Creators on Creating: Sherre Vernon

What inspired the title Translating Blue, and how does it relate to the themes explored in the collection?

I love poetry books with notes at the end. I think the first book I read where the notes were integral to the text was the Memory of Fire trilogy by Eduardo Galeano. Not strictly poetry—we’d call it Creative Nonfiction (CNF) now. But the point is: the notes. The last note in Translating Blue addresses the title.

Although my child will tell you that the rainbow has seven colors, among them indigo and blue, in our everyday speak here in the U.S., blue is all-encompassing: it’s baby and powder and light; it’s navy and indigo and royal. We are a legion of blue. And all this to consider without the metaphors, color symbolism, or puns that blue can give us. In Russian, a language I once knew better than I do now, there are two words for “blue,” and they are not interchangeable: one is light and one is dark. The words have different roots, and the colors are as unalike to native speakers as green and yellow are to you and me. It was this before-unimaginable difference of meaning, in my third language, that really helped me understand how we humans can carry our truths: so firmly, though they are actually, variable. I wrote a small little rhyming poem about my fascination with this color twenty-some years ago and a much better duplex more recently. It’s from that duplex that this collection takes its title—and, with metaphor and color symbolism and puns, carries it across the pages.

Could you share a little about the process behind writing the poems in this book? Were they inspired by specific events or experiences?

Assembling this collection was hard. My first full-length book of poetry, Flame Nebula, Bright Nova, had a very clear throughline in how it interrogated motherhood. Translating Blue was not so forthcoming. So many of my poems talk to and toward each other (as if hyperlinked, line by line) that it was nearly impossible for me to discern what the boundaries of Translating Blue were. I had a very bloated manuscript, under a different title, that I sorted and resorted with regularity. The breakthrough came when I changed my assumption. Instead of working with the idea that there is a manuscript here! I switched in the plural: there be manuscripts here! Three distinct themes offered themselves, and one of those themes, the idea of translation, or change, found its way into this collection. As I began to put together these poems of translation, it became clear that there were other tropes underscoring that theme: queerness, love, travel, abandonment, forgiveness, language, restraint.

How does Translating Blue differ from your previous works, in terms of style, form, or subject matter?

I’ll pick up where I left off in responding to the previous question: restraint. There are quite a few formal poems in this collection: sestina, sonnet, duplex, flirt/ghazal, couplet. All of these forms offer a sort of restraint to the very-much-ness that is happening in the manuscript. I don’t know that the use of form in Translating Blue is different than it is in my other works, but it is definitely a defining characteristic of the collection. In terms of content: O—these are love poems, aren’t they? Unabashedly. And that was hard for me. I’ve mentioned in other contexts that I have some residual timidity around romantic content, but these poems are what they are and—so. One last thing I’ll acknowledge here about style: I’m aware of the liquid use of pronouns. There’s an expectation in some poetry communities that when poems are collected a reader will be able to identify the characters (much as in a novel) and trace them poem to poem, knowing who exactly is being spoken to and of. To that I’ll offer: for me, neither love nor language has ever been so forthright. I feel no obligation to the grand narrative. Each love is whole when held by the speaker in Translating Blue, and it is that speaker’s journey we are traveling.

The cover of the book and its visual presentation seem to tie into the theme. Can you talk about how the design of the book complements the content?

I am so delighted that Susan Murie agreed to allow us to use her cyanotype for the cover. It’s blues on silk, it’s flowers, it’s a curtain and a veil, there are folds (like the folds in time and space that occur in this book). It’s romantic and tactile and sensual and I adore it. I think this cover is the perfect entry point to Translating Blue.

What role does color, particularly blue, play in your poetry, and why did you choose to focus on it in this collection?

I really am obsessed with color and with language, with point of view and how point of view changes what we see and communicate. I didn’t exactly choose color as a focus of the collection. I observed that it was and delight in that.

How does Translating Blue engage with the concept of translation, not just in a linguistic sense, but also in an emotional or cultural sense?

Aren’t we all, at some level, trying to be understood? And don’t we choose how obstinate to be (or not be) when someone brings us their broken communication? Every human experience has to be translated from one person to the next, one group to the next. It’s so obvious when we work in languages. Sometimes overt when we move between media (say a book to film). But like blue it can seem nearly invisible in some circumstances. I wanted to really bring to the forefront that every interaction is a translation. When I think about translating blue specifically, beyond the note I shared above, I realize that I am meditating on queerness. What does it mean for me to have a social (read assigned) female identity, but feel much more blue than, say, pink, in so many ways? It also has me thinking about politics: for me, my identity, my capacity for love, is what slants my politics blue in the context of this country. I’ll admit that’s a reading of the book that came to me after the writing, but it’s there, I think. Also, because this collection discusses Russia (which I assign to red), there’s something about being from the US (here, I assign blue). Another post script in my own interpretation of my work, but again, an available one.

There’s a lot of focus on the body in this collection. How do you see the body’s role in the expression of identity and emotional truth?

Much of my work deals with the body. I don’t know how not to do this. I’m a large person with a body that is immediately assigned a feminine reading no matter how I dress. My very shape precludes me from the more androgenous way I’d like to show up in the world.  And I’ve grown a child inside me. It puts attention on the body. O & this collection gets my swimming poems. Pretty physical, that.  And, well, again: love poems.

What do you hope readers will take away from this book?

I hope readers will remember what love feels like in their own bodies. That they will forgive themselves for changing and love those who have changed along side them. That they will give themselves permission to re-write their failures, and losses, as loves.

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Sherre Vernon (she/her/hers) is the award-winning author of Green Ink Wings, The Name is Perilous, and Flame Nebula, Bright Nova. Sherre has been published in journals such as Tahoma Literary Review and The Chestnut Review, nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, and anthologized in several collections including Fat & Queer and Best Small Fictions.

Read Sherre's Book, Translating Blue

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