On Creativity: Terry Hermsen

Last week, I interviewed poet, professor (and friend!) Terry Hermsen for the Columbus Alive (you can read that profile here). I first met Terry in 1999, when he was a visiting poet at my high school. As the literary magazine editor and an all-around poetry nerd, I assisted him during the workshops that he led. He gave us such fun exercises (one involved making near-rhymes of multi-syllabic words), and was kind enough to give me feedback on a poem or two.

Now, over a decade later, I’ve so enjoyed re-meeting him. We both teach at Otterbein University, have read together at multiple poetry readings around Columbus, and exchange and discuss poems when we get the chance.

Terry has just returned from Chile, where he was gathering material and inspiration for projects about translation, travel, identity, culture, and poetry. Since the profile I wrote of him is rather brief (although I am pleased with it!), here’s a more extended version of our conversation. He has such fascinating thoughts about what it means to translate, and how place/poetry/history intersect.

Watch Terry's 2012 reading at Paging Columbus (crank the volume!)

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My trip was a continuation of a trip I took four years ago, which was at that time, focused on Neruda. He’s sort of the doorway into world poetry for many people...for me, he was my first introduction to a poet I really liked from another culture.

It’s hard to avoid Neruda in Chile. That’s where it all started--in 2007 when I was there for a week. I had his book there with me and I wanted to talk to people, so I asked them what they thought of Neruda.

Last time I went to Chile, in 2009, I tried to teach myself Spanish. I translated a book last time simply to teach myself Spanish. I thought, if I can go through it line by line, and try to see what I can do, that will help me, and then I found I really liked translating. That book is almost finished, but that got me excited to do more translation.

I’ve been taking Spanish classes now...that’s better. I’m only interested in it for the words. Of course I want to talk with people, but it’s more a poetry project to hear how poetry works in another language.

I had college students helping me [on this trip]. We went around the streets of Santiago and interviewed 70 people, and I have 30 more recordings coming in.

[I learned that] you can talk to people about poetry in the streets of Chile...the people we spoke to were really thoughtful about it. We asked them:

1. What do you think of poetry (on a scale of 1-10) and why?
2. What poets do you know and like?
3. What do you think of Neruda (on a scale of 1-10) and why?
4. Has Chile changed as a country?

That’s my big question. I mean, I’m a stranger...but it’s thought of as a country of poets. But Chile is becoming a bit like the US...it’s economically-savvy, stuffed to the gills with advertising, very Western. It’s car-oriented, mall-oriented...It’s none of my business, but I’m a little worried that a country of poets is becoming less and less so.

All That Is Uphill Bows to What Is Below It

All That Is Uphill Bows to What Is Below It

In particular

this road and its ferocious curve
bows to the ravine

The guardrail
following the turn

has pried itself away from the road
in the middle of the curve

The metal remembers the car
that collided with it

This morning, in that same spot
another broken car
held in the rail’s broken arm

Very Few Things Are a Mattress

Very Few Things Are a Mattress

Oh you think you found an edge
what
with a toe
of a world that has an end
of a time that has an end

No Very few things are a mattress
knuckles of the fitted sheet
hugging its corners

Here is a box I am handing to you
the name of a place
you lived in is written on the side

Even before I picked it up
the bottom flap was open
The ground is strewn with
bricks and parks and an ocean
mountain-crumbs

At least you’ll always have the box

Ear, Nose, and Throat

Ear, Nose, and Throat

Your body is full of flowers
actually the inside of your body is just
one flower

Every thought you have wriggles
along your brain like a worm

Sometimes you tell yourself thoughts
you don’t think
as an experiment

Running feels wonderful
I dread the rain ending
Radishes not chocolate

It’s not an angel and a devil topping each shoulder
but a baby and a parent

Curtains

Curtains

The stillness that hangs before you
It is a shower curtain

It is how a year pretends
to just stop

Give me your hand
Give me what you hoped this year would bring
Give me the flowerfield
that abides because you were not here

And then you were
for a time

This is the way in