Mary Kelly was one of our 2024 Digital Residents. As a part of this program, we do Q&As with our residents to feature them, their work, and their words. See our Q&A with Mary below, and explore more Spotlights here.
TSW: Tell us about your work, writing, or project. What are you writing these days? How is your work changing, and how is it changing you?
Mary Kelly: I haven’t been following much of a thematic thread with my writing, I’ve spent the last while enjoying writing poetry and seeing what has come from it. Recently I wrote a poem about throwing up in an Uber, which was really fun to explore.
What I have noticed is that I am really drawn to narrative poetry and I focus a lot on free verse (I will one day write a pantoum though – mark my words!). Narrative poetry is something I’ve noticed in a lot of Aotearoa literature and I’ve been letting myself exist in that world, it puts me in conversation with some of my favourite kiwi-writers. It seems that my poetry has become a bit of a bandaid for my homesickness – that it has become an act of healing for each day I am away from home.
TSW: What is a question you’re asking yourself these days, and what’s a question you or your work is asking of your reader?
MK: I’ve spent so much time trying to fit my writing into a rubric of profit that I’ve fallen off the path of poetry as an art — that poetry is a lifeline, a limb. Recently I’ve been rewinding my poetry journey and asking the simple question “What do you want this poem to say?”
It allows a poem to exist in the eye of the beholder. That a poem can belong to anyone and anything and anywhere. What do you want this poem to say? What do you need from it? By asking this, I allow my poetry to belong nowhere and everywhere all at once.
TSW: Who do you bring into the room with you when you write, and/or, who do you consider your work to be in conversation with? Who are you writing for?
MK: A lot of my writing is geared towards space. When I write, I don’t often think of a person/place/thing but I think a lot about what is between the person/place/thing. I’ll write a poem to connect something, to create a lasso around things coexisting. A poem to me is something that wedges itself into awkward spaces. A poem to me is like a small cat that curls itself around your legs as you wait for the bus.
TSW: What’s a mantra or motto that you have in mind these days when you are writing or creating? Is there a writing routine or ritual that keeps you beginning?
MK: A writing routine that I’ve really been utilizing was actually shared by Sheila Heti during a book event at my local library. She shared that she doesn’t follow a writing routine, but rather writes when her body tells her to write. I’ve tried morning pages, keeping journals, following forms and deadlines but nothing seems to work better for me than the act of following my biological need to write. Writing then becomes an act of forgiving, that I can relax and undo this complex I have with writing and working constantly. The only promise I make is that I must write when my body has something to say.
