Scott Ferry helps our Veterans heal as a RN in the Seattle area. He will keep writing poetry to keep his skin on and the little voices sated. His most recent books are Sapphires on the Graves (Glass Lyre, 2024), 500 Hidden Teeth (Meat For Tea, 2024), and dear tiny flowers (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2025). You can find more at ferrypoetry.com
The title of Sapphires on the Graves evokes the cover image of “the flash and weft of sun on water” as the speaker tells himself he must collect each strand of light as it falls and weave it into [his] splayed chest” in order “to laugh with my children/ because i have to show them there is music on the black waters/ that there are sapphires on all the graves.” The speaker identifies himself as a father, husband and medical professional who feels estranged as he “grip[s] a broken umbrella/ [his] strained pants held up by one suspender” in a reading where “the people in the audience all look accomplished.” There, before the establishment, the speaker sees himself as an imposter, “fog in a cave.” But poetry to him is an imperative, as when the mock play with the speaker’s son taking the speaker’s eyeballs out leads to the startling lyric: “and i can think of many times in my days i have been blind / and then awaken / and sometimes the darkness was kinder/ sometimes the darkness was kinder.”
Tiffany Troy: How does the first poem, “guam,” set up the reader for what is to follow? To me, it builds on the chasm between sleeping/ being awake, the difference between “my wife who grew up here” and “my white skin” “bloodied with salt,” the desire to document versus the impossibility to document, and “permission for entry” versus “stealing any memories.” There is also the son and the daughter and their relationship to the moon and the sea.
Scott Ferry:
First of all thank you for the close reading of the poem and the tidal tensions pulling apart and back together here. I wanted to not only dive into the electric blue of the ocean, the vibrant growth of vines, the everpresent eyes of the ghosts, but also how it feels to be an outsider here in this place my wife thrives. I hope it is enough to respect the ancestors and culture and keep a quiet demeanor when entering these sacred places. I also feel the sacredness and try to engulf myself in it as much as I can. I enjoy watching my son and daughter enter into this world of parrotfish and typhoons and Catholicism with an easy flip of their fins. The trouble is the sadness when they have to leave their cousins and come back to drizzly Washington. We are grateful that we have the ability to go just about every year so that they have an attachment to that part of their identities.
As for the dichotomies of sleep and non-sleep, faith and non-faith, and words amidst wordlessness, those are themes I wrestle with in the rest of the book. This manuscript comes from a place of awareness of slipping into unconsciousness while driving and waking to small and sharp cuts as I swim along. It is about finding a magic or restoring a shimmer to a mundane routine life, especially for my children. It is about capturing a faith from the inconsequential and not letting the consequential destroy that faith. It is about enjoying the time we have as it slips into the roots. It is about finding forms to house the formless without squeezing the mystery in the blanket.
TT: Can you speak of the process of writing and putting together your tenth collection?
SF: I had started writing some prose poems in this form and liked the freedom of it. My good friend and brilliant poet Lillian Necakov writes many prose poems so I think she was also an influence. Visually, it is a flowing shore of words. In practice, it can allow the water to rush effortlessly. There is less restraint when I don’t have to worry about a stanza or line break. There is also less of a pressure to make the content remain linear, but it is open to stream in all directions without expectation of an ending or a set message. There is usually something that arises out of the tapestry as it is being painted, or as the paint is still falling. I think the form gives me permission to be formless and that is a place I strive to find. Drown the editor and grow gills.
So I started writing some of these, first with the longer Guam poem and then others followed. “Guam” was supposed to be in another collection and I knew it was the cornerstone of a new one so I pulled it. Once I set about writing a whole book of these poems, that they were going to have one-word titles, that they were going to have no capitalization and very little punctuation, that they were going to remain free and loose and exciting to write, the poems came quickly. I also knew that it was some of the most inspired writing I have done because I felt boundless and unrestrained. Writing isn’t always fun, but these actually were enjoyable to write.
TT: Could you speak a bit about the specific form of your prose poetry? By that I mean, visually, there’s the one-word title that’s left-aligned, followed by the prose poetry stanza. Within the stanza are words in all lower case, broken by “/” and “//”. How did you come to this form that is “formless,” as you said, and allow you to grow gills?
SF: I honestly don’t remember where I saw the slashes used in prose poetry. I think quite a few people have done it. I like the look and flow of it. To me it doesn’t stop my eye as much as a period, it is more like a breath or a heartbeat. It has rhythm and cadence to it. You could see it as a line break but it really isn’t because I would not enjamb my lines this way. The double slash is a double breath, the end of a stanza. These particular poems lend themselves to an organic cyclical form; or possibly, the form shapes and even narrates the poems. The idea of the one-word title just came as I went. I wanted it to be simple and concise and also uniform. I also wanted very little punctuation and no capitalization, but I do that with most of my poetry. I figure poetry exists outside of prose constraints for me. But the question marks are still essential. What is poetry without inquiry and mystery?
