, I came across a Russian folktale about a tsarina who hired artisans to carve a giant swan from ice. Because she was all powerful, she forced a newly-married couple to sleep in it; one died. The visuals of that, the horror of that cruelty has haunted me since.

There are light-hearted moments, but the underbelly of the poem, the ‘two clouds that join and darken’, speaks of the suffering that can ensue when you accept beauty at face-value and walk through the world without the awareness of brutal surprises.

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Excerpts from the book

The Swan Returns, this Time with a Russian Accent

Before my daughter’s wedding, a swan slides
through the dark folds of a lake. Ducks,
feasting on bread crumbs near the water’s lip,
raise their heads and shriek.
Two clouds join and darken. Anyone can see
it’s a sign. When the swan glides closer,
I toss a hunk of bread that it snatches,
then sails away like a feathered yacht.
My mother told me a Russian folktale
about a mustached tsarina
infamous for cruelty and terrible gifts.

I’ve accidentally given some thoughtless presents:
a wedge of cheddar to a lactose-intolerant colleague.
For a boyfriend, a birthday card addressed to my ex.
To a dying relative, a plant that attracted swarms of flies.
I can’t beat the tsarina, though, for originality.
She hired artisans to carve a giant swan from ice,
then forced a newly married couple to sleep in it.
A long train trails behind my daughter’s white gown.
I’d say she looks like a swan,
but I’m afraid to jinx her.

 

Why Mermaids Upset Me

After we finish our hot dogs, my mother gives my sister and me a couple of dollars to buy cotton candy. Behind us in line, a man with a tattooed neck— a mermaid, finely drawn and delicately colored—catches me staring.

I expect an indulgent smile but his bugged-out eyes mock me. His gaze travels from my face to my T-shirt and the flat chest beneath. When he reaches my ankles, he lingers on the lace-trimmed socks. Grimacing, he shakes his head. A small, intentional cruelty.

 

And Wonders About Old Lovers

I used to swim with the mother of an old lover.
We’d pack lunch for the beach, then wade
out past the waves until we could no longer feel
the rush of sand and broken shells.
Once, bobbing in easy surf,
we talked about her son,
who no longer wanted me.
“My son is a fool for not loving you,” she said,
encircling me in her sea-chilled arms.
It was the closest I had ever felt to anyone.
I kissed her shoulder.

Henrietta Questions my Faith

Henrietta’s face stays patient as some scribbled drawing stashed in my synapses unfolds.

Before the images, fragments of voices, suppressed glee. Motel 6, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Five evangelists in bathing suits, waist-deep in the pool. Four men, one woman. God makes a sixth, with a dramatic slant of light. What sins did this woman in her sensible skirted swimsuit commit? It doesn’t matter. She’s ecstatic, quivering. The pastor’s hand rests on her head, another on her shoulder. She clutches her nose, eager for rebirth, oblivious to a rotisserie on the cracked cement near the deep end, each spoke an ellipsis of green chiles, their scent burning in the air.

I Mention the Deer

I preferred my friend’s father. Mine sat silent in cigar smoke, suave in a cheap suit. Hers, a suburban cowboy, weather-worn in plaid flannel, loud with love. “Aw, girl,” he’d say when I visited, patting my cheek, “you’re so darn cute.” On warm evenings, he’d walk with my friend, head bent to listen, one hand holding their mutt’s leash, the other hand around hers.

Around six p.m. each night, I’d listen for his truck, then part the bedroom curtains to watch its slow descent. The truck made happy music—a jangle of rusted lawn mowers and car parts watering cans, and bits of bicycles. My affection for him changed one night, though, when instead of odds and ends, a huge buck, eyes paralyzed in surprise, antlers shocked with blood filled the truck’s bed. I didn’t want to believe he killed the animal. Or walked to the swing set and unhooked the swings. Or, joined by three neighborhood men who patted him on the back, hung the deer from its hooves like a desecrated god.

 

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What people are saying

“Tina Barry is not only a poet but a master of flash fiction, or microfiction. This kind of fiction is poetry, and its wild imaginative power is evident in the content. The poems and stories in I Tell Henrietta flood memories of the past with the color and smell of their time and place. In “Oh, the Carnies” Barry writes: “I tell Henrietta how the flaps of carnival trucks waved like dirty elephants’ ears.” I Tell Henrietta takes the reader inside the gaudy, slightly tawdry, ever fascinating world of Tina Barry.”

Susan Chute, Founder, Next Year’s Words reading series, from her introduction to a recent reading

“I Tell Henrietta is one of the most unusual and creative collections I’ve read . . . The work joins my favorite ‘most unusual and creative’ poetry list, which includes Olio by Tyehiumba Jess (2017’s winner of the Pulitzer Prize in poetry) and The Long Take by Robin Robertson, a finalist for the Booker Prize in 2018.”

“Barry’s poems, and Flynn’s artwork, can be unsettling and often jarring. But the images are vivid, and the words are as sharp and clear as a cut gemstone.”

from Glynn Young’s review of I Tell Henrietta, 9/24, Tweetspeak Poetry

 

Find the book

The book can be found at the publisher’s site, Aim Higher:
https://aimhigher.org/books/p/tina-barry-i-tell-henrietta-paperback
https://aimhigher.org/books/p/tina-barry-i-tell-henrietta
Small presses encourage you to purchase directly from them, for good reason!
But the book can also be found at these third-party sites:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble

 

Find Tina here:

TinaBarryWriter.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tina.barry.5
Instagram: @tinabarry188

 

I Tell Henrietta is Tina Barry’s third full-length collection. Tina has been published in Flash-Frontier, Rattle, Verse Daily, The Best Small Fictions 2020 (spotlighted story) and 2016, MER, and elsewhere. Tina holds an MFA in creative writing from Long Island University, Brooklyn. She’s been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and Best Microfiction awards. Tina is a teaching artist at the Poetry Barn and Writers.com. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her husband, the ceramic artist Bob Barry.