An Interview with Amanda Shaw

• What’s your favorite thing you have written?

A letter to my niece, Ruthie, on her first birthday. Her arrival into the world transformed my life, and she appears in several of the poems in It Will Have Been So Beautiful. The book is dedicated to her and my grandmother Ruth (her namesake) who died when I was six.

• What’s your favorite thing that someone else has written?

Elizabeth Bishop: anything! I particularly like “The Moose,” “Arrival at Santos,” and “Poem,” a deceptively simple ars poetica in Geography III. I’ve loved that book since I first read it 30+ years ago, before I was even thinking about writing my own poetry.

• What are you working on writing now?

I’m working on a series of poems set in museums, usually starting with a particular painting. They’re about the ways we experience art via the text on the wall, things we overhear other visitors saying, and the expectations we bring to the act of being in a museum. I’m interested in the details we overlook when we first see the painting.

In February I met a woman sitting in front of the Nelson-Atkins Museum’s Caravaggio, St John the Baptist. It’s a masterpiece that tends to go out on loan for special exhibitions. She’d had a very hard day—her husband was sick—and she told me, “Every time I look, I try to find something new in the background. I like to check in on him from time to time, and I miss him when he is gone.” That’s a poem on its own.

• Do you have a favorite food or drink that helps you write?

Whole Foods black cherry seltzer.

• What’s your favorite kind of music?

It’s hard to choose, but indie folk and rock are my go-to genre(s). I also love classical music and some opera, especially after living in Italy, where you can walk around and hear arias floating out of high windows. I know that sounds like a stereotype, but it was heaven when I found out that actually happens.

• Forest, country, beach, or city?

Depends on the day, time of year, and country! Usually city or beach, as long as it’s not a very popular and crowded place.

• What movie can you watch over and over again?

Wall-E or Up! And The Big Lebowski.

• What would you like people to know about being an Indie author?

I am so lucky to be published by Lily Poetry Review Books. I’ve made close friends among my pressmates in a very short time: We all did a reading just for one another last week. Eileen Cleary, the founder and my editor, works herself ragged out of sheer love for good people and good poems, and it shows in the truly wonderful community she has created. Her belief in me makes all the promotion you must do when you have a new book out worth it.

• When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

It depended on the week. I read a book called Rafiki about a little girl who was tired of cleaning up for the male animals—a lion, a rhinoceros, a tiger or two and something with horns I didn’t know about, maybe a gnu—she lived with and went on strike. The house got filthier and filthier, and they finally cleaned, moaning about it the whole time. She was a boss: I wanted to be her. That’s probably why I became a teacher.

• What does the writing process look like for you?

I like to read some short articles, usually science-based, and then write in my journal. Once I’ve figured out why I was drawn to what I chose to read, I can start a poem.

• Do you have a blog, and what content do you post?

I do have a blog on my website, amandashawpoet.com. It’s only been “live” since February, but it was done by a friend who is remarkably talented, and I love it. I have two blog posts, but I am working on the third now that my book launches (online and in person) are done! In the first post, I share how daunting it is for an introvert to make something very private entirely public all at once. The second is about watching Barbie with Ruthie over the winter holidays.

I plan to write a series of posts with hyperlinks to the art/scientific phenomena/cultural references mentioned in It Will Have Been So Beautiful because my poems are very associative. Ideally, you don’t have to look up what I refer to, but this is a chance to enrich your reading—like a multi-media art exhibit—so you can see what I am entering into dialogue with when I write.

• Where do you get inspiration?

Reading novels, poetry, non-fiction—anything. Also, museums, TV and movies, and odd uses of language I overhear or see on signs. I am endlessly delighted by accidents of translation in menus, signs, user manuals. I dread the day when AI renders those quirky mishaps obsolete, but there will probably be a lot more to worry about if AI gets to that point.

• What about writing do you enjoy the most?

It grounds me in the world and forces me to find something to love even when things feel terrible or hopeless. My best poems often start as prose, in journal entries where I’m trying to make sense of things I’ve experienced so that when I begin the poem, I can dream. In other words, I need to get to the mystery beneath the rationalization required to live in a strange, struggling world.

• What is the most challenging part of writing for you?

It takes me a long time to transition from daily life—that rational mind—into a writing mode, and when I am busy I don’t have a lot of opportunity to create that space—which means it takes even longer once I start again. I need a few days dedicated to getting past the noise in my brain to where poetry can live.

•  How have you grown as a writer?

Ideally, as long as I am writing, I am growing all the time. The most valuable part of my MFA experience was learning that revision was actually the best part of writing. It makes it easier to get drafts out, knowing they are just the first incarnation and that I can refine and refine until I figure out what the poem is really about and then how to make the experience of reading it more interesting for a reader.

About the Author

Since receiving her MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers in January 2020, Amanda Shaw has been a caretaker for her mother. A teacher for over 20 years, she also works as an editor at the World Bank and is the book review editor for Lily Poetry Review. Though she has lived in Brooklyn, Detroit, Geneva, and Rome, she currently divides her time between New Hampshire, where she was born, and Washington, D.C.

Follow her on Facebook and Instagram.