Luke Rolfes: It is great to talk today with Bill Hollands. Bill’s excellent debut collection of poetry entitled Mangrove is just now out from ELJ Editions. This book is full of playful and tightknit poems that are often narrative in structure, but the scope and depth of these poems will surprise the reader when they pull back from the page. Thanks for spending some time with us, Bill. Congratulations on publishing this book! Can you tell us about the genesis of Mangrove? How long have you been working on it?
Bill Hollands: Thanks, Luke, and thanks so much for having me. So, how long I’ve been working on Mangrove is a little complicated. I wrote a lot of poetry in college and on into my 20’s, and there are two poems in Mangrove that date from that period. But then I didn’t write at all for about 25 years. I mean nothing. And then in the summer of 2019 I started writing again when I took a class with Jeanine Walker at Hugo House in Seattle. Over the next few years, I worked closely with Jeanine and produced all the other poems that appear in the book.
LR: This manuscript is broken into three sections. Can you walk us through this organization and why you chose to break the book in this way?
BH: I see the three sections as thematic and also mapping to stages of my life. The first section deals mostly with coming of age as a queer person and my first experiences with that. The second section is about my family of origin, mostly about the deaths of my brother Steve and my parents. And the third section is about love, marriage, and parenting. As I was working on the organization of the manuscript, I struggled with how strictly to adhere to a chronological order versus how thematic it should be. I ultimately settled on a bit of a compromise—mostly chronological, but with some backups and restarts to highlight the themes.
LR: I was struck by the title Mangrove, and how it seemed to mirror the themes of this book. Can you tell us how you landed on this as the title?
BH: The title Mangrove came to me very early in the process of putting together the manuscript, and I never deviated from it. Mangroves make an appearance in three poems in the book. I grew up in Florida, and many of the poems are set there, so in some ways mangroves help establish setting. And I’ve always been drawn to them—their beautiful shapes and root structures, their swampy location. It seems like I return to them again and again, along with other trees from my childhood, such as ficuses, banyans, and palms. I hope trees function as a kind of motif throughout the book. And with mangrove, of course, there’s the play on words (man-grove), and much of the book is about the men in my life (father, brothers, lovers, husband, and son).
LR: Are there other books, movies, art pieces, albums that you consider “companion pieces” to Mangrove? In other words, what influenced you during the writing of this manuscript?
BH: So many influences! But I’ll highlight two: Marie Howe’s What the Living Do and Alan Shapiro’s Song and Dance. Both of those books are about the death of a brother, and many of the poems in the middle section of my book are about that, so I connected with the subject matter. And I can only hope to emulate Howe’s and Shapiro’s voice, humor, storytelling, and propulsive, sinuous syntax.
LR: Many of your poems are narrative, and you certainly have chops as a teller of stories. I’m curious: What drew you to poetry as the vehicle for these pieces rather than short essays or micro-essays?
BH: Oh, I’m a poet at heart. I love all the poetry things: metaphor, sound, rhythm, and particularly line. I’ve tried to write prose in the past, but my heart’s really not in it, and I don’t think I’m particularly good at it.
LR: Several of the poems in this manuscript are incredibly short. I’ve always been a big fan of short poetry. Are you aware that you are going to write a short poem when you sit down to write one? How do you convince yourself, as a writer, to “get in and get out” rather than to spend time letting the words and images marinate?
BH: I do think my natural mode is long and narrative, and most of my short poems start out that way. But for some reason they don’t work as long narrative poems; the structure’s just not there. But there’s something there: an image, a memory, a line. So I think, well, let’s hone in on that and see what happens.
LR: Let’s look at some of the individual poems. You reference classic, escapist television in a couple of these pieces. Gilligan’s Island. The Love Boat. Another poem makes reference to The Mary Tyler Moore Show. What draws you to this particular version of American television? Are you a fan?
BH: Well, I was a fan. I watched a lot of TV as a child in the 1970s—sitcoms and game shows, mostly. They were one of the most important influences on my development as a person. I identified with and learned from the characters and the conflicts. And so when I started to write poems about my childhood, it felt natural to include those TV shows; I didn’t really think about it. But then, after I had written a few, some folks started noticing that this was “something that I did,” that it was a recurring genre or mode, and I became a bit more self-aware and intentional about it.
LR: Have you ever tried writing a poem about current television or streaming shows? Is it too difficult without that distance of time?
