Pregnant Teenager and Her Mama by Carrie Etter

A Mouthful of Air: Poetry with Mark McGuinness

Episode 68

Pregnant Teenager and Her Mama by Carrie Etter

Carrie Etter reads ‘Pregnant Teenager and Her Mama’ and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness.

https://media.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/content.blubrry.com/amouthfulofair/68_Pregnant_Teenager_and_Her_Mama_by_Carrie_Etter.mp3

This poem is from:

Grief’s Alphabet

Available from:

Grief’s Alphabet is available from:

The publisher: Seren Books

Amazon: UK | US

Bookshop.org: UK | US

Pregnant Teenager and Her Mama

by Carrie Etter

You eat and eat and tremble.
You tremble and eat, and your mother
watches you like a mouse a cat.

She swoops in like a bat.
You hope to be claimed:
she alights beside you.

Your hands turn palms up, apology.
Kangaroo, she plucks and drops you
into the warmth of her pouch.

What’ll I do? you think,
no need for speech.
Her tongue’s on your fur,

or her love’s your skin.
The year’s a crucible,
and here she is,

a doe who leads
her fawn to water and waits.
O, how she waits.

---

Interview transcript

Mark: Carrie, where did this poem come from?

Carrie: Well, I think it was about a year and a half ago now, maybe two years ago. I was working on Grief’s Alphabet, the manuscript, and pulling together these poems I’d been writing since my mother died in 2011. And when I started to think through what the manuscript needed to look like, I had a lot of poems about the grief of her loss. But I realised, as the manuscript came together, that no one would understand what that loss meant to me unless I also portrayed my relationship with her and what she had been, what she meant to me as a mother, as my best friend, really. And so I had to write the opening section of the manuscript, which I call ‘Origin Story’, which is about our experiences together from the day I was adopted at two weeks old and all the way up to the last photograph I took of her and my last physically recorded memory of her before she died a few months later, unexpectedly.

So, of course, when I was thinking through that period of my relationship with her and important things we experienced together, one of the things, of course, that came up was my teenage pregnancy and trying to convey in a poem just how generous and supportive she was through that experience. I can imagine many another parent would’ve reacted very differently. But she was never anything but kind, supportive. She’s the least judgmental person I think I’ve ever known. And I think having had her, as having been adopted by her and my father is certainly one of the best things that ever happened to me and is part of the reason I turned out a poet to some extent because they always supported whatever I did, and that included poetry from a very early age and short story writing as well.

Mark: Yeah. So, that’s another thing that poets, you know, we’re not always guaranteed support for poetry.

Carrie: No, indeed, I’ve found very different reactions from different relatives and family members to my writing. But my mother, she was my first audience. I ran to her with my poems as an 11-year-old, 12-year-old, 13-year-old. She was the first person I took my poems to. And, indeed, once I started getting published I would send her, say, contributor copies for her. For those of you who aren’t poets, you may not realise that often we don’t get paid for our poems, but if there is a physical magazine, you’re always sent at least one copy, sometimes several copies of the magazine. So, in fact, when I was in Illinois last month, going through some old things, I found a huge tub of old contributor’s copies I had given her over the years and forgotten about.

And, indeed, there is another poem in the manuscript Grief’s Alphabet about writing my first poem and the necessity of the completion of that poem in some ways being running to and sharing it with her as though the poem was not finished until I’d shared it with her. So, there are a number of poems, like ‘Pregnant Teenager and Her Mama’ in Grief’s Alphabet, that record really difficult things like my father’s layoff, his injury and death, and so on that we went through together and that formed our relationship necessarily. There were a lot of hardships. There were also some moments of joy, I should say, as well in the manuscript. And, indeed, writing that first section, Origin Story, was in the end quite joyous because I understood even more keenly what I had in that relationship and how much it gave me.

Mark: And so she was your first reader. And a lot of writers talk about having an ideal reader in their head when they write. Would you say that she’s a part of that ideal reader? I mean, maybe obviously in this collection, but what about other collections?

Carrie: That’s really interesting because as I’ve been working on the book I’m editing, Claire Crowther’s Sense and Nonsense, I’ve realised that this collection is in some ways perhaps both my most personal and my most accessible. And I’m not sure that I would always… And maybe that was partly because I had her in mind as one of my readers that it turned out that way. And then my next collection with a very different focus that I’m imagining is much less personal and then perhaps would have a much different approach to accessibility and the degree of linguistic and formal complexity, because I’m not imagining her as a reader in the same way as I am in this book, as well as kind of imagining my family, who in the main do not read poetry unless they’ve been keeping it from me. I imagine that this is one that my sisters will actually open. They may come after me for saying that, but I think my books just stay on their shelves unopened for the most part. But, hopefully, this might be an exception.

