The Power of Poetry

Nathan Blansett, a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, stands at the beach. Blansett started writing poetry 10 years ago. When speaking about how poetry influenced his life, Blansett said, “I really think of poetry as a way of living, of going through life. The poems I write allow me to make meaning out of my experience, which is consoling.” Photo courtesy of Nathan Blansett

iliad literary-art magazine Co-Editor-In-Chief Kaija Gilbertson Hall speaks with poet Nathan Blansett about his experience with poetry and how it has influenced his life. 

iliad Co-Editor-in Chief Kaija Gilbertson Hall: Can you tell me about what you do for a living?

Johns Hopkins lecturer Nathan Blansett: I teach at Johns Hopkins. In the meantime, I write poems, read poems, and write about poems, like in book reviews. I like thinking about why some poems work and why some don’t.

KGH: Can you tell me about the courses that you teach?

NB: At Hopkins, I teach an introductory course in creative writing. For half the semester we read short stories and write our own, and for the other half, we read poems and write our own. And I’ve taught an upper-level seminar on poems of travel and exile. My students are exceptional—and I feel so lucky to teach them, especially since I’m only a couple (of) years older than them. When I finish a poem and when teaching goes well: those are the times when I feel the most joy.

KGH How long have you been writing poetry?

NB: I wrote short stories when I was little: I created these lavish backstories for my characters, and I loved describing their rooms, but I’d have ten pages with no dialogue, no sense of plot. I somehow knew, when I was a teenager, that fiction wasn’t the form that spoke to me; it wasn’t reflective of what I wanted to do. But my sister is a poet and when I was 15 I went to a reading she gave. I still remember it very well: I remember noticing that people were being moved by what they were hearing; the poem was having a physical effect on them. And rather immediately I realized I would write poems. That was 10 years ago.

KGH: What draws you to poetry as a creative expression?

NB: There are so many reasons, but I truly think I particularly like hearing lines break in a poem—I like the way a good line break makes me feel. I don’t get that sensation writing or reading prose.

KGH: How has this outlet of creativity influenced your life?

NB: I’m inundated in it. I really think of poetry as a way of living, of going through life. The poems I write allow me to make meaning out of my experience, which is consoling.

KGH: What kinds of poetry do you write?

NB: The things that bring me to the page don’t feel rare or exceptional—seasons changing, feeling lonely, feeling fearful. Those emotions often bring me to a poem.

KGH: Do you have any tips for people our age writing poetry?

NB: Find the poems that move you and try to emulate them.

KGH: Who are your poetry inspirations?

NB: There are so many. But in middle school, I loved the poems of Sylvia Plath and in high school, I loved the poems of Louise Glück. What they have in common, I think, is an extremity of speech—they’re intense, sometimes lacerating, always unsentimental. I would love (it) if someone said the same of my own poems.

KGH: What do you hope to achieve through your poetry?

NB: I really believe that the poem is an emotional document. It isn’t something purely decorative and it certainly isn’t something purely clever or ironic. I want to walk away from a poem thinking, “what that said was true.”