Our poetry team is featuring two new poems this week from writer Christopher Forrest, titled 'Pyramids' and 'Nachus'. Our team loved these pieces for their honesty and intimacy and think they make a great addition to our growing poetry section.
Christopher Forrest lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina with his wife and three young children. He received his undergraduate education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and worked in finance for nearly a decade before returning to school for his MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte. After graduating, he joined Press 53 and has worked there as poetry editor for the last six years. His poems and essays have appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Cagibi, The Ekphrastic Review, Heirlock, Storgy, and elsewhere. Outside of writing, he enjoys a busy and fulfilling family life, training for triathlon, and vinegar-based BBQ sauce.
As a part of our ongoing contributor conversation series, our editor-in-chief Julian Kanagy talked with Christopher about his new works, and about how fatherhood and legacy inform his work. This is their conversation in full:
Julian Kanagy: I'd love to start by asking about what fatherhood means to you. Both "Pyramids" and "Nachus" feature a father (the poet) observing his son, which seems to expand his understanding of the world. Do you find that your poetry is often informed by such lived experiences?
Christopher Forrest: It's hard for me, at least for the last decade, to write much at all that doesn't revolve around fatherhood. My wife and I struggled, as so many do, with fertility. To me, as we navigated through our options, it raised some awfully big things to think about. I spent a lot of time thinking about what was meant to happen; how much we were to respect the order of the universe; what duty did we have to intervene given that it is now medically possible; how do we balance the desire to create our own children against other paths to parenthood; what answers do we accept and which ones do we fight? I think that just thinking through big questions, whether you arrive at any particular answer or not, goes a long way in understanding the world. And fatherhood too!
In some ways we live in a different world than Egypt 5000 years ago, and in some ways we don't. In the ancient world if you went through the motions to procreate and couldn't, that was your answer. Now, that result isn't so final. But fatherhood and love for a child and these desires to build and create and provide and endure are no different now than they ever have been.
Julian Kanagy: Are these poems recent work of yours, or earlier work? Are they part of a larger collection of poetry, or does each piece stand alone despite their common threads?
Christopher Forrest: Both of these poems, and many of my others, tend to focus on, or maybe attempt to figure out, a basic understanding of legacy. What do we really mean to do here? The clearest way we survive is through our children. They can inherit things from us—physical traits, morals, habits, etc.—that we've inherited from others and there can be a bit of peace in fulfilling that purpose. But there is an important component of community. I mentioned the passing of my son's teacher, and even though he was very young and it would certainly be difficult for him to remember or articulate an impact she had on his life, I know, as witness, that she used, with wonderful enthusiasm, some time in her own life to make someone else's better, and when I first thought about what that meant to me I couldn't, and still can't, think of anything anyone could ever do that means more than that.
These are part of a larger collection of poems that begin with the fertility struggles we faced and end (though I continue to write) with early fatherhood, so that would make these more recent. A metaphor I use throughout the collection as a way to disarm the subject of fertility, which can be such a lonely and embarrassing condition despite its prevalence, is the asparagus. The after-effect of its consumption is something widely understood and shared but rarely discussed—perhaps this borders on gratuitous, but those basic elements are true also of infertility. The other and more compelling connection (to me, at least) is that of survival. It seems to me a possibility that when asparagus was first consumed thousands of years ago that its aforementioned after-effect might have been interpreted as a sign that it shouldn't be consumed. It survived, however, and now we appreciate both its taste and nutrition and the world is a better place for it. Similarly, when we were told that we wouldn't conceive without medical intervention we could have taken that as a sign that we weren't meant to have children. Instead we bristled against that feeling and went through the trials that eventually led to a son.
Julian Kanagy: In both "Pyramids" and "Nachus," the perspective is contemplative, passive, and observational of a situation or dynamic at play with his son. As a reader, I found this reflective approach compelling and the poetry moving. I wonder how it felt for you to write these poems; where do you begin and end with your pieces like these?
Christopher Forrest: My mentor in graduate school and beyond is Cathy Smith Bowers, an amazing poet and teacher who stresses the importance of an abiding image (her craft book on poetry is titled The Abiding Image) on which to meditate before the actual writing is done. To borrow from her, think of Michelangelo staring at a block of marble, carving the David in his mind before ever picking up a chisel. Well, in writing this collection of poems I found my abiding image was simply always my son—when we were going through the tests, the medications, the injection therapy, at every step of this journey into parenthood, he was my sculpture waiting in the marble. So often the most meaningful moments to me have been the simplest ones when I have time to take a breath and just watch for a bit, grateful and truly amazed at what comes to mind. I think over the years of writing I've found my most authentic voice is what takes over in simple scenes that seem to matter more than they might first appear. Cathy helped me understand creating tension by upsetting the readers' expectations, and I find that I love ending poems with this in mind. Nothing necessarily needs to happen, but I enjoy leaving the reader thinking about something they maybe didn't expect to. I suppose I ought to dedicate "Nachus" to Cathy, but I could just as easily dedicate them all to her.
Christopher Forrest
Christopher Forrest lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina with his wife and three young children. He received his undergraduate education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and worked in finance for nearly a decade before returning to school for his MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte. After graduating, he joined Press 53 and has worked there as poetry editor for the last six years. His poems and essays have appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Cagibi, The Ekphrastic Review, Heirlock, Storgy, and elsewhere. Outside of writing, he enjoys a busy and fulfilling family life, training for triathlon, and vinegar-based BBQ sauce.
Julian Kanagy
Julian Kanagy is a Chicago-based poet and editor. His poetry samples a Midwestern upbringing peppered with loss and abandonment, thrives both in the confines of formal structure and the simplicity of its absence, and expands into an ongoing search for the beauty in everyday life when it seems to be hiding. He started Heirlock Magazine to amplify underrepresented voices and The Wild Umbrella to celebrate writing for writing's sake; both as an editor and in his own work, Julian follows the advice of a mentor: “find the poems that nobody else could have written.”
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