In this Eyes On interview, we talk with Ceridwen Hall about “Weather Report and Other Poems,” published in Eckleburg, and The School for Danger and Other Studies, along with the works and habits behind them and what comes next.
Ceridwen Hall is a poet, educator, and writing coach. She holds a PhD from the University of Utah and is the author of Acoustic Shadows (Broadstone Books) and The School for Danger and Other Studies (newly available from Broadstone Books). Her work has appeared in TriQuarterly, Pembroke Magazine, The Cincinnati Review, Craft, Poet Lore, and other journals. You can find her at www.ceridwenhall.com. Read “Weather Report and Other Poems” at Eckleburg.
Ceridwen Hall’s poetry examines body against the mundanities and furies of girlhood with evocative lyricism. In her collection, The School of Danger & Other Studies, we experience Hall’s voice in surgical form, exploring the permissive, the transgressive and the perilous.
Rae Cline, Author of Precious Ugly, Founding Editor of Eckleburg
Eckleburg: Ceridwen, thank you for sharing your poetry with Eckleburg. We found this passage particularly immersive: “The truth is I’m full of accidents and furies / this semester. I curl around sounds like my body thinks….” When you read this passage, now, as a reader of your own work, what strikes you most about it?
Ceridwen Hall: I’m struck by the way poems act as early warning systems (as forecasts) of problems at the edge of consciousness. As it turns out, I was full of an inflammatory toxin when I drafted that poem. As it turns out, gun violence (and the fear it generates) has increased on my campus.
I’m struck too, in retrospect, by the way this poem marked a (re)turning point both in my writing and teaching—away from efficiency, away from technology, and toward more embodied ways of thinking and knowing.
What was the spark behind “Weather Report and Other Poems”?
CH: I set out to explore the risks (both the real and the imagined) and dangers (both the necessary and the ignored) that human thinkers (whether students or educators) encounter in contemporary educational settings (both virtual and physical). In light of the increasing use of technology to surveil and monitor both students and faculty, it made sense to tug at the parallels between espionage and education, to acknowledge that “every student is a spy”.
Share with our readers one or more works that are essential to your development as a poet, the ones you would hand a reader, and why they are so essential.
CH: Some of the works that I most needed to encounter in order to write this particular collection fall outside creative writing (but I would wholeheartedly recommend them to any creative thinker):
D.W. Winnicott’s Playing and Reality. These essays and talks on the essential ways in which creativity help humans develop a sense of self and connect with one another are a permission slip and prescription for artists of all kinds: go play.
Marion Milner’s A Life of One’s Own. A diary, a gorgeous blueprint for building a life of agency and spontaneity.
Of course, the poems of Emily Dickinson remain urgent and relevant to me.
What writing habit is absolutely necessary when you sit down to write a poem?
CH: I am an early morning writer! I brew coffee in a tiny French press, read a few poems to wake up my brain, and then sit down to write. I have a (perhaps superstitious) belief that my pets are drawn to good writing energy and are more likely to curl up under my desk when my imagination is humming along well.
We are excited to share The School for Danger and Other Studies with our Eckleburg community. What is your favorite passage from The School for Danger and Other Studies?
CH: Here’s the opening poem from the collection (first published in Post Road Magazine)
Trigger Warning
or is it a trial run? A touchstone? I’m drawn to study
the blade’s edge, the small betrayal between flinch
and flight. When cautioned, I read on, want,
with taut nerves, to learn: I like things a little dire,
like it when facts startle and loom, as fences invite
a bolting horse to leap. The listed dangers
change hourly, but not the lure. Warnings gleam
like ghosts humming on a bridge. I count as I cross
halfway, knot the ropes of my harness and descend
into the void. Wind obscures shouting distance,
but there’s a resonance between trouble and truth,
a bright echo I need. Conspiracy of self. A catalyst’s
arrow, then, a crucible—worst and best impulse
blinking in the search bar, hands almost steady,
eyes on the flimsy target.
What are you working on now?
CH: I am currently revising a lyric essay, “Spinster Material”, in which I learn to spin yarn and explore what it means to reclaim spinsterhood (as gender, as life-path) in a world where algorithms favor the married, the coupled, and the pregnant.
Thank you, Ceridwen Hall, for talking with us about “Weather Report and Other Poems” and The School for Danger and Other Studies. We are grateful to share your work with our Eckleburg community.
Eyes On Interviews introduce the writers and artists behind the work published in Eckleburg, a literary and arts journal based in Murray Hill, New York City. In each Eyes On interview, a contributor talks about their most recently published work, the works essential to their development, the books they would hand a reader, the habits that keep them creating, and what they are working on now. The interview series originated in 2010 and includes conversations with Rick Moody, Cris Mazza, Steve Almond and Rikki Ducornet.
