For Flagstaff writer Laura Adrienne Brady, poetry has unlimited potential. “It is a space where anything can happen. I have the sense of entering some kind of intuitive ceremony or improvisational experience.” Laura is also an essayist and the singer-songwriter known as Wren. She finds that each creative outlet has unique characteristics and opportunities. “A song lets me control the emotional tenor for the audience. An essay is a guided journey of ideas. A poem is looser, a series of images and impressions. I have less control over how it touches you or where it takes you, and that’s part of its magic.”
Laura’s writings have appeared in many publications and won nominations for a Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net. She has released three albums. Her poems interlace a deep reverence for nature and a mission to support strong social and environmental ecosystems in art and life. “The most consistent theme of my work across all genres is probably humans’ connection to the greater-than-human world. Though the earth may at times appear to sit at the background, I think it is almost always a character in my pieces.”
Laura came down with a complex chronic illness in her mid-twenties. This has a profound effect on her life and writing. “Illness forced a painful yet necessary rounding out of my personality, and changed how I experienced the world around me. My life slowed way down. I could no longer plan for the future; my plans so regularly fell apart due to my body’s limitations. I began to learn to live in a smaller and more immediate way. I felt cast out of the whirring, capitalist pace of life, as well as the typical pathways to career success and financial stability. Initially, this felt like a great injustice. With time, I’ve come to see the casting out as a deeply inconvenient blessing.”
Laura received an MFA in creative writing from Northern Arizona University. She currently teaches writing at the college level plus online creative-writing classes and coaching. Her personal writing schedule varies over time and seasons. “I’ve had periods where I schedule writing time three or four mornings a week and sit down to work even if I’m not in the mood; phases where I don’t need any structure because I’m writing on a flood of inspiration; periods where I’m only revising and refining older work; and phases that feel more about living, taking notes, and going on lots of contemplative walks, rather than being ready to make something. By the time I actually write anything, I’ve usually already spent hours musing on the topic while going on my daily walks in the woods.” This lesson extends into her teaching. “I like to remind my students that most of the writing process isn’t actually the writing part! It’s the living and thinking and digesting part that occupies perhaps 75% of the time.”
Laura uncovers ideas for poems in two ways. “The first is with a phrase jotted in a notebook, a simple line that captures something big I want to express, but that won’t be impactful on its own. In those cases, I then must write the poem that prepares the reader for that line. The other way is with an imagistic story or scene that’s been guiding me to understand something about my life or the world. Usually through fleshing out what that scene looks like, feels like, smells like, I find the poem that wants to come through.”
The local environment and community of Flagstaff provide continuing inspiration for Laura. “Flagstaff is a truly special place. When I visited for the first time I wasn’t immediately enamored by the cloudy skies and lack of color of that particularly gloomy weekend. But I felt so welcomed by the writing community that coming here felt like a huge and immediate yes! Because my poor health kept me often at home, it’s been a slow-building love affair with the area. However, as I get stronger each year and can roam farther into the aspens and prairies, my love for the place grows in leaps and bounds, and this truly feels like home now.”
In the following poem, Laura draws parallels between a childhood memory and the challenges of her illness. “One of the only ways I’ve found to regain power when powerless to feel better is to create meaning and beauty from the experience of suffering.” She feels that her writing skills have grown over her career. “The gap between the ideal poem in my mind and the poem I actually create is narrowing (though still never quite achieved!). The striving to translate imagination to reality is perhaps the fuel that pushes me forever onward as a creator.”
More: lauraadriennebrady.com
If lost, the camp counselor instructs, you must wait
to be found. My friends and I nod and then howl,
eager to scatter, make mischief like puppies. I will
always recall this advice and have not yet
found it to be true. In st/illness I draw myself
closer—every extra limb falls away, fingers
gone to roots, bones turned to stone. When
they gather my hair decades later, they will laugh,
let it go, embarrassed. This is no woman —
just fallen usnea. Even if I vibrate and shake, and
bluebirds erupt from my chest, still I will not
be seen. I have stopped believing anyone
can offer me a cure I do not already carry. I outstretch
my hands and they remain empty. The map writes itself
from the direction I turn — distant routes
crumble like fallen tunnels; choices split like ripe
peaches and new ones emerge in their place. Always
the beetles march in, waving the banners of hunger.
There is beauty to make from rot and shards, from
golden bees that crawl from nostrils and ears,
trailing honey. Every bit of sweetness in this world
matters. I once traveled all the way to the northernmost
edge to remember the look of love on my parents’
faces. The last choice I have is the song I sing to myself.
This poem first appeared in A Body You Talk To: An Anthology of Contemporary Disability from Sundress Press.
Dee Cohen is a Prescott poet and photographer. deecohen@cox.net.
