An Interview with Melanie McClellan-Hartnett
Melanie McClellan-Hartnett is an award-winning poet and visual artist in South Carolina. She won her first prize at seventeen from the Poetry Society of South Carolina for her poem Smoke Serpents.
She has two books of poetry, Goodbye, Oyster Girls (Broad River Books) and Some Bad Moon (Blurb). Her poetry is included in Sheltered: SC Artists Respond to the Pandemic and Fall Lines literary magazine. When Melanie McClellan-Hartnett isn’t writing, she’s painting, and even then, she often incorporates words.
What inspired you to start writing this book?
I began writing Some Bad Moon during the Covid pandemic, when the lines of the poems became so prevalent in my head that I realized the only way to free up mental space and stop the ‘echoing voices’ was to write and release them.
Tell us the story of your book’s current title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?
It wasn’t hard, discovering the title. The only hard part was accepting a title so similar to other known works, but in the end, my writing is deeply entwined with natural rhythms and patterns, and I realized the easily recognizable concept of Some Bad Moon struck a human note that resonates across our individual experiences.
Describe your dream book cover.
I think it would be super cool if a slightly holographic book cover could be designed to faintly show some relevant cameo (probably water) but depending on how the reader held the book in the light, it could faintly mirror the reader and their surroundings. A seemingly plain cover that actually casts the reader in the book. I love things that visually connect.
If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?
This question has led to my thinking about many interesting possibilities but no conclusive answers except, of course, CCR’s Bad Moon on the Rise and definitely Billie Holiday’s The Very Thought of You.
What books are you reading (for research or comfort) as you continue the writing process?
Right now: Windows on Washington Square by Joe Riley, Places and Passions by Anne Lewis-Smith, Hold What Makes You Whole by Marcus Amaker, and a currently unpublished poetry collection by my daughter, Nico Hartnett.
What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?
I love to dance with fire fans but not professionally—just for fun.
Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?
I clearly remember discovering written language. I was four years old and busily engaged in drawing a comic-style story of two fairies: a ‘good’ fairy and a ‘bad’ one. It was tedious drawing frame after frame and suddenly I realized since the ‘good’ fairy was pink (my then favorite color) and the ‘bad’ fairy was yellow (my then least favorite color) I could save myself the trouble of drawing the full figures by simply drawing vertical lines in pink or yellow to denote which fairy was involved.
When I realized repeating symbols could tell a story, I was overwhelmed with a sense of vast power. I remember gathering my paper and crayons and creeping to our hall mud closet (which, for unknown reasons, was my childhood haunt for processing deep emotions).
That same year, I learned how to read. Despite being undiagnosed dyslexic at the time, I found reading and writing very easy because color coding explained language to me before those tricky letters that liked to trade places were introduced. Seeing written language in color taught me both the ‘code’/insert symbol for meaning and to look for context clues.
Except for truly dark times when I couldn’t create at all or times when my energies have gone into visual art, I have written almost every day of my life since that evening when I was four years old and realized I could. I still think written language is the most amazing power.
Where is your favorite place to write?
I love to write curled up in a hammock with a slightly ratty patchwork quilt, or in a sunny window seat. I still use actual paper notebooks and pencils.
What advice would you give your past self at the start of your writing journey?
Choose your mentors carefully.
What’s one thing you hope sticks with readers after they finish your book?
A tiny smirk that says triumph. Life has so many intense and over the top, and also so many brain-numbingly dull, processes to be endured. I hope when someone finishes Some Bad Moon, they find some self-love and acceptance of their own journeys and some encouragement in our mutual paths.
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