Poetry as a means of healing, resistance, and hope
An interview with Holly Karapetkova
by Gregory Luce
Holly Karapetkova, Arlington County Poet Laureate from 2021-2023, is one of the DMV’s most highly regarded poets. Her most recent collection, Dear Empire, her third, was reviewed in Washington Unbound last week. In the book, Karapetkova tackles such vital topics as the difficulties of motherhood, environmental threats, consumerism, refugees, and—especially—race. To learn more about her process, her working habits, and why she courageously confronts and writes about hot-button issues, I requested an interview and Holly gracefully accepted.
Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed. First, please tell us a little about your background and what drew you to write poetry.
I began writing poetry when I was fairly young, and my early experience with poetry is one of the reasons I feel so committed to encouraging young poets. I've always been someone who feels emotions deeply and cares deeply about other human beings, and the more I became aware of injustice and suffering in the world around me, the more I found myself turning to poetry. Often at readings I'll hear writers say that poetry has saved them. This is not an exaggeration. I wouldn't be alive in the same way without poetry as a means to engage with the world, to try to make sense of the senseless, to try to make beauty out of a life that is so often ugly, unfair, and difficult to understand. Writing is a powerful form of constructing meaning and value in the face of destruction and injustice. It’s a means of healing ourselves. It’s a means of resisting dehumanization and oppression, and it’s also an act of hope—that someone will hear our words, understand, and be changed.
Your poetry frequently engages with important political and moral questions. Have you always been concerned with these issues? Do you consider yourself an activist?
In many ways the act of choosing to be a writer, and especially a poet, in 21st century America is itself an act of resistance. The general narrative we’re fed in this country is that the arts don’t matter—they won’t make us rich or earn us a lot of respect. They aren’t taken seriously. This marginalization is intentional because in many ways the arts are a threat to the status quo. And yet, in spite of capitalism’s insistence on the “uselessness” of the arts, they keep springing up in the most unexpected places, making it clear how desperately we need to express ourselves, or need others to express for us what we can’t express ourselves. Literature is our link to each other and to the world. You can try to silence writers’ expression of ideas, but they will always find their way to the surface.
Of course I’m also an activist in the more practical sense of the word as I think we all must be, especially right now. Now is not a time for fear or reflection. Now is a time for action, because if we don’t act now we may find ourselves in a situation where we are no longer able to do so.
Dear Empire contains a number of poems about race. Why do you consider this such an important topic?
Well, in many ways race and racism are at the very foundation of what it means to be an American. This country was founded on crimes of genocide and enslavement, and the racism that emerged to justify these horrific deeds is baked into our identity as Americans—especially those of us who are white Americans. If we're ever going to heal as a country, then we have to be honest about this history.
For over a decade now I've been writing about whiteness and white supremacy, trying to understand the source of its power. My research into racism took me back further and further into the past to try to understand the present moment and how we got here. To say that Black people were morally and mentally inferior to white people justified their enslavement and the profit their labor created. Arguments about the civilizing nature of European culture, especially related to Christianity and the "saving "of "barbarous people" justified the genocide of Native Americans and the theft of their land.
There's been a lot of discussion of cognitive dissonance lately, and I’m constantly amazed at what people can convince themselves is true in spite of all evidence to the contrary. But this country has a long dark history with cognitive dissonance. When our president blames DEI for a helicopter crash at National Airport or tries to erase parts of our national story that make white people “uncomfortable,” you’re seeing our history in a nutshell. You’re seeing just how deeply racism is embedded in our national consciousness and how stubborn and difficult it is for us to confront—and unfortunately until we can face our history we’re going to keep repeating it.
You recently published an essay in North American Review about why white poets should write about race. Why do you think so many otherwise progressive poets shy away from this issue? How does one avoid virtue signaling or just stating that racism is bad?
