Rebecca Bedell is a first-year MFA candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she is working on a poetry thesis. She grew up on the gulf coast of Florida and studied Creative Writing at Princeton University. She hopes to amplify radical queer compassion and fluidity of identities through her poetics and teaching.
Recently we talked with her about poetry, witness, and the body.
ALL: What do you think the role of poetry is in the world today?
RB: I think poetry has a vital role to form human connections across differences in experience, to reveal the joys and pains we share with each other in surprising ways, and to disturb complacency with raw, challenging new ways to witness the world. Poetry feels like an act of faith to me, in a broad sense, in which poets and readers reach out across gaps in our communication with the trust that new meanings can be made. I would love to see poetry's role be more broadly interpreted and enjoyed in today's society as a vital everyday part of our lives.
ALL: What's the most exciting part of contemporary poetry for you? Or the best thing about the poetry/literary community in the Midwest?
RB: The most exciting thing about contemporary poetry, for me, is also what's so exciting about Madison's literary scene: there's so much going on! We're in a time when so many new voices can make ourselves heard in various ways, through the Internet and so many publications and public readings. I can readily read poets across the country whose voices speak to me directly on shared personal experiences or poets whose work is completely different from mine, and this wealth of access is honestly as overwhelming as it is liberating—much like the digital age itself—but I have to keep reminding myself that there is no limit to the number of poets who can share our voices and build communities. That is, other poets' success does not diminish the chance of my own, and fame is not what I'm after, but just to create and share work with other people who love it as much as I do.
ALL: What are you working on currently? Where can we find more of your work?
RB: I'm new to the literary scene: fresh from undergrad, I am currently practicing my craft and working through the topics that will go into my MFA thesis collection of poems, and then my first chapbook(s). I was lucky to publish a poem each in the first two issues of Vetch, a wonderful journal of trans poetry and poetics, and beyond that I'm looking towards publishing more during my time here in the UW Madison MFA program. I'll be flourishing in Madison for at least the coming year, so stay tuned, I suppose!
ALL: Who are some contemporary or historical poets who have influenced your work?
RB: There were certain historical poets whose work really kick-started my interest in writing, starting in middle and high school—Allen Ginsberg, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost—and for many of those, I felt like it took me years to escape their shadow, to escape the burning wish to simply rewrite Howl or The Waste Land. And I still love some of those old greats. But moving into the contemporary literary scene, I've been profoundly influenced and enlightened by Mark Doty, Marie Howe, Saeed Jones, Jenny Johnson, Natalie Diaz, and most recently, Gabrielle Calvocoressi. I think I'm drawn to poetry that exudes compassion and insight for the lived experiences of the body.
Hear Rebecca Bedell read at the Watershed Reading Series “Dangerous Women” event on March 17, 2018 at 7 PM at the Arts + Literature Laboratory.