"‘You Don't Own That Story’: An Interview with Susan Rich" by Jack Arruda

Jack Arruda, Managing Editor of MORIA for Issue 13, sat down with Susan Rich, who will be our featured guest at MORIA’s First Press Reading Series on April 22, 2024. Rich has written six poetry books and edited two anthologies and is currently a professor of creative writing at Highline College near Seattle, Washington. She makes the point that there are “so many other things one can do to become a poet” outside of a formal education. Rich was in the Peace Corps after she graduated from college and lived in Niger, West Africa, which inspired much of her work, including her most recent book, Blue Atlas. In fact, Rich is an award-winning and fellowship-receiving poet, who also worked for Amnesty International, living in various posts around the world, including Africa.
Originally from Brookline, Massachusetts, Rich states that she has been a lifelong lover of poetry: “Poetry has always been a part of what I loved, but I think the landscape was different in the late 1980s, when there were really only five presses that published poetry. In those days, the profile of a poet was probably a Harvard graduate and most definitely white. And I was not a Harvard graduate, and I’m Jewish, and that’s not 100% white in our culture. I didn’t really think being a poet was in the cards for me as any kind of career, and so I just loved it and went off and studied other things.” What brought her back to poetry, however, was the sudden illness and death of her parents; she says it “made her aware in a different way that life is really short . . . you get one life and one is not a very big number.” She took poetry classes at night on the side, writing when she would come home from work and sending her poems out to test the waters of publication. But it began to take over her life more and more, so she gave up her job to study poetry at the University of Oregon, which eventually led to her teaching in her current position at Highline, where she’s been for 25 years. Although she has traveled around the world, she calls Seattle — “a great town for writers” — home.
What inspired her book Blue Atlas was an abortion Rich had while living in Africa, although it took her years before she would write about this experience. What made her consider pursuing this material in poems was a meeting with her MFA professor before graduating, who told her “that’s the book you should write. The reason to do it is because it’s not your story alone. You don’t own that story.” She says that now she’s glad it’s out in the world because “it’s not only my story, and especially in this particular moment that we’re living in . . . the complexity of a young woman making this decision; it’s something a lot of people go through.” She also mentioned that people have written her, telling her their stories, and it has opened up a space for writers to feel like they can write and talk about it, instead of feeling shame. She says her most personal piece in the book is “The Abortion Question,” stating that she “didn’t want anyone to take my experience of it, that still continues to be a part of who I am, as anything other than a choice . . . because having a choice is important.”
MORIA has published Rich several times over the years, including in our very first issue. In the upcoming Issue 13, she contributes the poem, “What I Learned from I Dream of Jeannie,” which was inspired by what she had watched on TV as a kid and what messages the show communicated about women, as the representation of women was given very little attention back then: “In those days, one is looking for representation in anything that they can relate to, and I didn’t know how many shows there were. It gave me something outside of myself, so that now I wondered, ‘what is it about those early influences that shaped my ideas about the world’?” She continues to write pieces that open spaces for others to talk and share their experiences.
The interview was closed with her advice to young writers: “Read everything you can find, and choose the library over a teacher. Find people you can share work with and expose yourself to all kinds of work. You have to learn and open yourself up as a young poet to different influences. Don’t close yourself off or decide too early. Allow yourself to try different things. You’re living in a poetry renaissance, so find a community in whatever way that speaks to you.”

JACK ARRUDA

Jack Arruda is a senior Filmmaking and Professional Writing student at Woodbury University. Originally from Acushnet, Massachusetts, he is a Managing Editor for Issue 13 of MORIA Literary Magazine.