Megan McDermott
"Two Women Without Mouths, But Maybe I Mean It in an Empowering Way"
after Francesca Woodman, Untitled, c. 1978-79, New York
To each other, we are upside down. I lay,
a quiet reflection, while you stand, quiet and
blocked. The ocean has never begged
like us. Imagine us unable
to make the little moans or murmurs
our true selves offer up so often.
Sometimes I’ve depicted more of myself.
Sometimes less. Sometimes my bare
flesh speaks. Sometimes it hushes.
Sometimes I think this is all of me – my eyes
and my open hands, parts someone else
would humor me to hold.
Megan McDermott is the author of full-length collection Jesus Merch: A Catalog in Poems (Fernwood Press) and two chapbooks, Woman as Communion (Game Over Books) and Prayer Book for Contemporary Dating (Ethel). Her poems have been published in a variety of journals, including Maine Review, Amsterdam Review, Rust + Moth, U.S. Catholic, and the Christian Century. She is currently an MFA student at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she serves as Lead Art Editor for Blackbird.
Why this Knocked Bleah Out:
I’ve been languishing in long form lately, so I knew when I couldn’t stop think about this exceptional and voicey compact poem… it was a winner! Megan has so succinctly, sharply, and still lushly captured a moment by a speaker who is being compelled to think and speak by looking at this piece of artwork. So often, the ekphrastic can feel a bit heady or cerebral, butting up against my ADHD and desire for extreme and profound emotion. This poem doesn’t try to cloak itself quite like that and instead uses art as a jumping off point for the personal.
Interview:
1.) What do you consider the driving force behind your poems? The "engine" if you will, that keeps each one running? is it always different? If so, what fuels the engine of this poem?
One engine behind my poetry is discomfort, especially with myself -- questions like: why am I acting the way I am, why have I done the things I've done, why can't I feel what I want to feel or think the way I want to think, etc. I am also drawn to sitting with unknowns about the future. Often these explorations naturally lead to reflections on womanhood, gender, feminism, and patriarchy. In this particular poem, I use a gripping work by a woman artist as a way in to articulating something uncomfortable about my own experience in relationships.
2.) What is your drafting process like? Voice notes, phone memos, type writer, napkin notes? I'd love to know the tea!
My notes app is definitely home to many poem fragments and jotted down ideas, but for ekphrastic poems like this, my drafting process tends to be a bit more methodical. After realizing I wanted to explore Francesca Woodman's work more, I bought the art book Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In. With a notebook beside me, I flipped though the book and recorded page numbers of particular pieces that inspired me, mostly working on instinct and not yet noting any ideas for poems themselves. At a later date, I went back to revisit those photographs, blank laptop screen in front of me, and tried to write into what interested me most about those images.
3.) What have you read, watched, or listened to lately that you feel is feeding your work right now?
For the past few years, I've been trying to read more fiction, as I spent basically a decade in a very delicious black hole of mostly reading only poetry (plus the occasional nonfiction book related to my work as an Episcopal priest). Among my summer reads were The Years by Virginia Woolf and Saving Agnes by Rachel Cusk. I love a novel chuck full of interiority and existential dread/anxiety and very little plot! I'm not sure how these prose influences will seep into my work, but I'm excited to look for traces of them in poems -- and perhaps short stories and essays! -- to come.