Imagination That's Grown in a Good Direction
An interview with Luci Shaw
This Weekend Edition of Ecstatic features Luci Shaw
In Partnership with The Rabbit Room
This feature belongs to a series of interviews between Ben Palpant and important contemporary poets. The Rabbit Room was conceived as an experiment in the creative community. After author & songwriter Andrew Peterson’s first visit to the Oxford home of C. S. Lewis, he returned to Nashville with a renewed conviction that community nourishes good and lasting artistic work.
At 95, Luci Shaw may have difficulty with mobility, but her mind and heart are as strong as ever—proof of which is found in her new poetry book, which will be released in 2024.
I first met Luci Shaw in one of her essays. Her writing was insightful, yet personable and kind, preoccupied with seeing everything through God's eyes. At the time, I remember thinking that if I ever became a writer, I would very much like to sound like her, to see like her.
Ben Palpant: Thank you for teaching me the value of the sanctified imagination.
Luci Shaw: Well, imagination is a gift, it is something that can be grown in a good or a bad direction, so I think we have to treat this gift like all of God's other gifts. We must give it back to God.
BP: How would you say that poetry speaks uniquely to the imagination?
LS: Poetry is different from mere history or fiction. Poetry calls for a different response from the reader. It asks a reader to enter a room with the poet—beyond facts and information—to a realm of image-making in our heads.
Imagination is making pictures in our minds and allowing God to use that capacity to create new things, new ideas into the world. I try to read good writing as a way to inform my imagination. Putting words onto paper takes a certain journey of the mind because you see something in your head and somehow you have to put it into a form that is accessible to the reader. Being familiar with good language and good poets makes all the difference to the quality of one's work.
BP: What poets do you return to again and again to inform your imagination, to inspire you?
LS: There are some wonderful, contemporary poets in the Christian tradition. Scott Cairns is one. Paul Mariani is another. They write searching poetry and prose that leads the reader to a new realization. That's how I want to go about my work, too. I love it when an image or a metaphor is provided to me and I can take that and follow it to a new arena of understanding.
BP: You've shared in another place that poetry has always been a part of your life. Was that because poetry served as a comfort to you? Was it a way to process life experience from an early age?
LS: My father was a lover of poetry. He did not write poetry himself, but he read the Romantics—Wordsworth and Coleridge, and the like. I remember him reading them aloud to me. The way the language formed images in my head was formative to my own imagination. I began writing poems when I was six or seven years old. I didn't realize it was anything special. I would write them on small pieces of paper and give them to my dad. He would show them to his friends. He was just so proud of his daughter and that was a great encouragement to me.
One of the great gifts my dad gave his kids was that he put us in really good schools, private schools, which took a great deal of money. But it was worth it because they had the kind of quality and expectation that called forth good work from students. The other thing that really affected me was that my dad was a conference speaker. We lived in Australia, Canada, and the United States so we were exposed to many cultures. Australia was especially formative to me. I remember going out to the mountains, smelling the Eucalyptus, letting it fill my lungs. The great sandy beaches around Sydney. It was a rich childhood and the fact that I was in a good school and I had good teachers made all the difference in the world.
BP: The world needs more fathers like yours. It sounds like he invested in you in multiple ways. Not just financial support, but emotional support which played a major role in your hope for the future. I love the simple picture of your dad sharing his loves with you.
LS: Yes, indeed… And, you know, in particular reading aloud to us. We didn't have a lot of children's books. Maybe Winnie-the-Pooh, but not much more to call on. But we loved to hear words read aloud. My parents would read really good adult fiction to me. That's how I learned how words worked. Hearing good literature imprints itself somehow on the mind with an unexplainable quality. But, you know, I was also shaped by learning different languages. I studied Latin, French, and I had a minor in New Testament Greek. I think learning a language can be such an enriching experience. Words, you know.
BP: You're touching on an important point here, something that calls to mind several lines from Naomi Shihab Nye. She writes, "Answer if you hear the words under the words, otherwise it's just a world full of rough edges, difficult to get through, and our pockets full of stones." Is that what you are talking about?
LS: Yes, but more. In the beginning was the Word, you know, and we were made to be in relationship with that Word, allowing it to seep into our own lives so that we can speak what is true and beautiful.
BP: It sounds to me like you're saying it's not just the words under the words, but the Word under the words that is most meaningful to you.
LS: Yes, indeed.
BP: What would you say are the stones in our pockets that are weighing us down these days and how does poetry minister to people burdened by such stones?
LS: That is a very potent question. In this life of ours where politics has taken such a huge part of our thinking and our understanding, I find it stretching my soul with anger and frustration as politics seems to take the worst of human motivation and human action and turn it sour. It just eats at my soul. But at my church, there's such an emphasis on God's word, the words of Scripture. So I get good food in that way. We have to choose whether we will listen to Scripture or to the ugly words of political strife.
BP: Has all of this taken a toll on your poetry?
LS: You know, I've been very fortunate to have two different husbands over the years who have given me the freedom to write poetry, to get away and work on my craft despite whatever is calling for my attention. It's not easy to be a poet because much of our society sees poetry as extraneous, an add-on that's not vital. But poetry is vital. It offers us meaningful words, deep words to overcome the meaningless chatter all around us.
