A Conversation with Poet Rose Mary Boehm

Life Stuff: Poems by Rose Mary Boehm, Kelsay Books, 2023. Paperback, 156 pages. $23

Life Stuff is a collection of poems that examines events from poet Rose Mary Boehm’s entire life – her childhood in WWII Germany, parenting her children in London, surviving an operation for a brain tumor while living in Madrid, making a life with her second husband in Peru. Everything is up for consideration as if Boehm is getting her life in order. After all, her author’s note tells readers, “I have reached the last installment of my life…….memories and musings…”stuff that comes to mind” when you start thinking too much.”

The very first poem in the book supports that idea of things coming to a finish before the work takes off to encompass a lifetime.

EMBERS
 
I live in the embers of fires
that once were fierce. White, gold, 
red, amber conflagration.
 
Youth.
Needs must.
No prisoners.
No forethought.
No consequences considered, torching
what came near enough, and the iceman a chimera 
whispered about by shivering old women 

no longer strong enough to hold the flames.
I have felt his breath in the shadows.
Last night he held my hand, sightless, unforgiving. 

For those of you who don’t know Rose Mary Boehm’s work, she has published eight poetry collections, two novels, and been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes. It’s worth noting that all this work is in English, which is not Boehm’s first language. But it is the language she adopted quite some time ago as a young woman raising her children in London, and the one she continues to ply as she examines life’s wonders and intensities.

I first became aware of Rose Mary Boehm this past December when I read work as part of a Kelsay Books publication event for several of their authors. She contacted me in January after reading my conversation with Laurie Kuntz here on One Minnesota Crone; another poet conversation was clearly in order. Here it is.

OMC: Hello, Rose, and thank you for taking the time to have a conversation about your work. Life Stuff is quite an expansive collection of poetry. I was particularly engrossed in the poems about your childhood in Germany. Seeing this historical period through the child’s lens is interesting because children tend to offer up the wonders right in front of them, not understanding what they don’t have, even as their brother offers them a teddy bear while waiting in the bomb shelter. It’s the child’s day-to-day life that is foremost, the warm eggs stolen from the neighbor’s hen house, the candles for the Advent wreath, the matter-of-fact-ness about whether a father’s train will get bombed and make him late coming home.

And, of course, there is so much more that follows the wartime poems. There are the poems that show how you reinvented yourself over and over, adopting new languages and cultures, making English the language you eventually used for your poetry.

Would you mind talking about the initial idea for this collection? Did you intend this as a final poetry collection, or as more of a poetic memoir that gave you a way to look back over your life thus far and make sense of it all? What is it you hope readers take from this work?

RMB: I think it was a bit of both. Perhaps my final collection and looking back. I think looking back came first. At my age the thoughts often go back into your past, evaluating, wondering, ‘mining’ as in, what’s the stuff I am made off? Who made me who I am today? How did I get from there to here? And so on. I admire memoir writers who seem to have a relatively clear film of their past. Even though my memories go further back than many others, they come as impressions. Not in a time-lined stream of recollection, not in order of occurrence.

Once I passed 80, I became more and more aware of my eventual finality, that I am at the end, not at the beginning. And my poetry changed to the more narrative kind, trying to capture moments that appeared like shreds of fog floating by, condensing, thinning, condensing…

When I had quite a few of these poems, it made sense to put them all together into a manuscript that just may be my last one.

OMC: That makes sense, especially the part about the memories not coming up in order of occurrence. There is an organic shape that takes hold. Is there a poem from Life Stuff that you feel really anchors this collection? Or, perhaps, a poem from each of the two sections?

RMB: Uff, that’s a difficult one. But on turning this in my mind, I feel that the lead poem, “Embers”, takes me (and hopefully the reader) into that realm where you begin to re-assess what’s been, whereas the rest are the consequence of this re-assessment.

“Embers” also leads to Part II, where perhaps “How to Prepare for my Final Flight” takes us to what, one day, will be the conclusion of my journey. It also hints at the fact that I am not alone. I am fortunate enough to still have a loving and beloved partner who will probably outlive me—he is younger than I am—and at that I am not a believer in the traditional sense.

OMC: I felt that way about both of those poems, too, but I know it’s difficult to choose one or two from a collection this large. They all have their weight. In one of your poems, you talk about not burdening your children with all these stories unless they ask – “Nobody at This Address” on pages 35-36. Have they read this book? Have they asked?

RMB: I really don’t know, and I didn’t ask. Yet. They live in London, I live in Peru. There has been much hurt on both sides over the years. Now they are adults, have built their own lives, and we are good. I am still not sure how much they want to know, but I am sure they will ask the moment I am no longer here. They have read other collections.

OMC: As a writer who has been creating poems for a very long time, what have you found works best for you when you are putting a collection together for publication? Waiting until you’ve had several published in journals and then seeing if they can come together in a book, or having an idea that guides you for an overall theme, or something else?