TT: Family (and the speaker’s professional role) are both central motifs to this collection, as is the speaker’s role of a father, and the teaching of the children sometimes is the turn of the poem. In “ventriloquist,” which can be likened to an ars poetica, you write: “…/ i want him to
turn all the way around until he is looking at the god inside of his own head / a
wide eyeless eye in a cageless cage / i want him to know that the ends of him are
only hypothesized to exist along a glittering trail of suns / i want him to find
a gentleness in how he redirects his own head / i hope i have loved him enough
so that he will never grip anyone’s soul roughly / so that he will cradle his own
heart with these soft hands / laughing as it gallops and burns in his chest.”
How do you feel your work as an RN complicate the idea of place (or goal) for you and what do you feel like poetry should achieve?
SF: In terms as writing as a father, it is really central to all of my poetry. I know that it is not always en vogue to write about one’s children, and many poets, especially female poets, have been dissuaded by the “establishment” for writing “mommy poems.” I honesty think it makes for real, gritty, emotionally-charged work. I mean, what is more important than guiding and nurturing humans, especially in this age of information tsunami. It is about making sure your children keep their original spiritual light and hope. If this collection is about anything, it is about that.
As for the RN work, I always thought I had a natural nurturing about me. I was a high school English teacher for 4 years and I felt that my empathy and softness betrayed me at every turn in terms of classroom management. When I got into nursing, these abilities were much more valuable and useful for connecting with those who are suffering and I didn’t have to fight against my natural state. In writing poetry, empathy and vulnerability are the keys to unlocking anything universal. This is my goal as a poet, even though I write almost always from “i.” I want to go so deep into my fears and faults and curiosities that I can bring back something from an ancient spring.
TT: How do you approach poetry based on these beliefs?
SF: For me, the form and craft are somewhat secondary to message, or emotional impact. I do take pride in my craft and my skill when writing, but I don’t obsess over the “quality” of what I write. It is more important that I have let something real out for everyone to relate to. I mean, I do write some dreamstate weird shit too, but that is also “real” in a way in its emotional truth. I honestly write poems all the time and I just try to listen to what needs to be written. I always try to kill the Buddha on the path.
TT: Turning back to structure, “guam” was written first but in some ways differ from the much shorter poems that follow. How did you decide to start Sapphires on the Grave with “guam” and what are some considerations that you had in deciding the sequence of the poems that follow?
SF: I had originally written “guam” well before starting on this project and had it attached as an end piece to another collection, but when I realized that these prose poems were going to turn into something bigger, I pulled the poem for the new book. The reason I put it in the front is, honestly, I most often order manuscripts chronologically as to when I wrote them. But, it also makes sense to begin the collection with a poem which seems to begin with birth and end with a death (or at least a separation and grieving). The poem also throws the reader immediately into an altered reality, underground and underwater, where the whole of this book originates. As I said, the rest of the poems were ordered in the order they were written and thus they have a type of temporal flow to them.
TT: What are you working on now?
SF: I have two collaborations which are basically done looking for publishers. One is with Lindsey Royce called No Protection From Beauty using the wonderful art of Sarah Petruziello as an ekphrastic diving board. Because our voices are pretty unique and different from one another, this collection is really surprising and full of juxtapositions. The other is with Aakriti Kuntal who writes surrealistic poems rooted in the body and the spirit. The book is titled Inheritance of Air and it is basically one long poem in two voices and I really enjoyed swimming with her into the subconscious with no view of the shore.
Otherwise I am writing here and there, working on unusual form and shorter poems. I am attempting to write a poem a day in April, so hopefully something comes out of that.
TT: Do you have any closing thoughts of your readers?
SF: I just want to say that I attempt to get my poems from an egoless place. I wouldn’t say I “channel” them or any other New Age BS, but I have to disrobe pretty much everything and do some listening. I try to not get my ego attached to my work because my ego has nothing to do with writing it. Any way I look at it, the ghostly and misty world that we all connect in is within each of us. Poetry isn’t really any one person’s property. Yes, all of us artists have certain tools we use with a varied level of success, whatever “success” means. Poetry is a spiritual practice because it demands quieting and enlightenment. When I was recently at AWP I felt like I was in a place of worship, that all the beings there were representatives of their own slice of the ether: genderless, ageless, radiating. I feel very honored to be a part of this extended family and to have a voice here, amongst all of the world’s madness. I feel like it is a holy thing and I am endlessly thankful.