Mark: Yeah. There are lots of ways to support a writer.

Carrie: Yes. And my family members coming to my events and showing interest in my work. And sometimes they’ve had me come… when my nieces and nephews were younger, they had me come and speak at their schools and things like that, and that’s always really lovely. I love taking poetry to young people in different ways.

Mark: You know, any of us who’ve studied poetry, we’re used to being advised to beware. If a poet says ‘I’ in the poem, it doesn’t necessarily mean the poet themselves is speaking. But this is the opposite of that because the poem is saying you. But even before I’d read the rest of the collection, I kind of picked up that the ‘you’ in this poem related to you, the writer.

Carrie: There’s something really wonderfully nimble about second-person point of view where you both invite any reader to step into the place of the addressee while at the same time being able to refer to a specific person. I think that’s part of the power of the second-person poems in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen that ‘you’ invites us to experience what racial microaggressions are like for ourselves even as we know we are not the ‘you’ to whom this in fact happened.

Mark: And as the poem progresses, ‘you’ fades into the background, and we get ‘she’ and ‘her’ for the mother. And so by the end, it’s the mother. And, in fact, she’s transformed into a doe as well. So, there’s that perspective shift as the poem goes on.

Carrie: One of the endorsements for the book that particularly pleased me was one that noted that, even though there’s a lot of me in this book, I myself am not the focus. The focus is very much on trying to show who my mother was, trying to understand and appreciate who she was. And there’s a line, in fact, at the end of another poem, ‘Lifelong I daughter,’ and this book feels like an act of daughtering.

Mark: Oh, what a lovely functional shift.

Carrie: Yeah. I mean, I love all the… You mentioned the doe, and one of the pleasures of writing this poem was the use of simile and metaphor, playing with the figurative language and broadening her capacity in who she was by her adopting all these different animal identities that seemed quite natural to her.

[Cat meows]

And as I was going to say that my cat walks into the room!

Mark: I was just going to mention the cat!

Carrie: Yeah. I hear he is squawking for us. [Laughter]

Mark: So, you’ve got a mouse, a cat, a bat, a kangaroo, a doe, and the fawn.

Carrie: It’s quite a zoo, isn’t it?

Mark: It is quite the zoo. Maybe you’d like to say something about that.

Carrie: I am in awe of figurative language at its best. I think of phrases like Dylan Thomas’, ‘A wall…’

[Cat meows]

Mark: It’s OK, animals are welcome today!

Carrie: Yes, indeed. Adding to our zoo. He uses the phrase, ‘A wall thin as a wren’s bone.’ Isn’t that beautiful?

Mark: Yeah.

Carrie: And I really wanted to play with that with this particular poem and do my best to make the figurative language work as well as I could to suggest the breadth of her mothering, that it takes on all of these different qualities beyond the human or broadens our sense of what the human is, perhaps.

Mark: I love that. And also what occurred to me when I was reading it was… This goes back to what you were saying about her lack of judgment. Because humans are very good at judging teenage mothers, and yet all the natural imagery just quite subtly suggests this is a natural process. There’s no judgment in the animal kingdom.

Carrie: That’s really a lovely insight. And, indeed, yes, it’s a way to implicitly suggest the absence of judgment in her behaviour. Well, that was not, I have to concede, part of my intention, but I love the fact that that’s part of the joy of readership, is the things that people find that work effectively in the poem that you weren’t conscious of in its construction.

Mark: That’s the magic of poetry, isn’t it? If it’s a real poem, then there’s always more in it, I think, than we’re consciously aware of when we write. I guess another thing it picked up to me it signaled was just the instinctive warmth and comfort. You know, ‘she plucks and drops you / into the warmth of her pouch’. What could be nicer than that? And ‘Her tongue’s on your fur’. I mean, it’s delightful, isn’t it?

Carrie: It is. She was very physically affectionate in that way, always ready to long warm, soft hugs. That physical affection, quick to say, ‘I love you,’ as well. She’s set a model for generosity and affection that continues to nourish me even with the loss of her.

Mark: Well, that really comes across in this poem.

Carrie: I’m so glad for that. I really hope to do her justice with the book.

Mark: And focusing just a little more on the form of the poem, I mean, how close is this to the original draft of the poem?

Carrie: That’s a really good question. I did take this to one of my workshop groups, and we raised some questions about…the phrasing around the bat changed. It became a little bit clearer but not a lot changed. I think one thing… So, while I am devoted to revision and always trying to reach kind of the best version of my poems that I can, and I read them aloud over and over again, try to make sure the sound is working to the best of my ability, sometimes I find that if an idea has stayed with me a long time before I draft it, then a poem close to finished comes out more easily. And so it’s those poems about an experience so many years ago now. We don’t need to say how long it’s been since I’ve been a teenager with my birthday later this month, but it’s been some years.