BP: How has community played a role in your poetry career?
LS: I belong to this wonderful group of people called The Chrysostom Society. Richard Foster, Madeleine L'Engle, and I decided that we wanted to pull together some of our friends who were writers to hear each other read and speak and then to develop books from those gatherings.
I think my friendship with Madeline L'Engle was another true gift to me. For thirty-five years, we were each other's best friend. She came from the far left, from the liberal side of the church, and I came from the far right, and we met somewhere in the middle. God was so rich in our understanding of life and of truth. That was one of the gifts God gave to me. I miss her terribly.
We both lost our first husbands to cancer in the same year, you know. She had this story that she was traveling in the middle of the Atlantic when she had a terrible feeling that something had happened to my husband, Harold, and that it was bad. When she landed, she called me right away to discover that he had died. You know, somehow that connection was made. We don't understand it, but it is evidence of our closeness.
BP: You and Madeleine share a similar spirit in your writing. Do you share a similar hope for what you might have accomplished by the time your life comes to a close?
LS: Yes, I think you just keep trying to take the picture in your head and do your best to communicate with words what that picture is. I have a book of poetry coming out with Paraclete Press in a few weeks and I'm working on another book that will come out a year from now. I'm just hoping I'll still be alive so I can see the book and promote it for them. I look forward to reading the words aloud from the page. Poetry has a special entry to the mind because it has a musicality to it.
BP: I'm just amazed that God has given you such strength of heart and mind at the age of 95. When you look back over your work, do you feel as though each previous book was a kind of rehearsal for the next one?
LS: That's a wonderful way of looking at it. I suppose so. Each book is further along in your life and, hopefully, more true to the medium you are writing in. I hope to be always growing as a writer. I never feel like I've got it figured out.
Poetry is a kind of grace, both gentle and strong. It should sharpen our experience of nature, of relationship, and the world around us. I'm so thankful that I live in a part of the world that has such natural beauty. We live in a house on a hill and can look out our living room windows at Bellingham Bay and the islands beyond it. We have Mt. Baker within an hour of us. We love to drive up that huge mountain and see our part of the world.
You know, I think nature gives us clues as to what ultimately matters and to what is ultimately beautiful, you know. I don't know how many years I have to live, but I hope I can live through a couple more cycles of seasons just because they are so rich. They speak to me. I'm an amateur photographer. I have a little camera that allows me to capture beauty. My husband drives me slowly through the woods around here and I'll say to him, “Stop, stop here. I just saw something I want to photograph.” The buttercups in one season, the cowslips, it's all so available to us. I don't think we appreciate the availability of beauty to us. Life is more than the job we do, more than providing food for your family. It's about feeding the soul and I think nature does that well, direct from the hand of God.
BP: You're reminding me of the poem, “How To Be a Poet,” by Wendell Berry. He writes, “accept what comes from silence. Make the best that you can of it. And make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came.” It sounds like you find that silence in nature.
LS: I certainly do. I love Wendell Berry. I have a wonderful collection of his poetry. You know, I love writing poetry and I'm thankful to bookstores that sell my books, but you don't make a lot of money from writing poetry. It provides food for the mind, but not much food for the dining room table.
BP: You've received a lot of praise for your work over the years, how has that affected your writing? I'm thinking here of young poets who want approval, who need some encouragement along the way. How have you made sure that the praise does not warp the way you write your poems?
LS: Friendships with kindred spirits are vital. I have a group of friends that meet together every week. We talk about God and about each other. Each person is so unique and yet we can share what we have in common. The Chrysostom Society, too. All this richness provides perspective.
BP: My final question isn't really a question, but I'm curious how you would complete the following, “Dear Poet…”
LS: I would say, never give up on the grace of God. And keep meeting together with kindred spirits to push forward imaginative work.
After our conversation, I considered the major historical events Shaw has lived through since 1928. How many of those events would have shipwrecked my hope on the island of despair? And it struck me that perhaps the greatest victory of one who has lived 95 years might be simply, remarkably, a hopeful disposition. Greater than fame, stronger than physical health, brighter than a mind able to write another book—so is the eye of faith.
Ben Palpant
Author & Poet
Ben is a memoirist, poet, novelist, and non-fiction writer. He is the author of several books, including A Small Cup of Light, Sojourner Songs, and The Stranger. He writes under the inspiration of five star-lit children and two dogs. He and his wife live in the Pacific Northwest.
Luci is the author of fourteen volumes of poetry. Her latest book of poetry, Reversing Entropy, releases soon. Shaw has lectured in North America and abroad on topics such as art and spirituality, the Christian imagination, poetry-writing, and journal-writing as an aid to artistic and spiritual growth. She is also a charter member of the Chrysostom Society of Writers. She is 95 years old.
What did you think of this interview? Share your thoughts with a comment!
This is a beautiful interview and very inspiring. Thank you for sharing, Ben, and for your insights, Luci. By the sounds of it, I want to be like you when I grow up!
Have enjoyed Luci Shaw's poetry since the 1980's when I read her book of poems about the Incarnation. It's nice to read this interview and hear more of her heart for the Lord.