“The very first thing I can remember writing—I was about eight—was a short story about Esther, a Jewish queen in the Old Testament who wielded power to save her community.”
Imago, Dei (Rattle, 2022)
Wild Things (Main Street Rag, 2021)
A question from Monica Macansantos: Do you ever find yourself inspired or guided by your childhood in your work?
All the time. I would say that a good chunk of my writing is me trying to work through moments in my childhood that didn’t make sense to me then, so returning to them with an adult or at least somewhat-wisened perspective. Or, I write about moments from my childhood that are filled with joy, the moments that sustained me and continue to sustain me. I’m currently working on a memoir and, as I recount stories and scenes, I’m trying to find the right balance between childhood trauma and childhood innocence/wonder.
A question from Anna Laura Reeve: Do you understand your role in society—as a poet—to be influential, critical, observant, or something else?
I definitely think of poets and poetry in the Romantic sense, as mediums and philosophers. I’d like to think that poets are gifted with the ability to perceive things that others may not– like any natural-born gift, whether it’s being particularly good at baseball or faster on the track than others or someone who has the right nose for wine or whose taste buds are more developed and so they’re better at being chefs. I think we can all learn the craft of poetry, but I do think that poets are born with both the insight and the impulse to try to convey the world around them. Mostly I write because I can’t not write; when I’m writing it’s out of a sense of urgency—a response to something happening in the public world (like the overturning of Roe vs. Wade) or a response to something happening in my more private world (dealing with an illness or the death of a loved one) and this response happens as poetry, as natural as breathing for me. At the same time, I recognize that what I’m experiencing—my fears, anxieties, loves, etc.—are shared by others and so I want to share what I’m writing because that human connection is what it’s all about, right? To know we’re not alone, whether we’re sharing communal joy or communal sorrow or communal rage. So I think it’s all those things.
A question from Megan Nichols: what books do you return to when you feel uninspired or disillusioned?
Oh! So many. The first book about poetry ever given me was Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet and that changed my life and set me on my path. I’ve recently happened on the work of James Crews, whose poetry is so focused on joy and kindness; after the events of the last few years, I found myself drifting always to darkness in my work and I wanted to shake myself out of that. So I highly recommend The Path to Kindness anthology that he edited. I tend to write lyric poetry, so when I was working on Imago, Dei, I returned a lot to study what Nickole Brown had done in Sister and To Those Who Were Our First Gods. Also T’ai Freedom Ford and Rita Dove. I’ve also gifted and rebought for myself and gifted, etc. etc. Jessica Jacobs’ Take Me With You Wherever You’re Going. For the work I do with fairy tales and mythology: Plath, Sexton, Atwood, Carmen Maria Machado, Danusha Lameris, Adrienne Rich, Angela Carter, Maxine Hong Kingston, Eavan Boland (I could go on and on here). Every single poem by Ada Limon (and I listen every morning to the podcast she hosted and that Major Jackson now runs—The Slowdown).
Could you tell us a bit about your growing up and your path to becoming a writer?
I am the oldest of four children and was brought up by a military father in an evangelical household. In the evangelical church, girls and women are to stay quiet and to listen. We spent several days a week at church and I learned, in studying the Bible, how to read between the lines, analyze word choices, decipher figurative language. The very first thing I can remember writing—I was about eight—was a short story about Esther, a Jewish queen in the Old Testament who wielded power to save her community. There aren’t a lot of powerful women in the Bible (except the “bad girls”) and I just gravitated to her strength and wanted to imagine her beyond what was in the verses. So I think that, although I’ve long ago left the church, that without it I might not have pursued writing.
Could you share a representative or pivotal poem from your book? Perhaps something that that invites the reader into the world of the book?
HER FATHER TALKS TO HER ABOUT SEX
If your right hand offends, chop it off,
throw it away. Better for you
to lose one part of yourself than
suffer your whole body to burn.
Throw it away. Better for you
to pluck out your eye. If you don’t
suffer, your whole body will burn.
Better to be blind. Better to starve.
Pluck out your eye. If you don’t,
think of Eve, naked and ashamed.
Better to be blind. Better to starve
than be exiled from your Father’s love.
Think of Eve, naked and ashamed.
Think of your runaway sister, forever
exiled from your father’s love.
Think of Delilah. Of Jezebel. Lot’s wife.
Think of your runaway sister, forever.
Think of those girls, opening their legs.
Think of Delilah. Of Jezebel. Lot’s wife.
Cut off your tongue. Cut out your heart.
Think of those girls, opening their legs.