And I’ve often thought back to her handling of the revelation of my pregnancy, and the way she came to me, and the way we talked about it, and her gentleness and quiet, steady support in that exchange, especially as you see pregnant teenagers represented on television, and film, and novels so differently. The contrast brought into relief what I had. And so I think the fact that that memory is so strong, and I’ve revisited it so often, made this poem that little bit easier to get right in an earlier draft of the process. Other poems take 20 drafts. I think this was three or four. But, again, I think that’s very much to do with how long the poem lived with me.

Mark: So, I was about to say this poem had a long gestation, but then I realised what I was saying. [Laughter]

Carrie: Indeed, it did have a long gestation.

Mark: A mysterious creative process. Also as well, I think it’s probably true that your years of practice meant that it was relatively easy for you to draft it so quickly.

Carrie: Some poems come… So, the opening poem in the manuscript ‘Birthday as Adoption Day’ about the day that I was picked up from the hospital at two weeks old, I wrote at least 10 completely different drafts of that poem because I couldn’t get it right. I couldn’t find the right use of form and point of view that felt that I got the right vehicle. And so that took a lot more redrafting. And then once I found the right kind of version then even more tinkering after that. So, it varies widely, poem to poem, how many drafts it takes, how much editing. I do run everything by… The whole manuscript has been read by a number of fellow poets. And I have two wonderful workshop groups, one in London I don’t get to very often and one here in the Southwest that I visit more regularly, that are great for feedback on my work, as well as a fiction workshop group as well. So, I do a lot of workshopping.

Mark: And just looking a bit more closely at the opening, I mean, you’ve got…so ‘Pregnant Teenager and Her Mama.’ I mean, you put the pregnant teenager front and centre there, which is bold and provocative for the reasons we’ve just discussed. But you don’t say, ‘and her Mother,’ you say, ‘and her Mama,’ which sounds much more homely and familiar. So, you’ve got that kind of…it’s almost inviting the judgment but then the warmth coming right away.

Carrie: Yeah, I think that’s really important, that sense that this is someone…that if this pregnant teenager were to speak in this moment, that she would use something very familiar like that because of the intimacy of this exchange. I have a lot of different names for my mother that come throughout the book. In fact, the most common one, the name I called her from when I was very little, was Modie instead of Mommy. And Modie comes up a lot in the book, but if you have the poem by itself, someone would see Modie and not be sure whether I’m referring to a person’s name or my mother. So, it felt that I had to use Mama in this particular case so that immediately you read the title and you know what the relationship is.

Mark: Yeah. That’s that warmth. It’s like the whole poem in microcosm in the title. And then this wonderful opening where you’ve got so much repetition, ‘You eat and eat and tremble. You tremble and eat and your mother.’ That’s the first two lines. We’ve got four ‘and’s, which beginners would be warned off. You’ve got ‘eat’ repeated, ‘tremble’ repeated, and ‘you’ repeated, and yet, well, to me at least, it beautifully conveys that awkwardness and the helplessness of the teenager that this, ‘Well, I’m doing this and I’m doing, and I’m just…’ Sorry, I’m raising my hands here. [Laughter] You can’t see this, as it’s on the podcast.

Carrie: It’s true. I was voracious during that time. In my first trimester, I was so hungry, and I was trying to keep this pregnancy to myself. And I was so scared because I really wasn’t sure what to do. I believe in women’s right to choose, and I felt that way then. I did consider abortion, but I had decided to give my son up for adoption instead. And I’m very grateful… I don’t judge anyone for making a different choice, but I’m very grateful for what I’ve done, not least because I now have a relationship with my son. As you may know from my book, Imagined Sons, which I wrote before I found him, it was as painful as it was to give him up. I know I gave him a better life than I certainly could have provided at that stage in my life. And I certainly also didn’t want to bring that kind of hardship onto my own family either after all we’d been through. I mean, my father was still laid off at that point. And that was really not an option. So, adoption ended up being the right thing for me at that time, but it’s not something I would prescribe for anyone else.

Mark: Sure. Okay. And then we get, ‘She swoops in like a bat. / You hope to be claimed: / she alights beside you.’ Sorry, I’m not reading it as beautifully as you do. ‘And then your hands turn palms up, apology.’ So, it occurred to me that this is all gesture. There’s no speech. And later on, you say this, ‘What’ll I do? you think, / no need for speech.’ And, again, this is the animal thing, isn’t it? They don’t speak. But they express through action and gesture.

Carrie: Yeah. She comes and sits with me. And just from her posture and way of looking at me, I know there’s no judgment coming. I know she’s fully there to put her arms around me and hold me through this. And I can’t imagine what I needed more at that point than that uncritical, unjudgmental love, the greatest thing that a parent can give to a child.

Mark: And then I think this is the only non-animal image in the poem, is when you say ‘the year’s a crucible’, which, I mean…so I’m thinking we had Luke Palmer a couple of episodes ago, and he was talking about alchemy. And this is obviously an alchemical image of transformation. I mean, would you like to say anything about that?

Carrie: Sure. I suppose so in the midst of all of these animal images and the sense of this exchange within love, part of what makes that so powerful has been just how excruciating this experience has been for the speaker, for the you. And so it kind of steps out and provides a sense… You have context from ‘Pregnant Teenager,’ certainly. But ‘The year’s a crucible’ widens that out to being in high school and dealing with this, dealing with the father of this child, all of the hell that this experience has been. And so it’s a way of a intentional, sharp contrast between the positive animal imagery and the difficulty of the experience. And so this moment is a kind of a haven amid the larger endurance of one of the most difficult things I ever experienced.

Mark: Yeah. And then it leads into this really, for me, beautifully judged ending, ‘And here she is, / a doe who leads / her fawn to water and waits. / Oh, how she waits.’ It’s one of those endings that it’s not tying things up in a little bow. It’s not signalling too much to the reader, you know? I mean, and in a sense, I was thinking, ‘Well, it’s quite brave.’ You’re waiting for the reader to get it. Was there a decision to make about that, or did you just think, ‘No, that’s the ending?’

Carrie: No, although I have to say I have read a wonderful essay by Joy Katz called ‘Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye.’ It’s basically on the use of repetition in poems and on the sense that we overuse repetition. And this is a poem where I really indulge in repetition, particularly at the beginning and the end of the poem. I love repetition. I tend to think poets don’t do it enough.

Mark: It’s one of the great joys of poetry, isn’t it?

Carrie: Maybe it’s a difference between American and British contemporary poetry, but I tend to see, at least in my teaching, students underusing it.

Mark: In Britain or…

Carrie: Well, because Joy Katz is writing in an American context and quoting American poets overrelying on repetition. I have not done… I’m probably going to get myself in trouble here because I’m sure, as soon as this goes out, people are going to be sending me whole magazines…

Mark: Of course they are! [Laughter]

Carrie: …where every poem uses repetition, and that would be well deserved. But I really felt that the power of repetition at the beginning is to convey the tension, the nervousness of the speaker caught in this cycle she can’t break out of on her own, which is why she hopes to be claimed. There seems to be no way forward. And at the end, it’s the loving patience of a mother who will simply sit and listen. And, again, that sense of something offering up a kind of nourishment that only she can provide and simply waiting for the daughter to do the right thing for herself, whatever that turns out to be.

So, yes, I mean, there were… I think I had a version without the last line, but I was already working in tercets, so that might’ve been why, sorry, three-line stanzas, I should say, why it felt incomplete, but I also wanted to pay attention to the fact that it’s not just about what she did, but it’s the way she did it, that how, the emphasis on not simply listening, but listening with a sense of complete lack of judgment and support and calling attention to the rareness and specialness of that response.

Mark: Right. So, just the patience.

Carrie: That how, that ‘how she waits,’ that waiting with a kind of care. There’s a way when people are in difficulty that simply being there can be nourishing.

Mark: Absolutely. Well, talking of repetition, I think it’s time to hear the poem again. And, Carrie, thank you so much for sharing so generously about such a powerful and personal poem.

Carrie: Thank you for having me. I am happy it’s going to reach a wider audience.

---

Pregnant Teenager and Her Mama

by Carrie Etter

You eat and eat and tremble.
You tremble and eat, and your mother
watches you like a mouse a cat.

She swoops in like a bat.
You hope to be claimed:
she alights beside you.

Your hands turn palms up, apology.
Kangaroo, she plucks and drops you
into the warmth of her pouch.

What’ll I do? you think,
no need for speech.
Her tongue’s on your fur,

or her love’s your skin.
The year’s a crucible,
and here she is,

a doe who leads
her fawn to water and waits.
O, how she waits.

---

Grief’s Alphabet

‘Pregnant Teenager and Her Mama’ is from Grief’s Alphabet by Carrie Etter, published by Seren Books.

Available from:

Grief’s Alphabet is available from:

The publisher: Seren Books

Amazon: UK | US

Bookshop.org: UK | US

Carrie Etter

Originally from Normal, Illinois, Carrie Etter has lived in England since 2001 and teaches creative writing at the University of Bristol. Her poems have appeared in Boston Review, The New Republic, The New Statesman, The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem, Poetry Review, The Times Literary Supplement and many other journals and anthologies internationally. Her fifth collection, Grief’s Alphabet, is published by Seren Books. She also writes short stories, essays, and reviews.

CarrieEtter.com

Photo: Fabrizia Costa

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