Today we are delighted to introduce you to Laure-Anne Bosselaar, an award winning poet and poetry teacher based in Santa Barbara. Laure-Anne is leading our drop-in poetry conversation each month at domecíl. Perhaps you have perused one of Laure-Anne’s five books of poetry at the shop. She is an inspirational figure whose warmth, humanity and curiosity, especially with regard to words and how they affect us, encourages us to want to enrich our lives through poetry. Meet Laure-Anne.
How long have you been writing poetry and what drew you to write poetry?
I was raised in a nunnery in Belgium in the 40s and the only books we could read were the very few allowed by the nuns, mostly catechisms — but no poetry. One day, I was about 8 or 9, I realized that the hymns that were sung also had a kind of music inside to words, within the lyrics of those hymns: I was actually discovering rhyme, but didn’t know that there was a word for that! So there was music inside the music of language... I found this so wonderful that I started trying to find rhymes to all the words in my head, and writing them down. It was, for me, a way to escape, a fun game, a way to enter a world of imagination. That’s when I started writing.
I have been writing poetry ever since. In Belgium I wrote in French and Flemish, then, in 1986, I moved to the US. My goal then was to learn how to write in English (I was in my late forties) and hoped that — some day — I’d have a poem published in an American literary review. I guess I got lucky! I took English language classes, and then courses in literature. I was encouraged to earn an MA, then an MFA. It’s then I met an American poet, Kurt Brown, who taught me everything I know about poetry. We married in 1992.
You’ve said poetry has been your life. You have published many books of poetry, received awards for your poetry and taught poetry at universities including Sarah Lawrence College and UCSB. Today you continue to teach online and in private workshops. You have been so grounded in the world of poetry throughout your life.
Poetry has, indeed, been my life. It’s my identity. Reading poetry has been a love of mine since that day I “discovered” rhyme. I feel spoken to by poetry. And feel heard, as well. Poetry is a place of peace and excitement I never stop learning. Not a day goes by without my learning about a new poet, or learning from a poet I “thought” I knew, and re-discover all over again. Poetry is my place of belonging. I relate to my students through poetry because we go deeper than a superficial conversation. Poetry is who I am - literally.
How have things changed over the years?
Things have changed for the better I think. For decades one almost had to be an academic to have access to the art of writing it. Now — and I do believe the internet plays a big role in this, poetry has finally come back to a more communal experience. Poetry is making a comeback in the streets, in cafes, and this thanks to the younger generation who aren’t as stuck in past traditions. They have reinvented poetry in a beautiful way with Slam Poetry and the Spoken Word, or just written poetry only. I love that. I’m grateful for that. You can now go to many cafés or bars to listen to extremely talented poets read or recite their work. The poems come more from an immediate experience, shared and heard by many, many more people. To me that’s such a fascinating & beautiful movement.
Tell me more about the monthly poetry conversation that is taking place at domecíl each month.
What I’m trying to do is bring poetry to people who are uncomfortable with poetry, or think they don't understand it. During the relaxed readings & conversations I hope to have at Domecil, I will bring poems by contemporary poets that all have in common that they are accessible and open. Anybody, even those who never read poetry will be able to understand or relate to the poems that I bring, and my hope is that by reading and sharing them, people might discover the joy of feeling moved, enriched and included by them!
Some of the feedback that we received from your first poetry conversation group last month was that people they had forgotten the power of words and how they can evoke forgotten memories.
The essence of poetry is to distill, to bring an emotion or share an experience as clearly as possible. Contemporary poetry is often a description of a moment frozen in time. That moment can happen while shopping, seeing dolphins in the waves, eating an apple, or falling in, or out of, love. By expressing this personal experience in a poem, poets try to make this a more universal experience.
In the writing of poetry we choose our words and our lines very carefully. We weigh every word, every image, every utterance so that it is clear, available and accessible to all, and thus invite people to feel that we are sharing with them an emotion, thought, or story that might touch them, make them feel included.
Poetry has been happening for millennia. In hard times and in happy times, at weddings and at funerals, during wars and in moments of peace, poetry has always been present. Right now, for example, we need to come together around poetry, and this not to claim some kind of truth or political stance, but rather no not feel so divided, so part of a “them and us” that only causes even more division. Poetry is there to unite people, in my opinion, so that, in common, we learn how to love a line, a new word, a new way to speak and be heard, and thus discover how much we have in common as human beings – and not keep focusing on what makes us separate from one another.
Here is one of Laure-Anne’s poems entitled Brief- from her most recent book Lately, written in the Fall of 2023 after an exchange of a gaze with someone waiting in line at a pharmacy.
Sometimes you see something that deeply touches you in a person. Even if that person is a complete stranger. This happens without words just for a moment, a brief instant, and then life separates you. This happens to everyone, I’m certain, but I wanted to write about that, from my own experience. How suddenly one remembers someone only seen for a second, but their face, or gaze, or hands, or demeanor made an impression on you, something made you feel connected to that person — and you have an inner smile remembering that, even though the only connection you had with him or her was being in the same place at the same time… That’s what the poem “Brief” is about.
BRIEF
It happens so often: there — somewhere
in a line, waiting room or store — I see you,
& it’s something about your work-wrecked
hands, cow-lick, the perfect curl of your lips,
or grief nearly collapsing your face,
that make me quietly smile at you or nod
as I take you in — nameless companion
in this crammed commute of a life —
& whether you lower
your eyes or smile back, I now carry you
along with me, & remember you some day
as I walk the dog or drive to the mall —
amazed, glad to have you close again,
albeit for the smallest moment.
Join us next Sunday March 16th from 4 - 5pm in the shop for a comfortable conversation about poetry with Laure-Anne.