Second Year Spotlight: Tara Hollander

Tara Hollander is a published poet who graduated last week after completing her thesis titled The Environmentalist's Will.

Tara’s poetry blends science and art as well as sexuality and religion, with an overall root focus in nature. Her work is bold and unafraid to be itself, a perfection reflection of the amazing poet.

Interview By: Ashley Werner (Editor)

Café MFA: Introduce yourself. Who are you and what do you like to write?

Tara Hollander: My name is Tara and I am a poet enraptured by the natural world. I'm also a lesbian that grew up in a small town in Washington state. I write about the tension of my politics against the conservative Christian structures in which I was raised.

Café MFA: What is your thesis about? 

Tara: My thesis is about that political tension I mentioned above, mostly concerning gender, sexuality, and family. I decided on the title, "The Environmentalist's Will", after one of the poems in the collection. Engaging and writing about nature is often how I work through the tension in my life. I find that a lot of my work is about being seen and belonging. Whether that belonging should come from family, communities, or the natural world, I'd like my readers to explore the longing for acceptance and avenues of peace provided in these poems.

Café MFA: Who is on your advisory board for the project? Why did you select them?

Tara: Kyle Dargan and David Keplinger are my two thesis advisors. This was a natural choice for me since I had taken, and deeply enjoyed, both of their workshops. I also selected them because they brought different perspectives on my work. David is an amazing cheerleader and always has suggestions for where a new poem is needed. Kyle was someone I could count on to ask hard questions like, "What is this book?" and also nail down details like gerunds, pronouns, and article usage. They were both instrumental in prompting me to generate poems through workshop, keeping me on track, and helping me organize the collection into what it is today.

Café MFA: How did the idea for your thesis come about?

Tara: I knew that my thesis would handle sexuality and gender, as well as how those two things interact with society and my family. After a couple of drafts, I realized that nature was the container that my message could be translated through. With that understanding, forming the different sections and the arc of the book came easier.

Café MFA: What has been your biggest challenge with your thesis thus far?

Tara: Most definitely organization. I felt so jumbled trying to find a larger story when I had spent so long on the tiniest of details in each poem. It was hard to step back and be a "big picture" person, especially on my own work.

Café MFA: What has been your biggest success thus far? 

Tara: Out of my biggest challenge came my biggest success. I am proud of the movement and arc I created across four sections: Orca, Local Streams, Salinity, and Salmon. They tell a story of exile and return. I'm most proud of the "Salinity" section. David and Kyle informed me that three fourths of the way into a book is where you will lose most editors, so I set out to make that the most engaging section. I ended up just having a lot of fun with it. I gave myself permission to be bold, angry, and even sexual. The shift in tone within this section is very necessary and really improved the readability of my thesis.

Café MFA: What has this project taught you?

Tara: I definitely learned that big picture work takes a lot of time for me. I developed my own process of organizing, utilizing sticky notes with poem titles and manila folders for each section. When I started out, I was moving the entire poem into an order on a Word doc and got very overwhelmed. Finding a way to simplify the poems into their title and a couple of words for a descriptor was huge for me.

Café MFA: What advice would you give first-year students who are planning their thesis work?

Tara: Draft! My thesis went through many versions before I landed on something that I am proud of. Submitting those first drafts to my advisory board was scary and led to a lot of imposter syndrome. But after I got through those initial meetings, I was able to make so much progress.

From Ashley:

I was lucky enough to be in Kyle Dargan’s poetry workshop with Tara (as well as a couple other classes). Tara’s poetry left me in awe of how her poetic brain works, especially with form and structure. She’s able to emphasize both anger and love in complex family dynamics, breaking down gender roles, while still weaving in environmentalism in every piece.

This poem was originally published in Afterpast Review under the title “A woman in the shape of a monster”.

NEW LIFE

I. “A woman in the shape of a monster”*

A man cuts through her periphery

He cuts through music,

Cuts through soft, short hair

By her ear and

Removes her earbud,

Cutting through her time

And her thought

And her peace as they’re about to take off

Then he swipes through photos

His phone cheating out

His elbow ready to again poke

His knee still inched into the side of her thigh

He cuts through the air with a cough

Which interrupts the uncaptivating nature of his story

Another swipe

She found herself, not repulsed by the strawberry pink

Folds or the soft smatter of wiry curls

But rather

The way his oily pointer finger

Cut through both.

II. “A hunger that food cannot fill”**

What would I have to say if his hands

Were bound like my paralyzed veins, what if

His small body, finally contained to the size of an airplane seat,

Legs bound in opposition of his manspread,

Were prepared before me

Like a cranberried turkey

What might my monster say

Who might I be as the protagonist of this story

Protagonist of the world of my own life

You don’t need to look up the difference

Between sexual assault and harrassment

To feel.

What do I do with this anger inside of me

This person I’ve become who the man cut through

I, the victim?

I am standing on knowledge of the goddess

And access to the female monster

I am almost a million pieces

I am just about one with the detritus

I am the smoke of deep sea vents

I summon creatures with my breath

I am ready for new life.

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*Planetarium, Adrienne Rich

**Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan