Q&A With Allie Rigby

Last month I did a Q&A with writer, author & book marketing expert Jeffrey Yamaguchi & this month he connected me with Allie Rigby who released her new poetry collection, Moonscape for a Child. Moonscape for a Child poses an urgent question: What does it mean to live well and with purpose in a world on fire? Each poem explores different aspects of this complex & elusive inquiry, and along the way Allie documents what grows, what burns, and what persists-often in the partnerships and ecological relationships we least expect. 

Q: Allie, where do your ideas for your poems come from? 

A: A lot of my ideas come from a combination of what I am reading, who I’m talking to, and what is going on in my life. A lot of my poems are my attempts to process and braid together ideas, memories, and feelings that I sense are connected, but I don’t yet know how. I start writing, keep digging at the question, and try to explore the possible threads. And a lot of the time, I don’t figure it out… those poems might remain unfinished for years, kind of like a bag of fabric scraps I may pick through later to try to assemble a new item of clothing. 

Q: In Moonscape for a Child, why was it important for you to write poems about the themes of living well and with a purpose? 

A: It’s something I still am not sure how to do, even after book one! Maybe someday I’ll know. It seems important to know, especially because we live in a time where global and local struggles are clearly abundant. Suffering is everywhere. But so is connection. And it’s not to overlook the suffering, but rather, to find a way to hold it all, or try to. But I don’t know the answer yet.

Some days I feel like I have purpose and I’m doing my best, other times, I do fall into deep depression wondering how to reconcile all the suffering–personal, local, global. I love a quote by Rebecca Solnit, when someone asked how she remains hopeful. Maybe she’s changed her stance now, but at the time, she remarked that she doesn’t actually have much hope, but she acts as if she does. In other words, her actions are aligned with hope. It’s kind of like sorting the recycling even if you’re not sure if it matters, or donating to the cause you believe in, even if you aren’t positive of the impact. Better to act in alignment with hope, I think. Also, there’s something to be said about the opposite action… you act enough times like you do have hope, and then suddenly, there it is.

Q: If you have any favorite poems you wrote in Moonscape for a Child, which ones were your favorites and why?

A: I really love the poems toward the end of the book, like “Gold Tooth Blues” and “Listening to On Being in Target.” They feel like my most honest writing where I’m being direct and upfront with my frustration with productivity culture during the pandemic, which was keeping Capitalism going, of course, and also, smushing so many people deep into the ground. I started to write down what I was afraid to admit to myself, as a cog in the wheel, too. Contrapuntals were a new form for me, and felt structurally right to express how disorienting it can be, at times, to be human, and how there are multiple ways to interpret one day or one outing, or one dream. Putting these poems at the end of the manuscript felt right, because they are a no-filter, grand finale of sorts. 

 “Coming of Age,” the last poem, I also love. I consider it my “anti-poem” in a way, where I offer a fairytale-drenched manifesto culminating in a call to burn my poems in a campfire, to keep the fire lit so we can all gather for warmth and keep the exchange going, of sharing stories. 

Q: What lessons do you hope readers learn after reading your poetry, what feelings do you hope they feel after reading them?

A: I hope they feel drawn to live with more compassion, whether that is for themselves, their families, their community, or even a struggling house plant. That would be amazing. I always hope that reading poems, in general, inspires people to write more, in general. Build a temple of words to live by. Be gentler, inwardly and outwardly. I guess I wish these for others because these are all the things I often wish for myself too. 

Q: Are you currently writing another poetry collection? If so, what will the themes be about this time? Or will you try writing a full-blown fictional story this time around?

A: More poetry! I love persona poetry, and am super inspired by Elisa Gabbert’s L’Heure Bleue, or the Judy Poems. For context, she wrote the entire book as an experiment of sorts, diving deep into the psyche of a character from a Wallace Shawn play. And then I will read a sonnet in Razzle Dazzle by Major Jackson and feel so inspired to explore that form more. Blas Falconer also gave a really riveting talk on sonnets at the Community of Writers Poetry Program this June, which inspired me to play with the form and look for possible turns within the work. Which is all to say, I’m in “generate more writing” mode. I usually don’t know the question I am asking, or the theme of a collection until I have at least twenty poems or so, and I can start to understand how they are speaking to each other.