The Poet Karen Rigby on Dame Agatha Christie, the Greenery in Oregon, and Jewelry Shops for the Magpie Brain
What is the one book people should read to understand what you do?
Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water. She writes, “the work is better than the artist,” and that orients my view about all of this writing life.
Who is the one person, living or dead, in your profession who you most admire?
I’m not certain about “most,” because that seems to change. I’ll go with Dame Agatha Christie. Her iconic, familiar leads, the quantity of mysteries she wrote, and her penchant for finding the insidious, terrible seam to unravel in ordinary people’s lives kept me fascinated throughout my childhood, long before I thought much about poetry or writing. It was enough to have a story to fall into. And later, a series of adaptations on TV and film brought the 1930’s to life. Now that I think about it, the stylized surfaces that unfold alongside simmering desires is not so far removed from some of my poetry!
What have you seen lately that’s been inspiring?
The greenery in Oregon. I visited recently, and it rained on and off for the entire week. There is a whole multistory arrangement of many shades of green, from ferns on a forest floor, on through moss scaling up branches, that is full of fearsome majesty. I live in Arizona, so it inspires me to visit places that are dense. Even overrun. Maybe greenery reminds me of growing up in the tropics. Maybe I love the idea of abundance.
What advice would you give to a young(er) person who wants to do what you do?
Read with abandon and generosity. Absorb as many of the arts as you can. And look for everything that feeds your work, not only in the sources that seem to be literary, or somehow important. My younger self had ideas about what a poem should contain or look like. I’ve come to think that it’s the particularity of the material, what I attend to, and what seems to be strange to everyone else, that may well become the hallmarks of the work.
What website other than the major social, search, and news sites, do you have bookmarked?
The Smithsonian Magazine is a maze for all things art, culture, history, science. It’s somewhere between a long flight, in which there’s nothing to do but read all manner of eclectic things, and a jewelry shop for the magpie brain.
Photo of Karen Rigby by Marie Feutrier
Born in the Republic of Panama, Karen Rigby now lives in Arizona. But we encountered her in the U of M MFA program, where we were struck by her incandescent sense of vocation. Even her prose had a lyric yet intense particularity that came from a dedication to craft—which is to say, a dedication to detail.
She is the author of Fabulosa (JackLeg Press, 2024) and Chinoiserie (Ahsahta Press, 2012). A National Endowment for the Arts literature fellow, her poetry is published in journals such as The London Magazine, Poetry Northwest, and The Oxonian Review. Karen is a freelance book reviewer.
Hear Karen read her poem “The Roses” from Fabulosa.