RMB: Even though I wrote all my life – I have quite a collection in German (I was very much inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke, Hermann Hesse, Christian Morgenstern, Kurt Tucholsky, Erich Kästner, Eugen Roth, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, etc.) and even though I became a copywriter later in life, even though I tried my hand at novel writing, I began to write poetry in English very hesitantly at first, then with more courage. Publishing my poems was still not even a twinkle in my eye when I began again, after I retired at 66.

Publishing mostly poems that had already been published in online poetry journals and print anthologies was the first step. It didn’t occur to me until after I published more and more that perhaps someone would be interested in publishing my poems as a collection.

OMC: Do your German poetry collections offer the same territory – memories of growing up in Germany during the war, raising your children, etc.? Or do you delve into different places in your native tongue?

RMB: When I wrote in German, I was still at a time of my life where I thought that my contributions—in whichever form—would make a dent in the way the world works. So, yes, many of my poems were influenced especially by the political poets, and those who made fun of the establishment. I also notice quite often that certain ideas for poems come from this well of influences in ideas and language. I have been known to write some short, quite surreal poems, inventing a little guy called Mungo. There are 25 of them, and they have been published in The New Absurdist. Responsible for these is fabulous German poet Christian Morgenstern, whom I still admire and love to this day. His poems were often gently funny, poking the sleeping bears (the politicians) and/or incredibly playful. And if Morgenstern could write “Fish’s Night Song”, then anything was possible.

Fish's Night Song

OMC: Okay, that’s fun! Thanks for sharing “Fish’s Night Song”. What other creative pursuits do you practice and how do they fit with your writing practice?

RMB: I started out with the piano. Stage fright prevented me from playing publicly. I then concentrated on mastering more and more difficult and satisfying composers. I always had a piano or access to one, somehow, whenever I settled somewhere for longer periods. Here in Lima, we live in a flat, and it became increasingly difficult to play when the need touched me. That’s when the neighbors slept – either their siesta or their night sleep. The piano is now the heart of a music room in a school for the less privileged children on the outskirts of Lima and has a life again. I used to sing but lost my voice to age. I painted and exhibited in group shows when I was very young, and I drew and had a solo exhibition in London. I no longer have the means or the need. Writing is now my only creative outlet.

OMC: As a mature poet, has your idea of what poets contribute to the world shifted over time and how? What do you feel is your most important contribution as a poet?

RMB: Yes, it has shifted. When I was young—as we do when we are young—I thought I could change the world with my writing one day, when my writing would be read. I also needed to express the melancholy and angst of youth. When I began to write poetry again after 70, I didn’t really think of contributing to anything. I just enjoyed the gift I had been given to string words together and make something special, beautiful, paint pictures—that’s it: I painted pictures.

Now I hope to open some reader’s heart and mind, hope they enjoy the pictures with me, feed on my vulnerability. It usually takes one to open up for the other to dare to look. I would love to touch a string here or there where my music resonates with someone who perhaps never before dared to look too closely.  

OMC: After a lifetime of reinventing yourself, what brings you the most satisfaction now?

RMB: My husband, my children, my grandchildren, my poetry. And not always in that order.

OMC: What’s next for you?

RMB: To travel to Europe at least one more time and see my loved ones: kids, grandkids, friends. Another book perhaps? I have an idea.

OMC: Well, I hope you bring that idea to fruition. Thank you, again, for offering a glimpse of the person behind the work. I’d like to close here with some sample poems from Life Stuff.

This first poem is from page 22 and first appeared in Writing in a Woman’s Voice. I was struck with the child not knowing what she was missing.

APPLE CRUMBLE WITH LOVE

I didn’t know about grown-up desperation
then. Had got used to carrots, potatoes, and water.
Didn’t mind porridge made with wheat ground in Mum’s lap 
with our old coffee grinder. Had no idea what coffee was.
I knew whey, not milk. Butter was a foreign word.
There was something nice in a slice of dark bread
with a layer of mashed potatoes. Sometimes
I brought home an egg, stolen, still warm,
from under one of Frau Keller’s hens. 

For my birthday Mum made an apple crumble 
with flower, water, and a few apples which 
had overwintered in a drawer, wrapped
in newspaper. At the time I didn’t understand 
why Mum was crying when she tried to 
prize the beautiful apple crumble from
the baking tray with a hammer and a chisel. 

This next poem struck me for its demonstration of how one might get used to reinvention. It is from page 63 and was first published in Lothlorien Poetry Review.

A QUESTION OF BELONGING

Where are you from? they ask, 
and I can’t tell. The more urgent 
their enquiry, the less
I understand the question.
 
My mind contemplates 
geographies and deeper places 
excavated by fear, love, desires, 
and the grand fugue.
 
I pulled in my roots a lifetime ago. 
They now hang suspended in mid-air, 
needing nothing more than
an affable welcome. 

For more information about Rose Mary Boehm, visit her website HERE.

To purchase a copy of Life Stuff by Rose Mary Boehm, visit Kelsay Books HERE.