Meet the Teacher” offers a quick introduction to the talented writers who teach for The Porch. Today we welcome Pauletta Hansel, a poet whose books include Will There Also Be Singing? (Shadelandhouse Modern Press), poems of witness and protest; Heartbreak Tree (Madville Publications) which won the Poetry Society of Virginia’s North American Book Award; and Palindrome (Dos Madres Press) winner of the 2017 Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry. Understory: A Women’s History of Appalachia is forthcoming from University Press of Kentucky. Pauletta was Cincinnati’s first Poet Laureate and 2022 Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County Writer-in-Residence.

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Tell us about a book you've recently read and enjoyed. 

Cipher by Jeremy B. Jones, which is a memoir about the author’s discovery of an ancestor who left a detailed journal in code. The book is in many ways the “negative” of my upcoming book, Understory, in that Cipher considers one male ancestor, and my own, 14 generations of female ancestors. Yet emotionally and historically there are many parallels, and the book is a compelling read regardless of one’s interest in ancestry.

What’s one book or essay you return to again and again to help you think about writing, get inspired, etc.?

My two “go-tos,” especially in teaching, are Jane Hirshfield’s “Poetry and the Mind of Concentration" from Nine Gates, and Gregory Orr’s “Four Temperaments and the Forms of Poetry,” which has been widely anthologized. Both provide very useful models for considering the power of poetry. Also anything by the late Tony Hoagland, but especiallyThe Art of Voice. In creative nonfiction, Tell It Slant by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola is a great resource.

What is your favorite writing rule to break?

I don’t know that this is a rule, but I have come to love playing around with prose in my poetry, especially pulling bits of research material–historical, news, etc.--and integrating it into my poems. There are so many great examples of this: Claudia Rankine, C.D. Wright, and Frank X Walker, for example.

Music while writing: Y/N? 

Nope.

What do you love most about teaching writing?

The connection with other writers, for sure. Also how it makes me think about the process of writing. I learn so much when I need to bring the underground knowledge up into the light. And I also write more when I am teaching because of the community around me.

For you, why does creative writing matter? 

This is a difficult question in some ways, because it is sort of like, Why does food matter! I have been surrounded by books my entire life: My father was an avid reader, and my late parents told me I wrote my first book when I was five or so. My mom had to spell the words, but I insisted it be in my own hand. So obviously, it matters more for some of us than others, perhaps, but I love supporting other people, including those who don’t think of themselves as writers, to take nourishment from their own words on the page, and from each others’. It is how we know ourselves as a human community.

I learn so much when I need to bring the underground knowledge up into the light.

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Tell us why you pitched your upcoming class or classes. 

I have loved persona poetry for many years; it feels like magic to embody another through words. I love to read fiction, but don’t write it, so persona is perhaps the closest thing. But for my upcoming book, Understory, I gave myself the task of writing at least one poem for each of my 15 grandmothers who lived on what became North American soil, and persona was a way of making intimate connections with women that were part of me, and yet unknown. So, I am happy to share the magic!

Share something that has inspired your creativity lately, other than a book.  

We just moved and there is a huge flock of carrion birds–I think black vultures–who consider my part of the neighborhood their home. They roost on the trees outside my office window and every now and then there is a great whoosh outside my window as they rise. Haven’t really written about them yet, but it is stewing.

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