Get to Know a Local Poet: Rebecca Hoogs

I have often joked with Rebecca Hoogs that she writes smart people's poetry, something I recently wrote about Linda Bierds too, whom Rebecca studied with at the University of Washington where she received her MFA in poetry and a MA in English. About Rebecca’s first chapbook, “Grenade,” Linda said, “The language in these twenty poems glints like sequins—brilliant on both sides.” Pretty high praise from a “genius” poet.

I first came to know Rebecca as a poet when we were both fellows in the Jack Straw Writers Program in 2007. She and I were part of the same recording session, and I fell instantly for her witty verse that warms the mind like a well-placed electric blanket; a personal favorite is “L’Oeuf,” an exploration of love through the French word for “egg.”

But before I knew “Rebecca the Poet,” I knew “Rebecca the Arts Administrator” (There goes that “brilliant on both sides” thing again…). By day, she is the curator of Seattle Arts and Lectures’ Poetry Series and directs the Writers in the Schools and Wednesday University programs. And that doesn’t even include her summers spent in Italy on the faculty of the UW’s creative writing program in Rome, making her, perhaps, one of the hardest working writers in Seattle.

Brian McGuigan: Can you tell us about what you are currently working on?

Rebecca Hoogs: I just finished a prose piece about place and what it means to be a writer in the West that is forthcoming in the fall issue of the recently returned-to-Seattle Poetry Northwest. I’m also always fiddling with my manuscript of poems, tentatively titled “Self-Storage.”

BM: In a recent interview with John Marshall of Open Books, he spoke graciously about your appreciation for poetry. Who is on your wish list of poets to have at SAL? And why?

RH: Ah, the wish list. It’s ever-changing, and has subcategories. There’s the “towering figure of greatness but unattainable” wish list, which includes John Ashbery, Jack Gilbert and Richard Wilbur. And there’s the “personal favorite but will the audience have ever heard of them?” wish list, which includes poets like Dan Chiasson, Sarah Arvio and Dean Young. And there’s the “shoot, they’ve already been in the series” wish list, which includes Kay Ryan, Anne Carson and Claudia Rankine. But a few of my wish-listers will be appearing in next year’s season—so stay tuned!

BM: As curator of SAL’s Poetry Series, do you find it challenging to separate your work from your life as a writer? When do you find the time to write during the busy fall and spring arts crunch?

RH: I find it immensely challenging. I wish I was better at writing poems about Excel and email, since that’s the bulk of my material these days! But seriously, it’s a constant challenge. I keep myself going by scheduling (Hello, administrator!) time with different writing friends or writing groups. I think at one point I had four different groups going—some generative, some workshop, some reading-focused. I have learned to treat my own poetry like a job and schedule time for it the way I schedule the rest of my work.

BM: Do you think it is poetry’s job to enlighten and, as a result, be a little bit hard to understand sometimes?  Is it the poet’s job to create “accessible poetry”? Or is it the reader’s job to, in a sense, “rise to the occasion” of the poem?

RH: Well, to enlighten, there has to be a bit of darkness, right? Beauty is in contrast—or to get predictably egg-head on you, Brian—what Italian calls chiarascuoro. But I don't think it's poetry’s job to be hard to understand. I think it’s poetry’s job to go to the difficult moments or our lives or language and to mess around in them, to see what can be dredged up, brought to the surface. And I think understanding, itself, is often hard to come to for both writer and reader. It’s the writer’s job to not take the easy way out—for that way lies tired similes and oft-seen roadside attractions. And it’s the reader’s job to go off-road with the writer, even if that means things get a bit dirty.

BM: What's the best thing about Seattle’s poetry community? And the worst?

RH: The best thing is both its size and the quality of engagement across a variety of aesthetics. The poets who come to SAL’s Poetry Series are always incredibly awed by the size of our audience, but  also by how warm and engaged it is. The worst thing? That I've become so dependent upon it! It's really hard for me to imagine ever moving somewhere else. This community is integral to my very personal life as a poet, and it’s hard to know who I would be without it.

Comment