Telling & Retelling

Michele Evans on her debut collection, purl

By Emily Holland

Michele Evans’s debut poetry collection, purl, readers are taken on a journey through voice and time. purl brings forth new and traditional forms and unheard voices in poems that give life to women from the Odyssey and poems that bring those stories to the present. Michele talked with Poet Lore editor Emily Holland about her path to publication, re-seeing the Odyssey, and the importance of the writing community.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

EH: First, congratulations on publishing purl! How did this book come to be? What was your path to publishing this collection with Finishing Line Press?

ME: When Covid shut down schools in March 2020, Beth Konkoski, a Virginia writer and colleague of mine, invited me to sign up for a virtual writing workshop led by Moira Egan, a Baltimore native and poet, and sponsored by the Keats-Shelley House in Rome, Italy. It was just the break I needed from the novel [I had been working on], so I registered. When I learned I had to bring a poem to the first meeting, I panicked. Because I was in the middle of teaching a unit on Homer’s Odyssey and using Emily Wilson’s translation and Madeline Miller’s Circe as ancillary texts, I wrote a poem in the voice of a woman who could have been Athena, Penelope, or a woman from today’s world. During one of the workshops, I recall making a list of all the women I could remember in the books of the Odyssey, and whenever an idea for a poem popped in my head, I returned to that list to see if I could make a connection.

In 2021, I took a Writer’s Center workshop with Meg Eden called Poetry Chapbook Workshop. At the time, none of the purl poems had been published individually. I wrote my first writer’s bio and cover letter in that course. I recall someone telling me that new writers may receive as many as 25 rejections before their writing is accepted anywhere, so I prepared to be disappointed. purl was first submitted as a chapbook to Finishing Line Press for the New Women’s Voices Series in Although I didn’t win the Finishing Line Press competition, they offered to publish purl anyway.

Many of the poems here reinvent or reimagine the stories and characters from the Odyssey. What initially drew you to these elements for your poems? And what is the challenge of using familiar material to create something wholly new?

For years I taught Homer’s Odyssey using what I call a traditional approach. My students learned the elements of epic poetry, like the qualities of an epic hero and the hero’s journey. And then one year I added Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad and “Siren’s Song” to the syllabus. For years I had given so much attention to Odysseus, and his crew, and his son, and Poseidon, and the Cyclops Polyphemus, and I was ready to try something different. Reading Atwood reminded me there are so many women in the books and when their stories are told, they are narrated by men and from a man’s perspective and then retold by bards. Like the childhood game Telephone, readers are left wondering about the real story.

In purl I wanted to give women from past and present a chance to tell their stories, so I began by making them the speakers of my poems. And then when I started drafting the poems, I realized their stories stripped down are like those of women today. The whole: We are more alike than we are different. Because I am a Black woman, the intersection of race and gender plays a pivotal role in the way I use this classical text to create something new. I don’t remember studying any Black writers until I went to college in the early 90s. And one of the first Black poets I encountered was Phillis Wheatley Peters. I felt a connection to her because she was so well versed in Latin classics and her poetry was also influenced by Homer. purl takes its name from a line in one of her poems, “An Hymn to the Evening.” And the line is also the epigraph of the collection.

While on this personal writing journey to reclaim my voice, I was also trying to amplify others.

The Odyssey is a complicated story of family and tragedy, but it also ignites so many conversations about storytelling and agency — whose story is worth telling? Or who has a voice in their own destiny? With purl, you also pull readers to think about these questions by bringing forth voices from Black women who were silenced or unable to tell their stories in their time. Can you talk about this process of weaving these narratives together?

While I was writing the purl poems, many horrific and unsettling events were happening around the country. Two that come to mind happened in the same month. In May 2020, Christian Cooper was bird watching in New York City’s Central Park when a woman called the police on him for asking her to leash her dog, and George Floyd was arrested and murdered in Minneapolis moments after leaving a convenience store. As a mother of two Black sons, I am constantly fearful of their safety, fearful they will be targeted because of their race, fearful they will be profiled, mistaken for someone who “fits the description,” fearful police officers will show up at my door to deliver news, fearful I will get a call telling me to rush to the hospital.

