Dorothea Lasky came to visit us at the University of Massachusetts Amherst as the second guest of the MFA program’s Visiting Writers Series. Lasky has published six poetry collections, one book of prose essays, and several chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in many journals such as the New Yorker, Paris Review, and American Poetry Review. Lasky graduated from UMass’s own MFA program in 2004 after receiving her Bachelor’s Degree from Washington University. After getting her MFA from UMass, she received a Masters in Arts Education from Harvard University and a doctorate in Creativity and Education from the University of Pennsylvania.
Before the night’s reading, Dorothea Lasky engaged in a Q&A session with Living Writers students who read her newest collection of poetry, The Shining inspired by Stephen King’s novel and Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation.
Dressed theatrically in a long patterned dress covered with a hot pink feathery vest, Dorothea Lasky is “CREATIVE” personified. With her curly hair pulled back in a turquoise headband, neon green dangling earrings, bulky statement rings, red glasses frames with matching red tights, orange flats, pink bracelets, and a gorgeous red cane, Lasky says she is dressed to match her Sagitarrius rising sign, revealing her fascination with astrology.
Lasky’s passion for astrology, and how the worlds of astrology and poetry intertwine are what kick off the Q&A. Interestingly, Lasky conjures the connection between our moon signs and their connections to aesthetics, saying that she tends to love poetry written by Scorpios most, as it’s her moon sign, referencing Lisa Olstein in particular, the Visiting Writers Series’ last guest. Lasky continued bonding with the MFA student mediating the discussion over their shared Aries-ness as well. Throughout the Q&A, Lasky returns often to her identity as an Aries in describing who she is as a poet and writer.
Getting more into Lasky’s book, however, the Q&A brought up questions of ekphrasis. Ekphrasis is the practice of making art from looking at art. In Lasky’s instance, she watched the film version of King’s The Shining and responded to both the plot and emotional aspects of the text by writing poetry. Despite having never seen or read The Shining myself, the ways in which Lasky and the Living Writers students spoke about specifically Stanley Kubrick’s film adaption of the story allowed me to follow along, and I was even encouraged to watch the film myself. Ekphrastic works can have that effect.
Lasky talked at length about the intimacy that she feels in relationship to the characters of the film, in particular to Wendy, noting that, “In a lot of ways, this collection is a love letter to her.” Lasky mentions that she’s even wearing red tights in recognition of Wendy’s classic look. This kinship that Lasky feels towards Wendy and towards other characters within the film appears in her poetry collection in significant ways. Lasky talked a bit about how imagination gives us access to places that do not exist to us physically, about how in writing poetry about The Shining, she was able to transport herself inside of the film in a way.
The group discussed a lot of background information about The Shining that I wasn’t aware of, including a lot of context about how the film was made, how the main actress was severely mistreated under the guise of a twisted idea of authenticity. They discussed an instance in which one actor was apparently left out of interviews and fans were told to not approach him in order to create a sense of isolation that he could bring more authentically to his role. One student asked Lasky if this context at all impacted her poetry, to which she confirmed that it did. She talked about the director’s manipulation of their actors and the power that resides in that role. She talked also about how exploring this concept through a feminist lens resulted in her poetry collection. Lasky’s work is in large part pondering the place of women in horror, referencing how women in horror are often just the ones being chased. Lasky gives a voice to the women of horror.
One student approached the microphone and proposed a question about healing in writing, referencing in particular a quote from an article on LiteraryHub that Lasky wrote and published just a week prior to the event. The Living Writers class had read this article, presumably, and were given the opportunity to speak intimately with Lasky about it. I leaned closer to listen.
Within this article, Lasky writes, “Maybe horror itself is a space to heal. Where we can exist in the excised hospital room of our dreams. Maybe if we turn to the art that frightens us still, we can make it all make sense” (Lasky). She proposes horror as a healing genre, a space in which what frightens us the most can also be what allows us to make sense of ourselves and the world we live in.
Another student’s question was about the motif of mirrors both in the source material and in Lasky’s poetry collection. This sparked an in depth discussion about mirrors, what makes one, how poetry functions as one, and so on. Lasky tells a story from her youth, one that many in her audience could relate to, of her younger self drawing a scary face on a piece of paper. You tell yourself that you’re going to draw the scariest face imaginable, and upon finishing, you have to flip over the page because you’ve dared to draw the unimaginable horror. Lasky said that this is what poetry feels like to her, writing everything you nearly couldn’t bear to say but doing it anyway, and how this mirror image of one’s worst thoughts becomes the poetry we all call art.
Lasky speaks of her admiration for horror film director Jordan Peele, who has said that he thinks of what scares him the most and puts it into his films. Lasky does this herself in her poetry.
Lasky describes her writing process towards the end of the Q&A after a few intrigued students posed questions about the ways she chose to order her poems and how that connects to the chronology of the film and novel The Shining. Lasky said that she messed with the chronological sequence of the film in significant ways, as she was able to imagine places outside of the film and fill those spaces in with her writing.
Before concluding the Q&A, Lasky was encouraged to answer questions about how her work interacts with current events, and specifically, if and how she sees a connection between her work and the genocide in Gaza. She spoke about haunting and false comforts, something that horror and reality have begun to have in common.
Lasky left the Living Writers Q&A portion of the event after giving brief astrological charts for students, discussing the connections between poetry and horror, and making a fashion statement, all in one afternoon.
Returning for the poetry reading, Lasky had taken off her pink vest and instead put on a sheer pink dress over her patterned one. As the room filled up, Lasky connected with friends, greeting everyone enthusiastically, labeling everyone endearingly by their Zodiac signs.
Dorothea Lasky reading from her book “The Shining” at UMass’s Visiting Writers SeriesAfter a beautiful introduction from an MFA student, Lasky read a bunch of incredible poems, both published and unpublished. The way she reads is so sure, concise and confident. Uniquely, Lasky is both loud and soft, voice booming throughout the room but lines spoken with such a quiet emotionality that is impossible to mimic without feeling it. Lasky read some new, unpublished poems from two upcoming collections, one of which is titled Mother and was inspired by Bernadette Mayer’s prose poetry titled The Desire of Mothers to Please Others in Letters written during her third pregnancy. The poems read from Mother were written during Lasky’s third pregnancy, an homage to Mayer. These new poems were abstract yet grounded and confident yet worried. The contradictory nature of Lasky’s poetry means that it is its truest form. Lasky also read from The Shining, noting that this collection is what brought poetry back to her, and how lucky are we that it did.
Dorothea Lasky was a joy to listen to. Her poetry rang true and her presence was vibrant. UMass was lucky to have her, even if only for a night. The MFA program’s next Visiting Writers Series event is November 16, 2023 as UMass welcomes fiction writer Andrea Lawlor to Old Chapel for a reading.
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