Private Mentorship with Lissa Kiernan

BIO

Lissa Kiernan’s second collection of poetry, The Whispering Wall, won Homebound Publications’ Poetry Prize and was a semi-finalist for Tupelo Press Dorset Prize. Her first book of prose, Glass Needles & Goose Quills, won the Nautilus Gold for lyric prose and took first place in the Independent Book Awards’ cross-genre category. Two Faint Lines in the Violet, Lissa’s first poetry collection, was a finalist for both the Foreword Indies and Julie Suk awards. Lissa is the founding director of The Poetry Barn, a pollinator habitat for poetry in the Hudson Valley, and AIM Higher, a nonprofit that celebrates artists. She lives in the Catskill Mountains near the Ashokan Reservoir’s spillway with her husband, Chris, and a fluctuating number of felines.

ARTIST & TEACHING STATEMENT

People say my poems are brave but I see them as simply the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings (Whitman). In “flood mode,” a sort of alchemy happens somewhere between pen and page. Choices are offered up that weren’t necessarily present in the poem’s origin story, choices that—if accepted and I’m lucky—provide a unique therapeutic experience: carving new neural pathways and perspectives, facilitating understanding, empathy, and healing.

About the “I”: Surely, first person point-of-view is usually strongest but can also prove slippery, tricking some into thinking poetry is nonfiction when we poets lie shamelessly in the service of our poems all the time. I extrapolated the history of a nuclear power plant in Two Faint Lines in the Violet to tell some of my most personal tales. In The Whispering Wall I adopted various personas as muses to discover what the self may have been able to intuit but not yet articulate.

Women surreal artists have been particularly helpful: Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Leonor Fini. Inspired by the courage and originality they exhibited in their lives and works, I stretch my comfort zone to experiment with syntax, imagery, and point-of-view. To see how much I could privilege musicality without muddying meaning. To write a pure lyric without worrying it might leave a few things unsaid.

Mainly, I try to stay curious, attentive, playful, vulnerable. Every poem calls for something different. I attempt to embrace failing as just another path to self-discovery.

Over the course of our mentoring engagement, I am all in! I work with only one poet at a time, because I will pretty much live and breathe your poems. I'm ready to offer large-scale suggestions—with an eye toward your manuscript's theme, tones, scenes, and characters—as well as line-by-line commentary on poems where there's call for it, and as my sense of what your manuscript is trying to achieve sharpens. We'll probably want to work on organization and ordering, look closely at how one poem leads to the next, as well as examine titles—both for the individual poems and the book itself—so that everything leads up to the inevitable sense that, as Robert Frost put it, "the final poem is the book itself." There’s little that feels more rewarding to me to help bring a great book of poetry into the world. Think of me as your poetry midwife:)

INFLUENCES

WB Yeats, DH Lawrence, Anais Nin, Sylvia Plath, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Mary Oliver, CD Wright, Forrest Gander, Muriel Rukeyser, Mary Ruefle, Sharon Olds, Lynda Hull, Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, Michael Palmer, Franz Wright, Arthur Vogelsang

TESTIMONIALS

“Choosing to work with a mentor is a big decision. Beyond the financial investment, which is not insignificant, there is a kind of “this is getting serious now” quality to making that level of commitment to one’s writing. Once you get past those hurdles, there’s the matter of choosing the right mentor. It can feel daunting and vulnerable. I mean, what if you muster all your courage and they say no? This is how I felt when I asked Lissa Kieran to work with me on my book manuscript. I had taken two of her online, facilitated workshops through The Poetry Barn and loved them. Lissa is a brilliant teaching artist. Her workshop content is rich, and her critiques are comprehensive and insightful. Of course, I also greatly admire her writing. 

Luckily, Lissa agreed to work with me, and we embarked on a month-long journey to create a cohesive manuscript from my seemingly disparate poems. Lissa was the absolute perfect guide for me on this quest. As every writer knows, there are the nuts and bolts of writing and then there is the creative process. If you’ve read any of her books, you already know that Lissa is a master of both. (If you haven’t read her books, stop reading this right now and go buy one of her books, seriously, or all of them.) She helped me polish, dig deeper, rethink, and revise. She helped me order and reorder the poems. Her encouragement and exuberance for my work buoyed me when I had my doubts. (As one does when sitting on the floor amid what looks like the aftermath of a tornado.) I’m ecstatic with the results, both the beautiful manuscript and the knowledge I gained of the process. Invaluable! 

Luckily for you, word is that Lissa is accepting mentees again! My suggestion: take the plunge! You won’t regret it. 

—Kim Noriega, Poet, Teaching Artist, Mentor”

“Lissa was nothing short of amazing - perceptive, empathetic, and wise. I was (and still am) astounded and thrilled that she was able to take the 100+ poems I sent her and work with me to wrestle them into a book.  She took care to let me keep my own voice but was never hesitant to (kindly) note what should and should not be included.  She also went far beyond what I expected and encouraged small and large changes; every piece in the book is better than it was in its original form. I cannot recommend her highly enough - for me, she was the mentor/guide/editor that I hope all poets will be able to experience.”
—Kim Peter Kovac