I think many white writers shy away from writing about race out of fear of what can go wrong. White people live in a reality where we are not forced to think about racism on a daily basis, in spite of the fact that it has been designed to our benefit, and so we’re often unaware and uninformed. When I decided I wanted to write about my experiences with racism and white supremacy, I knew it was going to be a long journey. Throughout my life I’ve looked to literature to gain knowledge, to experience walking in someone else's shoes. So there was no question in my mind that in order to understand racism I needed to turn to writers. Before and during the 10 years or so when I was working on the poems in this book, I read hundreds of books by Black and Brown writers—from antebellum America to the present. Immersing myself in their experience kept me from missing or misrepresenting the reality I was confronting. It also helped me avoid the tropes of white fragility and white tears, the classic toxic byproducts of white people’s attempts to discuss race. I'm not going to say I didn’t experience a tremendous amount of pain when I was writing these poems, especially when experiencing the suffering of Black and Brown folks that my own complicity had enabled. I let myself have those moments of sorrow and anger, and then I kept digging. I kept trying to get to the truth of my experience growing up under the dogma of white supremacy, which at its root is (for me) about the ways we stand by and allow other people to be dehumanized and harmed for our own comfort, our own economic gain and psychological well-being. And how, in that process, we lose our own humanity.
Who are some other white poets who you think confront racism in a meaningful way?
I’ve mostly found Black writers helpful in understanding white supremacy—James Baldwin is the greatest single influence in my development as an anti-white-supremacist, along with TaNahesi Coates and Toni Morrison, and more Black and Brown poets than I can possibly name. However, there are several white poets who have inspired my work, including the first white poet I ever heard take on white supremacy, the late Jake Adam York. Others whose work has helped inform my own include Martha Collins, Susan Tichy, Joseph Ross, Sarah Browning, and Sean Murphy.
And finally, you’re a professor at Marymount University, in addition to being a mother. How do you integrate your writing with your obligations in those areas? And could you say a little bit about your writing process and how poems come to you or arise in your imagination?
I feel like my writing life goes through different phases and stages, just like all other parts of my life. When my children were younger and I was working full-time, I didn't have a lot of energy to spare; much of my writing would happen in my head while I was pushing a stroller, or on the back of a napkin or old receipt when a thought came into my head. There was a period after my daughter was born when I was extremely busy and all I wrote were haiku. There have also been times when I've established a regular writing practice, putting aside time every day. For several years I even wrote a poem a day, no matter how busy I was. Right now I'm spending a lot of energy promoting my new book and taking care of other responsibilities, so I'm not producing very much new work.
In terms of how poems arise, my process varies greatly. Sometimes, as with the poems on white supremacy in Dear Empire, my approach is very intentional. I wrote a long series of poems that were entirely about race and whiteness; a lot of the poems were originally entitled “Dear White,” and I just kept probing the idea of whiteness again and again to see what I could find. At other times the work feels like it's thrusting itself upon me or forcing me to pay attention. However it happens, for me poetry is a necessity. When I try to live for too long without it, it finds a way to interrupt and insert itself into my life; I'm never able to go too long without it.
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If you’re interested in Holly Karapetkova read and speak about her work, she will be appearing locally at the following events:
Sunday, May 11, 4 pm
The HOT L Poets Series with Lesley Wheeler
The Ivy Bookstore, Baltimore, MD
Saturday, May 17, 4:15 pm
Gaithersburg Book Festival, Edgar Allen Poe Pavillion, Featured Reader
Bohrer Park, Gaithersburg, MD
Thursday, May 29, 7 pm
The Writer’s Center, with Steven Leyva
4508 Walsh St, Bethesda, MD 20815
Learn more about the author, including more upcoming events, on her website: www.karapetkova.com
Holly Karapetkova is a Poet Laureate Emerita of Arlington, Virginia, and a recipient of a 2022 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship for her work with young poets. A winner of the 2024 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize for Dear Empire, she is the author of two previous books of poetry, Towline and Words We Might One Day Say. She lives in Arlington, Virginia, and teaches at Marymount University.
Gregory Luce is a founder and editor of Washington Unbound. He is a poet living in Arlington, VA who has published six chapbooks, and numerous poems in print and online. He serves as Poetry Editor of The Mid-Atlantic Review. In addition to poetry, he writes a monthly column for the online arts journal Scene4.