Meet Karen Rigby | Poet & Writer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Karen Rigby and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Karen, can you tell us more about your background and the role it’s played in shaping who you are today?
There is a popular quote by a novelist, L.P. Hartley: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” I’ve always found that to be expressive. I can neither return to the tropics of my birth, nor can I explain everything about it.

I was born in Panama City, Panama, in 1979. My father is Panamanian-American, and so I grew up with a sense of duality: two languages (English and Spanish), two seasons (rainy or dry), and two citizenships.

Add to this a third culture: my mother is Chinese, from Hong Kong. And the fact that both of them worked for the Panama Canal, which connects two oceans.

How did that shape me? It would be an indirect line to trace from there to here. But I might guess that it made me find room for the knotted and tapestried argument; endurance through upheavals; love for the lavish image (the flowers and greenery alone!); and a certain liking for the cinematic, slow pan across vistas so varied that you can’t help but take in its details. Also, too, it might have bred the ability to cross through and between and over many and varied lines.

All of which, happily, are not that far removed from what it takes for me to write poetry.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I started writing in elementary school, with a manual Olympia typewriter. It makes me laugh, and I’m surprised now, that I was even able to lift it and carry it from one room to the next. From those early stories and poems, I’ve ended up here, with two books, Chinoiserie and Fabulosa. How does that even happen?

Not without perseverance. But that seems easy. I think what may distinguish the childhood dream that remains only a dream from an actual result has much more to do with love than it does with any ideas about “grit” or “ambition.” How far will ambition go? That has a ring of exhaustion to it.

And so I don’t work in those terms. Love goes even further. It’s a far more poweful drive than only an ambition. From a love for language and art and making to the wider forms of thinking and the desire to move another person, even in those invisible ways—now that’s the lesson, isn’t it?

Maybe that sounds too ideal. Maybe it’s true, that every one of my poems is a love letter.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
ZK Grill on Chandler Blvd in Phoenix for Persian takeout. There’s the Arizona Theater Company, for the now and then musical or play. Tucson for its poetry center readings over at the U of A. And the McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park, which both of my kids liked when they were younger.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I would not have become a poet without reading other poets, but rather than listing all of them, I’ll shoutout the libraries in which I first found their poetry books—the old Fort Clayton library in Panama, and my school and university libraries—and also venues where I’ve encountered poets, such as the University of Arizona poetry center.

I will name, though, Sharon Suzuki-Martinez, who is based in Tempe, and who has read my work with such care for over a decade now, and also one of my early poetry professors, the poet Jim Daniels. Also Gerald Costanzo, who has given me many books and shown me what a lifelong love for shepherding books can look like. Then too, there’s Simone Muench, who lifted my current book out of the slushpile, and Jennifer Harris, who helms JackLeg Press, where it is published.

Website: www.karenrigby.com

Other: BOOK: https://www.changinghands.com/book/9781956907094 https://bookshop.org/p/books/fabulosa-karen-rigby/20727786?ean=9781956907094

Image Credits
Marie Feutrier (For the author photo) Book Cover Designer: Jeff Clark (for both book covers)