BH: I have, but not a ton. The lack of distance might be part of it, but I also just don't watch that much television anymore. I mean, I'll occasionally binge a show like Couples Therapy or The Great British Bake Off. And come to think of it, those two shows might be good inspirations for poems! But popular culture is so different these days, so diffuse, and the most interesting things are probably happening online, which I'm not very attuned to. That said, I did recently write poems about Pete Davidson and Timothée Chalamet, so who knows what will come out next?
LR: I loved “Presidential Physical Fitness Test.” (I remember, vividly, having to take it when I was young.) The focus in this poem, however, is not on the self but a girl who does exceptionally well at “hang time.” It’s a fascinating image to end the piece on. Why did you choose to shift the reader’s gaze to her?
BH: This poem was actually written in response to a Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge and was selected by the editor as one of the winners. The image was a photograph of a banana on a hook by the artist Laura R. McCullough. (You can see the image and my poem here: https://rattle.com/presidential-fitness-test-by-bill-hollands/ .) For some reason, McCullough’s playfully absurd image reminded me of Laura hanging from the bar during the Presidential Fitness Test, and the poem kind of wrote itself from there.
LR: One of the opening poems in the book is “Hi. My Name Is Billy Hollands.” In this piece you set us in the scene of an elementary school music concert, in which you describe yourself as a far more emotive and expressive child than the rest---hopefully destined someday for stardom. To my reading, this poem functions, in some ways, like an origin story. What can you tell us about this one and why you chose to position in as the second poem in the book?
BH: Some years ago, my brother Pete transferred some of our old home movies to DVD, and for some reason this included the performance of my elementary school chorus performing on the local TV station. It had been many years since I had watched it, but one day I was thinking about it and specifically remembering how I tilted my head during the little introductory speech I was chosen to give. I really practiced that tilt, I could still feel it in my body, and I wanted to see if my memory was correct, so I watched the old clip. And sure enough, there it was, the tilt! I think you’re right that this poem is a kind of origin story for the collection, and that’s why I put it near the beginning. I would have put it first, but I wanted to start each of the three sections with a TV-inspired poem that signaled the theme of that section, so I had to put it second.
LR: I was also drawn to “Examination.” In this piece, the speaker of the poem ruminates on a visit to what I presume is a dermatologist’s office for a skin check. What made you want to write a poem about this specific experience?
BH: I grew up in Florida and got lots of sunburns, plus my older brother died from melanoma, so I get my skin checked every six months. Because of this history with my brother, it’s an emotionally charged experience for me. And one time I was just struck by how the exam is both a strangely intimate and a completely clinical event, and I went from there.
LR: In “Mr. Hollands Explains His Tattoo to His Students,” the speaker (I presume it’s you in this instance) is bombarded with questions about his tattoo from his literature students. To my ear, the poem becomes an exploration of our tendency to “assign meaning” to everything around us. What can you tell us about this poem and your intentions behind it?
BH: Yeah, that’s what the poem is about for me, too. My students always wanted to know about my tattoo: what does it mean, what does it mean? As if it means just one thing. And that got me thinking about how the teaching of literature is often like that, how teachers (including me) would emphasize “the meaning” of a text as opposed to the experience of it as a piece of art. And then the poem ends with a reference to Macbeth, which if it “means” anything is about the meaninglessness of life.
LR: Did you have any tough cuts when building this book?
BH: One tough cut was a poem called “ICYMI: One-Sentence Summaries of My Recent Poems,” which was originally published in DIAGRAM and later republished in The Lumiere Review and the Washington State Queer Poetry Anthology. It was an important poem for me in developing my voice as I took up poetry again a few years ago, and I still like it. And it always seems to be a crowd-pleaser when I read it at a reading. But it just didn’t work as part of a collection where the reader has, presumably, actually read the poems to which it refers. I think it only works as a stand-alone poem.
LR: What’s next for you? Are you writing new poems?
BH: Yes, slowly. My son has recently graduated from high school, so I’m writing a lot of “empty nest” poems. And I’m about halfway through my year as a Jack Straw writing fellow in Seattle, and my project for that fellowship is to explore the intersection of pop culture and queer identity, so expect more TV and movie poems to come your way.
LR: Thanks so much for taking the time with us today, Bill. Congrats again, and best of luck with this book! You can purchase Mangrove from ELJ Editions here: LINK. https://elj-editions.com/mangrove/
Learn more about Bill here: https://billhollandspoetry.com/about/
Thanks, Luke, I appreciate it!