Suffer. Your whole body burns.
Cut off your tongue. Cut out your heart.
Throw it away. Better for you.
Why did you choose this poem?
Probably my favorite poem in the book is this pantoum; I think it captures how traumatizing evangelical dogma can be for young girls who are just learning to navigate their own desire, and I was really excited about using the form of the pantoum so that readers might experience the feeling of being stuck/contained/boxed in by the redundant, oppressive rules. In that poem, I felt like the theme and the form really came together—like the poem had to be a pantoum.
What obsessions led you to write your book?
I’ve been obsessed with trying to understand how the roles of the church, toxic white masculinity, beauty culture, and general misogyny operate in this world and with exposing their mechanisms. I wanted Imago, Dei to speak to others who’ve grown up in the church and are still trying to recover.
A question from Jack B. Bedell: Was there a moment working on your current project where you felt like it was a waste of your time? And if so, did an idea or piece or writing lead you out of that pessimism? What was it?
I almost didn’t send this book out. I was terrified of what was coming out of me as I was writing it; at the same time, there was so much relief in getting the words on the paper. I wrote the book very quickly, in a matter of weeks over winter break. I actually sent it to Rattle on a whim because I figured I had nothing to lose since I’d get the year subscription. I hadn’t even workshopped it with my writing group yet. While I was waiting on what I expected to be a rejection, my group met to go over it. I almost canceled with them and when we met to discuss it, I was shaking. I was worried that what I was writing was too personal or might be read as vindictive or just me feeling sorry for myself and seeking pity. I didn’t feel like it was a waste of my time to write it, but I wasn’t sure it was worthy of being read by anyone but me. But my group loved it; they made some suggestions for revision and before I even had a chance to start editing, I got the call from Tim Green that it was one of three winners for the 2021 Chapbook Prize. I was thrilled…. And then I began panicking. A lot of people were going to read it now. Had I betrayed my family? Would they hate me? Was I embarrassing myself? Should I call it back? My writing group and husband talked me down, but I still remember very viscerally that initial terror.
How did you decide on the arrangement and title of your book?
“Imago Dei” is Latin for Image of the Father and refers to the Judeo-Christian belief that humans are made in the image of God/are a reflection of him. I knew I wanted to write about both the Church and my father, so “Imago, Dei,”—Image, Father seemed like the right title. Plus, in grad school, I was obsessed with Lacan’s theories about the mirror stage and the “Imago.” I started looking up the etymology of that word and that’s when I learned that “imago” is also a stage of development for moths. Suddenly I had another layer of meaning; I went backward through the poems that I had written about the church and my father and began to weave in butterfly/moth symbolism and that, in turn, helped me to figure out which poems would go first—I wanted there to be an evolution/transformation for the speaker, but I wanted it to be more complex than the old “ugly caterpillar becomes a beautiful butterfly” theme. This became especially true for me when I read about how horrifying and painful the process of becoming a winged insect is. One website described it as the caterpillar dissolving and becoming soup. I thought of Susan Minot’s fabulous story, “Lust,” in which the narrator imagines herself as “watered down soup” because of the way her culture objectifies girls and women. I wanted that horror, which is so entrenched in fundamentalist ideology, to be present throughout the book.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on a full-length memoir that extends the themes of Imago, Dei in literary nonfiction. I have also been working on another chapbook, this one about redheads (since I come from a family of six and have two redhead daughters).
A question from LindaAnn LoSchiavo: What’s the best way to find a poetry book publisher for your next WIP?
I like contests, personally. I look for places that publish the kind of poetry I like to read. I use Duotrope and the Poets & Writers Classifieds. New Pages is good, too, and I’m in several Facebook groups dedicated to writers and the submission process. I use Twitter, too, to find places.
If you could choose another artistic path (painting, music, dance, etc.) what would it be and why?
In another life, I’m sure I was a dancer. Nothing moves me more than words, but music is a close second.
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Elizabeth Johnston Ambrose is an academic and creative writer whose poetry, plays, humor writing, and literary nonfiction appear in The Atlantic, McSweeney’s, Mom Egg Review, Emrys, Women Studies Quarterly, Feminist Formations, and Room, among others. She is the author of two chapbooks: Wild Things, (Main Street Rag, 2021) and Imago, Dei (Rattle Chapbook Poetry Prize, 2022). A community college professor and co-founder of the Rochester-based writing group Straw Mat Writers, she also facilitates a writing group for breast cancer survivors, out of which grew an anthology of poetry and prose (Foothills Press, 2018).
Speaking of Marvels 