My poem “anticlea,” which won the ASP Bulletin Poetry Contest in October 2023, paints a portrait of a protective mother of a son. The poem is named after Odysseus’s mother who dies of a broken heart after years of waiting for her son to come home after fighting in the Trojan War. A mother waiting for her son to return home is something I think all mothers of sons can relate to, especially Black mothers. From Mamie Till to Wanda Cooper-Jones, the list of Black mothers losing their children due to hate crimes, excessive police force, profiling, racism, and other reasons is growing. And mothers who are already mourning the loss of a son will also have to deal with the way people will try to destroy their sons’ character as well.

The poems also remind me of the musicality of Greek epics, the way those poems were performed rather than written. So many of the poems in purl reference music or have a strong sense of musicality in their lines. How do you work to focus on the music of a poem?

When everything shut down during Covid, I added writing and walking to my daily schedule. While walking I either listened to a podcast or a playlist and some of my ideas for poems came to me while I was listening to music. Often, I would stop in the middle of mile two to record an idea in the notes section of my phone after hearing the lyrics of a song. Many of the women in the Odyssey were weavers and singers. So it made perfect sense that the voices of the women in purl would also be musical. The sirens were famous for their ability to lure sailors with their enchanting voices. In the Odyssey, they are enchanting and beguiling. But like so many of the women and feminine forces, we don’t have access to their stories, only their interaction with Odysseus.

We cannot talk about purl without talking about form! From haiku to visual poems to the sestina and the sonnet crown, form plays a huge role in moving the reader through the different parts of the book. What is your relationship to form, in general? What was the writing process like when you approached these forms for purl?

I consider myself an emerging poet who writes primarily in free verse. I like the freedom to break rules and write without always having to count syllables, follow patterns, or use words that rhyme. Most of what I’ve learned came from studying poets and reading their poetry in classes and workshops. I think I am learning just by writing, and rewriting, and reading and listening to poetry and taking generative workshops.

When form poems show up in purl, it’s safe to say the first iteration was probably free verse. One of the concerns I had while working on the collection was figuring out how much of the Odyssey readers would need to know in order to understand some of the allusions in my verses. In addition to providing definitions for all of the poems’ titles, which are names of women and places (for the most part), I also wrote the arias and the sonnet crown to help readers who may need more context and background information. Like the arias, the sonnets are numbered, but each one highlights one of the feminine forces in the epic poem.

I always rush to a book’s acknowledgements because the acknowledgements tell us a little bit about the writer’s community. Can you talk about your writing community and its impact on your work?

Simply put, they have been incredible. None of this would have been possible without them. From a very young age, my parents, especially my mother, encouraged me to write. She was my first advocate and I am so happy that she is able to experience this with me. My husband and kids have watched me prioritize other things over writing for years, so they have been incredibly supportive when I lock myself up for hours on end to write (and read). My son, Harrison, is a gifted artist and created the blue queen that is on the cover as well as two different line art drawings on the inside. He is an emerging artist and I am so happy to share this accomplishment with him.

When I started writing the poems in purl, I read at the Reston Used Book Store in Virginia and at Moco Underground in Sandy Springs, Maryland. Having the opportunity to read in front of a kind and welcoming audience did wonders for my confidence. I still get nervous, and my hand still shakes whenever I am reading — but I have come a long way since those first events. Organizations, presses, and spaces like The Writer’s Center, Day Eight, The Inner Loop, Zora’s Den, Washington Writers Publishing House, Alan Squire Publishing, Artemis Journal, and Yellow Arrow in the DMV area have been so helpful to me by amplifying my voice and showcasing my poetry.

In addition to Moira Egan, Teri Ellen Cross Davis, Saida Agostini, and Brooke Obie all wrote blurbs for purl and were really supportive in their own way. When it came time to provide Finishing Line with endorsements, I was so fortunate to have this talented group of women writers in my corner. For anyone who is just beginning to write, I would tell them to join a writing group, get a writing accountability partner, seek out organizations in your community. It’s so important. I learned so much from them.