Lisa Olstein talks to Camille about DIAMONDS in Tupelo Quarterly

From “Pour Forth into that Vessel: A Conversation with Camille Guthrie,” Lisa Olstein talks to Camille about her new book:

Lisa Olstein: What questions or obsessions urged this particular work into being or revealed themselves in it?

Camille Guthrie: Who am I, and what the hell am I going to do with my life? When I moved to rural Vermont from Brooklyn almost thirteen years ago, I was pregnant with my second child. I had thought that a midlife crisis was a cliché of masculinity, but I was very wrong. I began writing these poems out of a painful time—a separation and divorce, and the consequences: moving houses and needing a new job. A time of loneliness, anxiety, change. I also fell in love—that was a real surprise! When I began the poems in Diamonds, I decided to write from that raw place—to take some risks and expose what felt vulnerable. I felt cracked open. Like a lonely lady lost in the middle of nowhere—and there were bears outside. But I wasn’t alone. I was surrounded by my girlfriends, old friends and new ones, and so the book is for them. When the title poem went viral—twice—the response was another big surprise, and people wrote to me about their experiences with divorce, parenting, dating. (I want to add that this is poetry-level viral, not kittycat-level viral.) The poems engage with the hyperbolic drama of the lyric poem, and, in revision, I wanted to keep the sense of thinking-and-feeling-in-the-moment. There are other obsessions, too, such as art, love poetry, history, country life. I guess the ultimate question is always Can I write a good poem?