Can you go through the step-by-step process of writing this poem from the moment the idea was first conceived in your brain until final form? “Born Under the Influence, a Dämmerschlaf Pantoum” was a timestaking and challenging poem to write for three reasons. First was in the subject matter itself of the risks women are subjected to in childbirth, and in this case the quest for painless childbirth.
Second was the personal nature of the piece, for me being born under the influence of a morphine scopolamine cocktail administered to my mother; this was called Dämmerschlaf or Twilight Sleep and used well into the 1960’s after wide use in Europe despite the risk of severe postpartum depression and weakening of an infant’s nervous system.
What is Twilight Sleep?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_sleep
Third was the basic presentation of ideas with imagery and rhythm on the appropriate poetic stage, which I found in the mesmerizing quality of the pantoum form.
What is a Pantoum?
https://poets.org/glossary/pantoum
Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. There was no physical place where I started writing this poem. It was written more imaginatively than in any concrete sense. Sometimes the poem would occupy my head in half wake states falling asleep or rising in early morning. Othertimes it would unfold in my mind when stimulated by the sight of blooming poppies or deadly nightshade, both known as intoxicants. The poem lived and grew in my head more than in any other place.
What month and year did you start writing this poem? I can’t put my finger on a date of inception because this poem was a long time coming and ran in and out of my mind like a haunting, even when working on other pieces. I do not date works in progress, but I made a decision to write this one down late in 2018, worked on it sporardically for months, then saw its publication in 2019.
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Were there any lines in any of your rough drafts of this poem that were not in the final version? And can you share them with us? I never keep old drafts once I have decided a poem is done. Perhaps this is because in a self-consciousness I just don’t want to record flawed attempts stumbling around with a piece or to have older drafts vex me once a poem has reached its pinnacle.
What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? I want readers to see this poem not only as an autobiographical account in form but to have it reach across time and place in the practice of strapping women into birthing cribs, drugging them, and not caring for them as they suffer severe side effects. It is important to me that all my poems sit in the lap of some social context or concern.
Twilight Sleep – The Brutal Way Some Women Gave Birth In The 1900s
Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? There were two very emotional parts to write in this poem: generally the phrase and concept of “struggling to breathe” as a child’s welcome into the world beyond the womb. Specifically the idea of any mother robbed of her memory of birthing accompanied by my own rejection for months thereafter as in her post partum depression she relinquished my care to my elderly grandmother.
Has this poem been published? And if so where? “Born Under the Influence,” the title piece of my fourth full-length collection of poetry, received first place in the Ventura County Poetry Projects’s “Origins: Where I Am From” contest in Southern California. It appeared in Shanghai Literary Review that nominated it for a Pushcart Prize, and it was also anthologized in Oh, Mama! A Collection of Birth Stories.
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Andrena Zawinski, veteran teacher of writing and activist poet, has garnered accolades for lyricism, form, spirituality, and social concern. Honors include a Kenneth Patchen Poetry Prize, PEN Oakland Award, Emily Stauffer Prize, Akron Art Museum Prize, Pittsburgh Magazine One to Watch in Literature Award, and others. Zawinski was born, raised, and earned degrees in Pittsburgh, PA as a single parent but has made a city island in the San Francisco Bay her home for over twenty years where she founded and runs a popular Women’s Poetry Salon. Her poems embrace with deep-rooted emotional power the worldwide condition of women, immigrants, and the working class alongside a reverence for the natural world
Most of the BACKSTORY OF THE POEM links can be found at the very end of the below feature:
http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2021/02/will-justice-drakes-intercession-is-251.html