DEBRA KEANE
Debra Keane (she/her) is a Denver poet, artist, advocate, social worker, facilitator, and identical twin. She’s written over 1,000 daily poems and simultaneously squirms at and strives for creative vulnerability in her everyday. Her work has been published by Twenty Bellows, Beyond the Veil, Last Leaves, South Broadway Press, 40West, and ALA Editions.
I don’t know that writing, art, or poetry will save us, but it can save its individual creators and receivers for a little while. It gives us a way to lean in, to make sense of, to understand what it means to be alive in our particular moment, and in all the moments past and in whatever’s coming.
Debra Keane
SBP: WHAT IS FUELING YOUR CREATIVITY RIGHT NOW? WHERE DO YOU FEEL THE MOST CREATIVE?
DK: I am relishing this particular moment in my own brain, heart, and spirit. I have structured my day-to-day to be filled with creative practices and deadlines, so my creativity is fueled by the routine of my commitment to meeting the page/paper/canvas at intervals. It’s such a dang treat to encounter myself over and over again against our backdrop of global and individual pain and joy and grief and knowing and not knowing.
SBP: WHAT MADE YOU FALL IN LOVE WITH POETRY?
DK: Poetry came along in my childhood and broke all the rules of language I was learning in this beautiful, strange, abstracted, and queer way. I’ve always been a listener and observer; poetry gave me a lens to search for the beauty of the world – the poetry of everyday conversation, sound, literature, trees, emotion, thought – all of it. Poetry also has such an efficient impact-to-word ratio! Giving voice to the unmentionable with such brevity. What’s not to love?
SBP: WHO DO YOU HOPE FINDS YOUR POETRY? WHO IS YOUR ART FOR?
DK: I want my poetry to be found by anyone who could read or hear it and go, “huh” in some way. ‘Huh’ could be for a spark of recognition, a moment of delight, a confusion, a reckoning. I love the idea that one of my poems could save my own life and then simply go kiss someone else on the cheek as it passes them by. My art is absolutely for me first: it lets me know if it wants to be shared outside of my audience of one, and then usually won’t shut up until I get it to the right person or people in my life.
SBP: IF YOUR WRITING WERE A KEY, WHAT DOOR WOULD IT UNLOCK, AND WHAT WOULD YOUR READERS FIND ON THE OTHER SIDE?
DK: My writing is the key to my own existence! By training or happenstance or personality, I have not always paid attention to what my brain/body/spirit is communicating, and so meeting the page every day is the way that I can re-/discover that I do in fact exist and am having a deep human experience that is simultaneously unique and universal. Behind that door, readers would find me and my host of speakers waving at them and shrugging and pointing at everyone and everything with awe.
SBP: WHAT POEM THAT YOU’VE WRITTEN RECENTLY WENT TO A PLACE YOU WEREN’T EXPECTING, OR WHICH WAS THE MOST/LEAST CHALLENGING TO WRITE?
DK: My poems have been walloping me with their grief surprises at the bottom of the bag. And then there’s a weird burnt french fry of anger that keeps butting in every few weeks as I write daily. I don’t mind them, though. People perceive me as a really joyful person, and I absolutely am, though I think only because I let grief and The Anger Fry speak in my work.
SBP: WHAT HAS BROUGHT YOU JOY THIS LAST YEAR?
DK: Meeting myself again in a really sweet, unrestrained way and embodying a sense of spaciousness. Trees, flowers, my nephews.
SBP: WHAT IS YOUR CURRENT OBSESSION?
DK: I love my houseplants dearly. They all have names and enjoy visitors.
SBP: WHAT MAKES SOMETHING HARD TO WRITE OR CREATE?
DK: It’s hard to write or create when I have too specific a vision for a project and don’t leave space for the unfolding of what’s underneath what I think I’m trying to say. Or when I’m trying to be clever — oh my gosh, watch out.
SBP: WHAT IS THE VALUE OF WRITING AND ART IN THE CURRENT STATE OF THE WORLD?
DK: I don’t know that writing, art, or poetry will save us, but it can save its individual creators and receivers for a little while. It gives us a way to lean in, to make sense of, to understand what it means to be alive in our particular moment, and in all the moments past and in whatever’s coming. I love that we can look back and recognize ourselves in the work of the ancients and our contemporaries. What a treat that things have both always sucked and always been amazing — writing and art is the record of that truth.
south broadway press 