Poetry grounds us to the ordinary miracles around us - Tim Conroy
Tim Conroy’s second collection of poetry, No True Route (Muddy Ford Press, 2023) launches Tuesday night, October 24th at Bar None in 5 Points at 6 pm.
Tim Conroy is a poet and former educator. His work has been published in journals, magazines, and compilations, including Fall Lines, Auntie Bellum, Blue Mountain Review, Jasper, Marked by the Water, and Our Prince of Scribes: Writers Remember Pat Conroy. In 2017, Muddy Ford Press published his first book of poetry, Theologies of Terrain, edited by Columbia, South Carolina, poet laureate Ed Madden. A founding board member of the Pat Conroy Literary Center established in his brother’s honor, Tim Conroy lives in Florida.
Advance Praise for No True Route:
Poetry at its best gives the head and heart direction. In No True Route, Tim Conroy sends us straightaway to his life's truths, as he feels them. Words bitter, sweet, brutal, and blunt -- but always beautifully spun, make this intensely personal and pathfinding work worthy of taking along on your own journey. -- J. Drew Lanham, author of Sparrow Envy - Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts
“How not to be a body / suspended alone”: in poem after poem, Tim Conroy’s No True Route investigates that state of potential isolation, of fatal disconnection narrowly avoided… this “rope knotted to adolescence,” becomes for Conroy a life-line. “Do you recall the moment you first belonged?,” he asks, and the question – amid these “oyster cuts of memory” – is satisfyingly both poignant and affirming. -- Nathalie Anderson, author of Held and Firmly Bound and Stain
Tim Conroy's second collection, No True Route, continues self-investigation from his past that began in his first book, Theologies of Terrain. Through personal and poetic journeys, the poems have gained more profound insights into the heaviness of life's burden and the possible ways to lightness. -- Miho Kinnas, author of Waiting for Sunset to Bury Red Camellias, Move Over, Bird, and Today, Fish Only.
~~~~~
Interview Question from poet Miho Kinnas, author of Waiting for Sunset to Bury Red Camellias (2023, Free Verse Press), Move Over, Bird (2019), and Today, Fish Only (2019) from Math Paper Press.
What was it like to put together the second collection?
The second collection, No True Route, took six years of writing, revision, and difficult choices. Ed Madden, former poet Laureate of Columbia, South Carolina, helped me hone and order the poems. I am fortunate to continue to work with Muddy Ford Press and publishers Cindi Boiter and Bob Jolley, who have an unyielding ethic to connect regional writers with a community of readers. I hope readers find the poem in the collection meant for them. Or better yet, they will pick up a pen and write poems about their journeys. In No True Route, some poems express loss, brokenness, strength, and how we hold onto each other. Memories can fool and change us. My brother, Pat, would have recognized these themes in the collection as familiar terrain.
How did the changes in your life (retiring, moving to Florida) affect your writing?
COVID and Moving and Loss sharpened my perception of time and how we live during periods of significant change. One thing I tried to write about because of this change was that no matter where you live, you must never hide or forget your deceased family and friends. It is perilous to deny their presence in our lives.
What poetry are you reading now?
I have been reading and searching for poems with spiritual themes for a project. It is an attempt at an existential spiritual search questioning our relationship to the Divine in all our metaphors of beliefs and doubts. My Genesis or creation poem to enter this discussion is Ode to Dirt by Sharon Olds, then Ode to the Clothesline by Kwame Dawes, an excerpt from the Song of Solomon, Ask Me by William Stafford, Have You Prayed? by Li-Young Lee, Upstairs the Eulogy, Downstairs the Rummage Sale by Yehoshua November, A Violin at Dusk by Lizette Woodworth Reese, The Vast Ocean Begins Just Outside Our Church: The Eucharist by Mary Oliver, Kerr’s Ass by Patrick Kavanaugh, The Call by Ron Rash, A Prayer by Max Errman and Thank You by Ross Gay.
But I am still collecting and refining. I don’t know the shape of the final product, but I will hold “poetry worship” services using these poems where the poets are priests. The congregation will read these poems and explore the human need for something after death and an explanation of divinity. After all, we are “muckers” searching for the Kavanaugh’s “God of imagination.” Perhaps my poem in No True Route, Visitation, fits this mold.
Why Poetry Matters. Figurative language is how we make sense of our creation, our moment. Poetry compromises the text of all faiths and beliefs. Poetry explores the ground of being like a hungry mole cricket. It’s the stirring language of the Cosmos and the soup spoon. It rises from dirt to sunflower to hearts. Poetry is our first and last breath in our brief lives of verses. Poetry grounds us to the ordinary miracles around us. But I warn you, it’s a mouse in the hole trembling to rush out to nibble on a crumb; satisfying, so risky.