Diana Greene Winston-Salem Monthly August 2009 Artist in Residence: Teri Hairston

Robert Frost said, "A poem begins as a lump in the throat." Winston-Salem poet, Teri Hairston, would likely agree with that theory, though she'd use a different metaphor for illumination. She prefers the image of a pearl when describing how her poems come into being.

"I get this little feeling, this little agitation," Hairston says, rubbing her fingers together, "like an oyster with that little invading particle that years of agitation turns into a pearl."

This natural alchemy has created many beautiful surprises in a life that Hairston is the first to tell you hasn't always been pretty. As a survivor of two abusive marriages - the second worse than the first - Hairston's given voice to a world that's often buried in shame, crushed by oppression. Her poems have won awards and appeared in several national and international publications.

Hairston grounds her poetry in story and pulls from the vivid, often harrowing, details of her life. Her words contain a force found when the real is realized, when the feathers and blood, mothers and fathers, coffee and a buzzards' caw caw land with an intentional exactness on a page. While she loves "the sound and melody of words," her style leans firmly toward the direct address.

In her poem, The Product, published in the literary journal, Calliope, Hairston opens with the factors that were the calculus of her mother's life.

                  If you multiply the twelve hour days my momma stood on her feet at Bassick Sage doing factory work making metal parts for cabinets

by

the ten mouths waiting at home to be fed five of the mouths weren't even hers but can't be subtracted "cause she fed 'em anyway"

the product is...

no stomach was ever empty

This mathematical portrait depicts the remarkable yet depleting nature of maternal love. It contains reverence and sorrow, awe and pity - oppositions that inspire Hairston.

"I really just try to open a door of truth and get beneath that veiled layer that I lived in for so long," says Hairston. "The more that I write, the more that I expose."

There is a powerful defiance heard in Hairston's poem, Illiterate, which she wrote early in her literary journey that began in 2000. Based on a horrific moment with her ex-husband, the short poem describes how Hairston transcended destruction by creating new life from ash.

"The night he snatched my book and threw it in the pot-bellied stove, I knew as I watched the book burn that I would write about this one day," Hairston says softly, pausing, recalling that memory. "It took years."

Hairston eventually fled her abusive marriage, taking her two children with her to a shelter before moving to an apartment equipped with only three quilts, three pillows, three forks, cups and plates. From there, she began the complex transition from victim to survivor. She enrolled at Salem College where she started writing under the inspiring tutelage of poet Pam Uschuk and "grew some confidence."

Hairston's sense of amazement that her work is published, that people resonate with what she calls "the strangeness that was my normal" is palpable. There is, it seems clear, a warm light shining on the darkness.

"We must make food from the slaughter," she says, quoting a line from the poet, Jo Harjo. "I have this whole sense of myself and my life as having been slaughter. It's got to be for something, it's got to be. I can't believe it can't be for nothing. It's what drives me to gather myself."

When did you realize you would live a creative life?

I think when I watched my books burn, I knew that that was not going to be my whole life. I knew there was something greater beyond that oppression.

Where do you find your inspiration?

In opposites. Some of the things that I've experienced that are difficult, dark, and lonely times, and when I can see things that are bright and colorful and beautiful and throw the two of those together and it becomes neither of the two by themselves, it becomes both of those joined at the same time.

What do you do to overcome a creative block?

My creative block is access to leisure time for writing. People of color, especially women of color, who don’t have access to leisure time - that is a disadvantage for the society. It's a block; it's access.

What do you think of failure?

Not an option.

What quality to you admire in other artists?

Pam Uschuk (former Salem College professor) is a point of reference. Her topics are so diverse. When I think about a poet, or a writer, I can use Pam as a model. She knows the craft that I am studying and trying to learn.

Which artists do you admire?

Alice Walker, Joy Harjo, Pam Uschuk, especially when she writes about me! Edwidge Danticat.  

What would surprise people about you?

To know all the places that my writing has taken me - to Prague, to Durango, Colorado. The intimate little spaces, like a workshop I did for a group of women who are recovering addicts. It was held in the tiniest little house. We did some writing. We did guided thinking. Women cried and shared and when we ended we were dancing.  That's a place that my writing has taken me to.