bpc; Two of your poems, Sleeping Men and Diamonds are daring pieces. They gently peel off the skin of the subject you are broaching until the listener realizes that you have just revealed in Diamonds: Child molestation and in Sleeping Men: The revelation that many women have probably had at some time - how easy it would be to hurt a man - if you wait for the right moment - and yet such occurrences are rare in comparison to crimes against women. Instead you arrive to the desire to feel as safe as a man. In each poem there is an appeal, and an attempt to raise our consciousness - whether you intended it that way or not - that is one of my interpretations of these poems - which speaks not only to women, but men as well. I think what impresses me is that you do not stop at the first impulse, which might be anger or revenge. What process do you employ, or what characteristic is it in you that drives you to keep reaching from the ego to the super ego?

Collins: In my poetry, I may unconsciously seek an ideal self, the route to my best impulses, which includes making the best poem I can make. Am I satisfied with this impulse? for example, anger, revenge, Is there another route to making meaning, finding beauty, evolving my own inner life.

Sometimes, the act of writing it itself transformative or, for example Diamonds. The narrator does not confront the perpetrator, but asks, "What If" she had the opportunity, what would she really want from that experience. What would be best for her own soul?

bpc: Arthur Miller once said that when he set out to write a play, he had a question he wanted to answer. When he answered that question, another one would come - which he would answer - and so on, until he couldn't answer the question. That's when he knew he was done. In the novel you have just completed the first draft of, can you apply this idea to your work in any way? In other words, what question or questions did you answer and what question could you not answer?

Collins: I don't feel I am answering questions when I am writing a poem or a play, although I find that approach an interesting one. It seems mathematical and reductive. In the end, Miller says, he reaches the unanswerable. And here, I relate to him. Writing for me is creating optimal conditions to let a story flow through me and revise and tinker with it till it is as good as I can get it. It is a mystery which functions on many levels and has its own integrity. It is my job to allow it to express its own quirky self. and this is not the final version. The same story may be told again and be very different.

I do answer a lot of questions as I go, but they are questions of research. Like "why do we see the moon in its phases?" Or "How does an atomic explosion work?" I relate more to the Samuel Beckett quote: Try, Fail; Try again; Fail Better; that is how I view my work. William Faulkner characterized his work as "glorious failures." When I have failed as gloriously as I can I try to move on.

As far as my novel, I guess I was asking a few questions-Can we perform alchemy with the psychological radioactive fallout of Hiroshima and the Holocaust? Can we heal the bone wounds of us/them thinking, of racism, anti-Semitism, sexism?

The novel poses the question, but only partially answers it. So on a metaphysical level, I begin by asking what are for me unanswerable questions that nevertheless need to be asked and confronted. I have recently completed the THIRD draft of my novel, entitled "The Creation of Silver.". I have the sensation that it is too big too see, like the way I feel when standing next to a very tall person. I have set out to do something that is always slightly out of reach, and can focus on only one part at a time. I have to do it this way, otherwise, I become overwhelmed and paralyzed like trying to clean every room in my house at once.

bpc: It is interesting that you prefer a quote from Faulkner as opposed to Miller. Coincidence? And the Idea of "Glorious Failure" would not have the same impact if it came from anywhere else but the South.

Collins: I quote William Faulkner only because I read a biography about him and that quote was in it. In a way I'm sorry I read it because, according to the book, he wasn't a very nice guy especially when it came to women. A writer can be a role model to me in terms of their writing and be a very maladjusted in his or her life, but it does color my vision of them. Makes me think they did not live up to their own wisdom. However, neither do I.

bpc: I spent nine months in Alabama and realized that my understanding of Americana was incomplete until then. As a Southerner and a woman, what can you tell us about the South?

Collins: It astounds me that so many people in New England have not examined their stereotypes about the South. They mimic my accent and seem to think they have it right and that it's really funny. They characterize the South with breathtakingly broad strokes - we are a bunch of uneducated, racist, rednecks who smoke corn cob pipes and impregnate our daughters when they are twelve. This bashing is done with the abandoned glee because they can't comfortably bash anyone else. Thank goodness for this last frontier. I was taking a class at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and a woman from California said to me. "You are really blowing my mind. You're from the South, yet you say all these brilliant things in that Southern accent. It doesn't make sense."

She said this as a compliment, without a trace of irony. I liked this woman and still like her and most of what I hear doesn't really hurt or anger me. But when someone close to me makes an insensitive remark then it does hurt. Do I sound bitter? I'm not. Because New England has been good to me. People have encouraged me, the audiences are wonderful, I've gotten a few grants and stipends and I've been able to develop as a writer much more than if I had stayed in Kentucky and written in relative isolation. Also, it is very insular there. There isn't as much literary pie there, so people fight over it more. It's kind of like a parking space in Boston.

I recently wrote a piece called Hands which is about tobacco farming in Kentucky because I got in an argument about tobacco at a voting booth in Boston. Tobacco farming is completely misunderstood by most people who do not live in Kentucky and I wrote the story in the form of five voices in five different decades. The response to that story has been wonderful for me and I feel it has created an understanding for those who did not understand. "Why don't they raise soybeans?" That was the question that spurred the story. I got this initial rush of frustrated anger, then I thought, well, that's a fair question, and I wrote Hands. I can't tell if what I say about the South is especially original, but it certainly seems to be news to the Yankees. But never have I felt so called upon to define myself, never have I felt so different, never have I felt so Southern as when I am not there, as when I am in New England.

I certainly had my stereotypes before I moved to Boston. I thought everyone would be liberal in their thinking and very sophisticated in conversation. I expected no racism. Maybe being the odd one out is the only way stereotypes get examined; otherwise, there is no necessity. For me that is true of being an artist in general. There is conventional wisdom, conventional vision. And the artist says: Hey wait, the Emperor is not wearing any clothes! that's what my art is anyway, an articulation of that gap between what I see and the accepted version.

One observation I have about the South is that, although we are very racist, we are no more racist than the Northeast. Poverty in the South has a democratizing effect... lots of people are poor, white, black and Hispanic and they all work together on the factory line and on the farms. If you are in the South, there is so much overt racism around you, that if you are going to differentiate yourself from that you have to take a stand and say "I don't feel that way."  Then you have to figure out how you do feel. The process is much more covert and oblique in the North. I hear racist remarks all the time, white-to-white remarks, assuming I will collude with the slur. It's been very eye-opening.

Also, in terms of conversational style. I find that in New England, including New York and Boston, people are very outer-directed for their stimulation. There are plays, museums, music, readings, etc. There is a rich and complex culture in which to participate. At home, people really are still sitting on their porches stringing beans and talking to each other. Their daily lives are filled with exciting narratives and educated or not they get really good at storytelling. There isn't that much to do downtown. For lots of people, including my home town, there is no downtown anymore, because of Sam Walton's little enterprise.

All this talk - that's why those good books come up from the South. I was shocked to find that conversational style was more sophisticated and nuanced back home that it was in New England. Truly shocked. But I think it's true. I was a wild child in Mt. Sterling Kentucky. both my parents worked and I roamed the fields, licked the cow's salt blocks and got chased by bulls. Left on our own, we invented a lot of stuff. Like musical instruments out of mayonnaise lids, rubber bands, and building supplies from my father. Basket ball goals out of hangers and shoe strings using a tennis ball. I got really accurate that way. darts out of match sticks needles and paper. We used our little cousin as the circus lady and threw darts at her. We got a bad whippin' for that. Then I grew up into a teen-aged werewolf, my present incarnation.

I feel very fortunate to have had the childhood I did. My parents were young and wild, stylish and high strung They made it so I never have to make anything up. To be born in the South is to be really lucky if you're a writer. It's all there in your face. Of course you do have to tone it down so people will believe those tall tales.

bpc: Besides being from the South, which is enough for most writers, is there anything else that has had a profound effect on you?

Collins: I was burned in a fire when I was ten. An underground gas line exploded and a plume of fire like a little A-Bomb rose up from this huge crater and melted off half my skin. After that, my family was different than other families - like just one family in town had been hit by a bomb. I couldn't be touched for a year while they did skin grafts and I began to be very touch-deprived. I wear leather now, I think, to make up for not having had skin. In my novel, the main character is also burned. I think it is a big challenge to me to fathom the life of a child that didn't have a moment like that in her history where the sense of safety is exploded in a single instant. We all lose our sense of safety and our innocence, but if we open our hearts we can get it back.

Email the Poet   Go to Website 

You can purchase Ms. Collin's CD, Burn. it won an award at the Boston Poetry Award 2000. It can be purchased from amazon.com or buy it at the Black & Blues Clothing Store in Davis Square or order it from her web site.