An Interview with Celeste Parsons: Nelsonville from A to Z
by Gina McKnight
It is a
great opportunity to reside in a community where the arts take center stage. Meeting
Celeste Parsons for the first time in my barn office, I knew she had a lot of creative
ideas to share. Since that meeting, Celeste has seen her creative idea for Nelsonville
from A to Z come to fruition. It is a collection of poetry by local
poets celebrating local iconic places and people. The book was launched in
collaboration with Stuart’s Opera
House and the royalties from book sales help their Arts Education Program. Local
artist, Hannah
Sickles, created stunning illustrations, adding aesthetics and integrity to
each poem.
Celeste
lives outside of Nelsonville, Ohio, in a log house built on a former dairy
farm, with her husband Jim, her Westie dog Spook, and a revolving population of
deer, turkeys, chipmunks, hummingbirds, and other wildlife. She enjoys
gardening, anything having to do with fabric or thread, reading, and bicycle
touring with Jim on their tandem bike (64,000 miles since the year 2000, and
counting). She is also an enthusiastic member of the ABC Players and thinks of Stuart's Opera
House as her second home. She has written poems, plays, technical
documentation, and newspaper articles since childhood. Nelsonville from A to
Z is her first published book.
Welcome,
Celeste!
GM: How did
you come up with the idea for Nelsonville from A to Z?
CP: My husband and I visited Berea, Kentucky for
his birthday trip a couple of years ago, where I bought the alphabet book A
is for Appalachia. My first thought
when I saw it was, "What a lovely book." My second thought was "We could do
something like this for Nelsonville."
I talked with Hannah Sickles, the illustrator, and with Emily Prince
from Stuart's Opera House, and things just developed from there.
GM: The
artwork is beautiful and follows each poem perfectly. Do you have a favorite
poem in the book?
CP: I hate answering "what is your
favorite" questions, because I have such a hard time picking just
one. I love the maturity and depth of
the thoughts expressed in "M is for Mine," especially the last three
lines: "M is for the mines / For
the history that runs through our veins / Like the endless tunnels below our
feet." I love all the different
viewpoints of the different poems--many of the subjects seen from outside, but
some reversed. For example, in "N
is for Nelson House," the house talks to the reader, and in "Y is for
Yesterday," the poem "speaker" is one of those buried in Fort
Street Cemetery. I love the way that
some poems focus on the past and some are looking at the future. And I absolutely love the way Hannah's
illustrations capture all of the subjects.
GM: Do you
think the book has been well received? What feedback have you heard about the
project?
CP: Everything I have heard has been very
positive. I've been amazed that some
readers from other cities have asked about placing the book in their local
libraries! There really is something
here for everyone, whether a local resident or a visitor.
GM: Working
with you, Celeste, has been a great experience. I am excited for future
collaborations. What is on your literary/creative horizon?
CP: I'm working on a children's book, When I
Run Away from Home, that's a re-work of something I gave my parents years
ago. I'm illustrating this one myself,
using colored pencils, and it has been both a challenge and a lot of fun
getting my hand back into that kind of art.
GM: What is
your advice for novice poets/writers?
CP: I don't think there is any one way to start
writing. One thing I found out while
working on Nelsonville from A to Z is that it is quite hard to write a
poem about a specific subject! Most
often, I find that a particular phrase pops into my head or out of my
mouth--sometimes serious, sometimes not--and I say to myself, "That needs
to be a poem." But whatever your
source of inspiration, you have to love language, playing with it, expanding
your vocabulary, feeling the rhythms even when you don't use a strict
meter. And you have to be willing to
rewrite and rewrite until the result finally feels whole.
GM: In your
opinion, what makes the perfect poem?
CP: Oh, gosh, that's another question that's very
hard to answer. Probably the joining of
a thought, an emotion, and a phase in a way that seems new and encourages the
reader to think about what you've said beyond
the time it took to read it. An
example that pops into my head is from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,
by T. S. Eliot:
I grow old . . . I grow
old. . .
I shall wear the bottoms of
my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel
trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids
singing, each to each.
I do not think that they
will sing to me.
I have
always thought the last two lines are a perfect expression of sadness and
resignation. Prufrock can hear the
mermaids, but he knows he is not the kind of man for whom they will sing. There is nothing "poetic" or
high-flown about the words Eliot uses; it is just the juxtaposition of word and
thought that touches me.
M: List 10
things your fans may not know about you...
CP: 1) I
love anything to do with thread--quilting, knitting, embroidery, bobbin lace.
2) I read
constantly and omnivorously.
3) I never
thought I would like kale, but I do.
4) My
husband, Jim, and I do as many errands as possible riding our purple tandem
bicycle.
5) Between errands and annual trips, we have
ridden over 67,000 miles since 2001.
6) I love puns, the more outrageous the better
(inheritance from my dad). 7) I have a
West Highland Terrier who likes to eat carrots and green beans. 8) I collect pigs and owls.
9) I am an
enthusiastic member of our local community theater group, ABC Players.
10) I want
to take a donkey ride into the Grand Canyon on my 90th birthday.
Nelsonville
from A to Z
is
available in hardcover edition locally from Stuart’s Opera House, Rocky Outdoor
Store, and Nelsonville Emporium (all of Nelsonville, Ohio); Little Professor
Book Center (Athens, Ohio)
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| From LIVE LOCAL, Athens, Ohio December 2019 |
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