Annunciation: Author Bios and Process Notes
Because all the contributors came to this project from different and personal perspectives, we asked them to speak briefly about how they approached their work for this volume. We found their responses fascinating and illuminating, and hope you'll agree.
Ivy Alvarez
It was editor Elizabeth Adams’s request for modern perspectives of the Annunciation that caught my attention. Modern. The now. But how to approach this deeply significant religious moment?
Do I write allegorically about the scene wherein an angel tells this young woman that she bears God’s son within her?
Perhaps I could write ekphrastically about Henry Ossawa Tanner’s painting “The Annunciation” (1898).
What about resurrecting my grandmother, making her young again, with her first child, and the equivalent to Mary? (She probably wouldn’t have liked that, and would’ve considered it blasphemous. Oh, well…)
What about those seconds of disbelief, just as the angel tells Mary the news?
Such possibility. In the end, I wrote all four poems. In every one, the woman remained central. All the while I wrote, I interrogated myself. What would I do in this situation? What if it had happened to me? In all honesty, I still don’t know.
Ivy Alvarez is the author of two poetry collections: Disturbance (Seren Books, 2013) and Mortal (Red Morning Press, 2006). Her work appears in journals and anthologies in many countries, including qarrtsiluni and Brilliant Coroners (Phoenicia), with several poems translated into Russian, Spanish, Japanese and Korean. She lives in New Zealand. www.ivyalvarez.com
It was editor Elizabeth Adams’s request for modern perspectives of the Annunciation that caught my attention. Modern. The now. But how to approach this deeply significant religious moment?
Do I write allegorically about the scene wherein an angel tells this young woman that she bears God’s son within her?
Perhaps I could write ekphrastically about Henry Ossawa Tanner’s painting “The Annunciation” (1898).
What about resurrecting my grandmother, making her young again, with her first child, and the equivalent to Mary? (She probably wouldn’t have liked that, and would’ve considered it blasphemous. Oh, well…)
What about those seconds of disbelief, just as the angel tells Mary the news?
Such possibility. In the end, I wrote all four poems. In every one, the woman remained central. All the while I wrote, I interrogated myself. What would I do in this situation? What if it had happened to me? In all honesty, I still don’t know.
Ivy Alvarez is the author of two poetry collections: Disturbance (Seren Books, 2013) and Mortal (Red Morning Press, 2006). Her work appears in journals and anthologies in many countries, including qarrtsiluni and Brilliant Coroners (Phoenicia), with several poems translated into Russian, Spanish, Japanese and Korean. She lives in New Zealand. www.ivyalvarez.com
Rabbi Rachel Barenblat was ordained as rabbi and as mashpi'ah ruchanit (spiritual director) by ALEPH: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal, and now serves with Rabbi David Markus as co-chair of ALEPH. She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and is author of three book-length collections of poetry: 70 faces: Torah poems (Phoenicia, 2011), Waiting to Unfold (Phoenicia, 2013), and the forthcoming Open My Lips (Ben Yehuda, 2015), as well as several poetry chapbooks. Her downloadable Velveteen Rabbi's Haggadah for Pesach has been used around the world; she is also author (with R' Jeff Goldwasser) of Days of Awe: the Velveteen Rabbi's Machzor for the Days of Awe. Since 2003 she has blogged as The Velveteen Rabbi. She serves Congregation Beth Israel in western Massachusetts, where she lives with her husband Ethan Zuckerman and their son.
Jeanne Marie Beaumont
I had nine plus years of Catholic schooling, during which Mary was a seemingly constant hovering presence. Every night of my childhood I went to bed consoled by a night light that was a white porcelain figure of her. Years later, as I was readying for my first trip to Italy, excited yet a little overwhelmed by the amount of art I was about to view, I was advised to concentrate on one Biblical scene or event as I moved through churches and museums. I chose The Annunciation as the scene I would pay special attention to. I think I was first attracted by the presence of a book in so many of the paintings. As I traveled, I also collected postcards of the Annunciations so I would remember them. From contemplating and comparing various depictions of this pivotal moment, in particular the range of Mary’s expressions, postures, and gestures, the poem began to form. I hadn’t written much ekphrastic work prior to this (it’s since become a favorite mode), but it felt a natural way to discuss the variants and the constants among the various artists’ interpretations, while also trying to imagine the person herself in this improbable situation. The poem thus moves from inside the physical moment to Mary’s widening perspective on the depictions of it and the repercussions of it. Jeanne Marie Beaumont’s first book, Placebo Effects, was a winner in the National Poetry Series (Norton, 1997). Her other books are Curious Conduct, Burning of the Three Fires, (BOA Editions, 2004, 2010), and the forthcoming Letters from Limbo (CavanKerry Press, 2016). With Claudia Carlson, she co-edited the anthology The Poets' Grimm: Twentieth Century Poems from Grimm Fairy Tales (Story Line, 2003). She currently teaches at The Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan and in the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine. |
Kristin Berkey-Abbott
When I was a child, a Sunday School teacher asked my fifth grade class how we thought Jesus would be received in our modern world. We had a rollicking discussion and then moved on to other topics. But I’ve come back to this idea again and again, and twenty years ago, I started writing poems that imagined Jesus moving in our contemporary world: Jesus who shows up in the bowling alley, Jesus as new kid in your high school, Jesus who comes to help with hurricane clean up, and all sorts of other situations. However, until very recently, I didn’t do the same thing with other figures from the Bible. In January of 2015, shortly after Epiphany, I had a day where I saw the angel Gabriel at every turn. It seemed that with every tenth website or so, I saw some sort of image of or reference to the angel Gabriel. I had an idea for a poem: the angel Gabriel moving through our modern world, looking for the Virgin Mary. I needed to narrow the focus, and so, I chose Miami, and the poem tumbled forth. Kristin Berkey-Abbott has published two chapbooks: Whistling Past the Graveyard (Pudding House Publications) and I Stand Here Shredding Documents (Finishing Line Press). She oversees the department of General Education at the Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale and she teaches as an adjunct at both Broward College and City College. She writes regularly about books, creativity, poetry, and modern life at her creativity blog (http://kristinberkey-abbott.blogspot.com), and she explores a variety of spiritual issues at her theology blog (http://liberationtheologylutheran.blogspot.com). Her website (www.kristinberkey-abbott.com) gives more information about her writing and her academic career. |