Arielle Hebert on freedom of choice, empathy, and art as protest. <em> Arielle Hebert in conversation with poetry editor, Camille Bliss </em>

Read the poems here.

Camille Bliss

There are several calming images of nature in your poems: “To be / a woman watching steam billow over a pond,” and “A mast year, an abundance of acorns / buried, or broken open by small claws.” How does nature inspire your poetry? Is there a space that charges your creativity? Do you think the narrative of your poems shifts when writing indoors as opposed to outside?

Arielle Hebert 

To me, everything is nature. I see humans as part of nature, rather than separate from it. Because we are so intertwined, most of my poems have natural or scientific images in them. I feel nourished and replenished when I spend time outdoors. Even just on walks around my suburban neighborhood, I’ll see birds, insects, hares, deer, and the occasional fox. Where I live in North Carolina, we have lakes and rivers a short drive away, and I love slowly making my way along the banks, counting turtles, taking pictures of plants I want to identify, and following bird calls through the trees. When I am in nature, I feel like I am among the real, true world. It helps me step outside of myself, think outside of myself, write outside of myself. I take notes or photos to come back to while I’m outside, but I do most of my writing at my desk, which is surrounded by houseplants and filled with natural light, so even when I’m inside, I feel accompanied by nature.

Camille Bliss

I feel peace toward the end of “The Blue Egg,” as if the meditation on wastefulness and uselessness culminates in an urgent need to nurture the earth. Do you believe the need to nurture is inherent in women? In people? Can giving this energy back to the natural world fill the void of the need to nurture?

Arielle Hebert 

I believe the need to nurture is, or should be, inherent in all people. But I think a better word is “care.” We should all care more. What we have been taught, though, is that women are born to be nurturers, that motherhood is a woman’s nature or destiny. Society teaches us that women’s usefulness comes from being a mother and a caregiver. But for women who cannot or choose not to become mothers, are we then useless? Absolutely not! In the same way, humans tend to view nature as “resources.” We use animals as either tools for work, for profit, or for food. I grew up around horses and learned early on that they are often put down when they can no longer race or bear a rider, even if they have years of quality life left. But all creatures—including women—deserve to live, to simply exist, regardless of their “usefulness.”

Camille Bliss

Throughout your poems, I notice themes of personal choice—choosing not to have children in “Birthing Age,” choosing to “go around again” with your partner, as in “Love Poem with Ending from Futurama,” and choosing to believe in your own power, as in “Pep Talk.” For you, what is the importance of the ability to choose? How do the choices you make in life reflect who you are as a person?

Arielle Hebert 

Choice is true freedom. Without it, we are shackled to other people’s expectations for how we should live our lives. While we are bound somewhat by our circumstances, our choices define who we are and who we want to be. In post-Roe v. Wade America, women are no longer free to make decisions about our own bodies, making freedom of choice a matter of life and death. My choices to not have children, to love whom I love, and to express myself in my writing are all decisions that should be mine alone, but now are limited or censored by authoritarianism under the current administration. Deciding to portray these personal choices in my poems and sharing them with readers is in itself a way to resist that authoritarianism.

Camille Bliss

I was particularly struck by the last few lines of “Love Poem with Ending from Futurama.” “Every year he asks how old he is, / if I want to go around again, / and every year I say yes.” My interpretation of the poem is that there’s no point in living one hundred and fifty years without discovery, and that we can discover more about ourselves through the ones we love. Is there something you’ve discovered about yourself through people close to you that you wouldn’t have realized on your own? What would the world look like if we prioritized empathy over scientific discovery?

Arielle Hebert 

I love that question of what the world would look like if we prioritized empathy over scientific discovery! While I do believe in the pursuit of knowledge, I don’t believe it has to come at the expense of the natural world. Much of our pursuit of scientific knowledge is for the purpose of exploiting nature for our own uses rather than truly understanding it. If our knowledge-seeking produced understanding and empathy, our world would be a better place.

I have learned so much about myself and have grown into the person I am because of the people I’m close with. My partner and my friends are my chosen family. They have helped me to unlearn/relearn things about myself I previously thought were weaknesses—kindness, forgiveness, deep feeling—and to see these as my strengths, my superpowers.

Camille Bliss

I’ve heard that writing is a political act, whether it’s the intention of a piece or not. In “When Vampire Bats Become Close Friends, They Start Talking Like Each Other,” I envision a hoard of banshees storming blockades, speaking in tongues only half the population can understand. In the frying pan of “post-Roe America,” how do you visualize rebellion? Do you consider poetry a method of resistance? How can poetry, and the act of writing it, influence the current state of our world? Of ourselves?

Arielle Hebert 

Poetry, and art in all its forms, is political, is a form of protest. The Trump administration’s attacks on First Amendment rights to free speech and a free press threaten our democracy. Censorship and anti-intellectualism are tools of fascism which we are witnessing in the form of rampant book banning, abolishing the Department of Education, withholding of funds from educational institutions that refuse to comply with the administration’s demands to dismantle DEI and core programming, and so much more. The very act and art of writing is threatened by AI, which the government has given unlimited power. These days, even writing an email or a cover letter without the use of AI is an act of rebellion, let alone writing poems that speak truth to power and to the people. There are many ways to make our voices heard, and poetry is one of the ways in which I use my voice. I hope others feel encouraged and empowered to use their voices, whether in poetry, at the polls, at the dinner table, or any other capacity.

Camille Bliss

I’m curious about your writing process. Much of this collection bounces between an inner dialogue of empowerment, as in “Pep Talk,” and discontents over our dying planet, as in “The Last Days.” How does a future poem begin for you? Do you get inspiration from images? Is it a point you’d like to get across? Is it a response to something you notice outside of yourself?

Arielle Hebert 

I don’t write every day, but I pay attention and hold onto images or experiences in my mind or my notebook that create a little well for me to draw from when I do sit down to write. I carry around memories or feelings that haunt me until I’m ready to write about them. For the last five years or so, I’ve met once a week with a few poets on Zoom for a generative writing session. We each pick out and share a few words from something we’re reading to make a word bank to draw from, then we mute for 45 minutes to an hour to draft a new poem. The word bank helps propel the draft forward, whether I use as many of the words as I can or whether I choose one or two in which to root the poem. Using words shared by other writers helps me to break out of my own language patterns and use words I might not usually use, allowing me to go places in a poem that surprise me. 

Camille Bliss

Earth is our body. It is here we can exist, breathe, and experience. In “The Last Days,” you write, “And if it’s true the world is dying, / that’s one more reason, or excuse, / why I do not want to bear children.” We are always one day closer to death, but in what ways does our current treatment of the planet reflect on our own bodies? Is bringing a child into a dying planet synonymous with raising the dead?

Arielle Hebert 

There are many reasons I have decided not to have children, and the current treatment of our planet is only one of those reasons. I may never become a mother, but I love and care immensely for the children in my life. And while the planet may be dying, I believe in the power of personal responsibility, that one person’s good actions lead to another’s and another’s. I haven’t given up hope that we can take actionable steps to change the paths to self-destruction we’re headed down. But if we can’t change the inevitable last days, why not do our best to make them better days instead of worse? I want to be able to say that I tried. That I cared for the earth and those around me.