'Stay Brave' with Dorianne Laux
‘Stay Brave’ is an interview series by woman-identifying creatives for woman-identifying creatives to inspire bravery in the creative life. [Created and curated by Leah Umansky]
How do you interpret the phrase, "Stay Brave?"
Stay open, resilient, kind. Persevere.
As a woman-identifying writer, what are the ways that you “stay brave” in your life?
By continuing to highlight the epic heroics of women's ordinary lives.
Who is someone in your life who models “staying brave” for you?
This can be someone you know personally, or someone you never met in real life.
My mother, my sister, my daughter.
What writers, artists, and/or musicians do you look to to foster a sense of “bravery?”
Sharon Olds, lucille clifton, Judy Stedman and Geri Digiorno, Rickie Lee Jones, Joni Mitchell, and Nancy Pelosi.
What’s a piece of advice you would pass on to your younger self about “staying brave?” What’s something you know now, that you didn’t know in the past?
Don't give in or give up. I didn't know that I would survive. And thrive.
Can you remember a time in your life where you realized your own bravery? How did you use it to propel you forward?
I spent a week alone in the wilderness with my dog and climbed to the top of a steep rocky hill and looked over the valley onto the nearest town. The hike took about two hours. It was a hot day and all I had was a backpack, water and apples, a sandwich, dog food, a book and note book, a long tee shirt, a camera. All I wore was my boots and socks and a hat. I took a picture at the top of myself, sweaty and dirty and proud. It was a small thing, but it made me feel powerful and fully human.
What do you do when you aren’t feeling brave? What inspires you or motivates you?
In 2022, it feels brave just to get up every day and dare to find some joy. I think all of us have had this sense of impending doom. We are a country in deep collective mourning and depression. When I don't feel brave enough to face it, I go out to my backyard, water the flowers, say hello to my good neighbors, and go back in and bake a pie and share it with them.
In what ways would you like to be more brave in your creative life?
I would like to be brave enough to write into the darkness, and into the light.
What is your proudest moment of bravery?
When I jumped off the side of a cliff into the Pacific Ocean.
What are you currently working on?
A book called Finger Exercises for Poets with short essays and prompts and a new book of poems called Life on Earth. Both are finished but still need work. I write once a week with poet friends and have been collecting new poems into an untitled file for another. I feel lucky that at 70 the poems still come. I would say you have to be brave to get old and feel the exuberance and energy of youth ebb. But to still feel useful, to have the ability to give something back to this world that has nurtured me all the long years I've been here, to continue to see it freshly, is a gift only time can bring.
Thank you to Dorianne Laux for being our inaugural interviewee.
Pulitzer Prize finalist Dorianne Laux’s most recent collection is Only As The Day Is Long: New and Selected, W.W. Norton. She is also author of The Book of Men, winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize and Facts about the Moon, winner of the Oregon Book Award. Two new books are forthcoming: Finger Exercises for Poets, and a volume of poems, Life on Earth, both from W.W. Norton. Laux is founding faculty at Pacific University and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Leah Umansky is the author of three books of poems, most recently OF TYRANT, forthcoming with The Word Works in 2024. She earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and has curated and hosted The COUPLET Reading Series in NYC since 2011. Her work has been widely published in such places as The New York Times, POETRY, American Poetry Review. The Academy of American Poets' Poem-A-Day, Guesthouse, and Pleiades.