An Interview with Mary Morris
Mary Morris is the author of four books of poetry, most recently, Lanterns in the Night Market. Other books include Late Self-Portraits (selected by Leila Chatti, winner of the Wheelbarrow Book Prize, MSU Press), Dear October (winner of the New Mexico Book Award), and Enter Water, Swimmer, selected by X.J. Kennedy. Morris’s poems are published in North American Review, Poetry magazine, Prairie Schooner, and The Massachusetts Review. She is a recipient of the Rita Dove Award, Western Humanities Review Poetry Prize, and the National Federation Press Book Prize. Morris has been invited to read her poems at the Library of Congress, which aired on NPR. She is a long-time resident of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?
Reciting poems in grade school, beginning with Emily Dickinson and The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. Also, very inspired by a creative writing teacher in high school, where I discovered a number of poets, including Bukowski and E.E. Cummings.
What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?
I am a dyslexia specialist.
Tell us the story of your book’s title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?
As a traveler through numerous countries containing their various cultures, landscapes, political and ecological issues, I was inspired to write the poems which accumulated into Lanterns in the Night Market. My wish was to invite the reader to travel with me. Exploring various continents across the globe, I began writing inventive, as well as starkly realistic, journeys. A flamenco dancer seduces an audience, lovers travel the Bosphorus, and the earth is endangered by climate change. Many poems required research. I visited prehistoric caves with red-pigmented handprints, researching the people who once lived there. As a reader of Lorca, I wrote of duende and politics. Visiting Cambodia and Southeast Asia was an inspiration following the history of war-torn nations, their resilience, and their beauty. For instance, listening to the long, slow notes of a cellist playing Bach in the temples of Angkor Wat, visiting a flower market as a holy man imparts wisdom in Thailand, witnessing Buddhist monks in Laos with a reminder that they were the most bombed country during the American-Southeast Asian war. I began to invent a traveler’s ode to a suitcase, humanitarian instructions on ethics of how to travel, how writers might exist in exile, and a menu designed for a dictator positioning the world into further ecological danger. Traveling through the Serengeti in Tanzania illuminated ‘the full moon shining over the Serengeti as nocturnal animals gather.’ My journey across Jordan was deeply inspired by the hospitable Bedouin people who cross the Red Desert on camels. I read numerous reports that glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro are melting at a dangerous rate for the environment. I visited the Caribbean where the poet Derek Walcott wrote of enslaved ancestors from his home. Many years ago, I lived in Mexico, where a culture celebrates Day of the Dead. In Belize, I saw how manatee are endangered. In the end, I wished for a common bond of humanity, noting devastation and great beauty in the world, seen through both a close-up and wide-angled lens. Lanterns in the Night Market became my love letter to the world.
What part of publishing your book made it feel real for the first time?
Always sweet to receive first copies in the mail.
If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?
Drumming and singing of the Masai in Tanzania. Roars of lion, trumpeting of elephants.
The beautiful, holy harmonies of gospel singing from the Cook Islands. So many birds. Hypnotic flute playing of snake charmers in Marrakesh. The sound of tides—coming in and out. Dolphins.
What’s one thing you hope sticks with readers after they finish your book?
Our common humanity.
What was the most rewarding/meaningful part of publishing your book?
Having wonderful and supportive publishers.
What creative projects are you currently working on?
I am finishing a manuscript of poems on early onset Alzheimer’s. My father was diagnosed before age sixty.
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