"remain open to the ways you will evolve to become a different kind of creative person with new rhythms"
"remain open to the ways you will evolve to become a different kind of creative person with new rhythms"
a good creatures interview with poet Eugenia Leigh on how playing with her son enhances her creativity and the necessity of investing in childcare
Hello there! This is an entry in a new section, good creatures, that explores the intersection of caregiving and creative practice. I’m so excited to showcase people doing lots of kinds of caregiving—people caring for kids or pets or other family members and/or caring for space through gardening or community work or activism—and lots of kinds of creative work.
If you know (or are!) a good creature whose work we should feature, send me an email—you can just reply to this newsletter.
Today’s interview is with Eugenia Leigh, whose book Bianca is one of the best books of poetry I’ve read in a long time. (When I had full bags and long flights for last year’s AWP, Bianca and Wolfish were the only books I bought!) I first heard Eugenia’s work years ago, when she was traveling for her first book, Blood, Sparrows, and Sparrows, and she read in Madison’s Monsters of Poetry series. And then, more recently, when we were nearing the end of the editing process for The Long Devotion, I came across a poem of hers in a folio of Korean American Women poets in Pleiades, edited by EJ Koh, and knew we had to include it. The poem, “Gold,” which is also in Bianca, Leigh’s second book, presented a really vital perspective on mothering: learning to care for yourself and your child when your own parents were abusive and unreliable. Publisher’s Weekly calls Bianca “sensitive, insightful, and commanding portrait of motherhood and survival.”
Below, we talk about changing your life and creative habits when you’re caring for a small child and trusting that a new rhythm will come in time.
Who do you care for?
I care for my rambunctious, affectionate, neurodiverse son who is a kindergartener. I suppose I also care actively for my own brain because I live with complex PTSD and bipolar II disorder.
What kind of creative work do you do?
I primarily write poetry, though I’ve been dabbling a bit in nonfiction (essays) as well.
(editor’s note: Eugenia is being kind of hilariously modest here. She’s had incredible essays in Time, on managing mental illness as a new mom, and Romper, on how becoming a mother brought her buried rage to the surface, among others.)
What’s changed in your creative life since becoming a caregiver?
Reshaping my entire life to accommodate my child’s schedule has been the most trying adjustment. I am a natural night owl who always did my best writing at night. Now my brain is fried by 8PM, and I’m forced to wake up (every day?!) earlier than I’ve ever waken up in my entire adult life. Sometimes I wonder whether my first book (written in my 20s) and my second book (written in my 30s) sound different only because one was written by Nighttime Eugenia while the other was written mostly by Daytime Eugenia. That being said, sometimes I speculate the Universe gave me a child partly to regulate my schedule and force this kind of rhythm with its predictable sleep, which is vital to bipolar management. So the thing that’s been the most difficult has also been a gift.
What are some ways care-giving fosters creativity and vice versa?
Although math and science have always baffled me, I somehow birthed a STEM kid who loves science experiments and anything to do with numbers. This means I've entered a season in which I'm learning a ton about outer space, chemistry, baking — topics that I previously could not hold for long in my brain. Thanks to my son, I've also been engaging more with materials I haven't touched in ages — paints, chalk, stickers, food coloring, fabric paint, modeling clay, etc. When I can remember that playing with my son also enhances my own creativity, I’m more motivated to be both a mom and an artist who thinks outside the box (which I’m not naturally good at). I'm looking forward to the ways all this new input will (hopefully) result in unexpected creative work!
Is there something specific you do to jumpstart creativity?
Now that I can’t pause life anytime I want to write when inspiration strikes, I keep a notes app on my phone in which I jot down ideas or lines or observations that come to me when I’m away from my desk. When I sit down to write, I scroll through the app for a gem that might be a springboard for writing that day. One of my friends, a poet who does a lot of visual work, encouraged me to use art or unconventional books as “prompts,” and he suggested I take a look at Grapefruit, a conceptual “book of instruction and drawings” by Yoko Ono. The ideas in it are wild! e.g. “Snoring Piece” says only “Listen to a group of people snoring. Listen till dawn.” And “Prescription Piece” says, “Prescribe pills for going / through the wall and have only / the hair come back.” It’s been freeing to try to come up with written work that leaps from these strange instructions.
What are some creative milestones you’re looking forward to? Or ones you “missed” due to the both/and aspects of your life?
Before getting married and having a child, I worked in corporate jobs that didn’t allow me to leave for long writing residencies. Now that I’m partnered with someone who doesn’t have any flexibility in his work (and with no family in-state), it still feels like a pipe dream to participate in one. But I am dreaming and scheming and hopeful a long writing residency can be in my future!
What advice would you give someone who is a caregiver that wants to start a creative practice?
Invest in childcare! And childcare that is specifically meant to protect your creative time (i.e. not for running errands or doctor’s appointments). This is easier said than done, but until my son was eight months old, I was his primary caregiver 24/7 until I found myself crying in the park with my baby sleeping in the stroller and bereft over how long it had been since I sat down to write. My best friend, who was visiting that day, implored me to find a way to budget for even a few hours a week of childcare. She reminded me that no one in the world will ever give that time to me, and no one is counting on me to write or make anything. No one cares if I have a creative practice except for me! So it was up to me to invest in that time, to carve out that time, and most of all, to protect it. This is, of course, a huge privilege to be able to do and can require relying on a village to invest in this time with you. But it’s possible if you get creative. E.g. Is there a caregiver near you who is also a creative person with whom you can swap babysitting hours?
What advice would you give someone who has a creative practice and is embarking on becoming a caregiver?
Let yourself grieve the old ways you were an artist. Your former practices will likely not apply anymore. Your schedule, your priorities, and even your brain and worldview will change. But remain open to the ways you will evolve to become a different kind of creative person with new rhythms. Those new rhythms will come even if they take time.
Eugenia Leigh is a Korean American poet and the author of two poetry collections, Bianca (Four Way Books, 2023) and Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows (Four Way Books, 2014), winner of the Late-Night Library's 2015 Debut-litzer Prize in Poetry selected by Arisa White, as well as a finalist for both the National Poetry Series and the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Poems from Bianca received Poetry magazine’s 2021 Bess Hokin Prize and have appeared in numerous publications including The Atlantic, The Nation, Ploughshares, and the Best of the Net anthology. Her essays have appeared in TIME, Romper, and elsewhere. Eugenia received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and serves as a Poetry Editor at The Adroit Journal and as the Valentines Editor at Honey Literary, a BIPOC-focused literary journal and literary arts organization.
You can read more at www.eugenialeigh.com, and you can find Eugenia on Instagram and Twitter at @EugeniaLeigh
Write More, Be Less Careful is a newsletter about why writing is hard & how to do it anyway. You can find my books here and read other recent writing here. If you’d like occasional dog photos, glimpses of my walks around town, and writing process snapshots, find me on instagram.
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Motherhood changed my practices of creativity in so many ways, but it's also opened me to parts of myself I hadn't known were waiting. Love this interview, thank you.
I loved this interview: thank you both!