Interview with Anna Friedrich

It is a joy and an honor today to present an interview I did with contemporary Christian poet Anna Friedrich. I was introduced to Ms. Friedrich through the Rabbit Room Poetry Substack (surprise, suprise!) and have had the joy of being subscribed to her Substack since. (Click the link to read some of her poems!) Her poetry is raw in a way I have rarely encountered, using poignant imagery and searching questions to pierce the reader's heart.

Ms. Friedrich's poetry collection Under the Terebinth"invites readers into a shaded place, where questions are welcomed, where beauty is real and made manifest in caterpillars and whale song, and where Sorrow, personified looms large." (Description from seller website.)

And now--the interview!

Can you tell me about your poetry writing journey?

I wrote songs for many years, with my voice and my guitar, before I really discovered poetry as an art form. I didn’t think of my songwriting as poetry, and I don’t think it was really, but I’ve long loved words and lyrics and music — all of which make up the heart of poetry. Of course, growing up in a pastor’s family, I knew the Psalms to be poems, and I had to read some formal English poetry in high school, but other than that, I had not really been exposed to poetry until I took a graduate course, in my 30s, at Regent College in 2015.

Who or what inspired you to start writing poetry?

In that said ^ graduate course, my professors (Loren & Mary Ruth Wilkinson and Iwan & Amanda Russel-Jones) were lovers of poetry. They referenced it off-hand in conversation, made a point to weave poems into their lectures and our assignments, had memorized long and short poems and could quote them when the moment called for it, and frankly, I was hooked. They inspired me to begin to read poetry regularly. Then, the next year, I took a class with Malcolm Guite, and it’s no exaggeration to say that class changed my life. I wrote 3 sonnets as a creative response to that class, and Malcolm gave me some affirming feedback and suggested I try to get them published. I was flabbergasted, but went ahead and submitted them to CRUX (Regent’s theological journal) and they published one of them! I was honestly floored. I kept writing, read more and more poetry and books about the craft of writing poetry, joined a local poetry workshop at the library, kept up the conversation with Malcolm (who then graciously wrote the foreword to my first collection of poetry, Under the Terebinth), and now here we are a decade later, I’ve had dozens of poems published in various places, and I’m writing more than ever.

How has your poetry metamorphosed through the years?

At first, I think I enjoyed poetry as simply word play. Then I started to see how poets seem to say what the rest of us find so hard to say. So writing poems became a wrestling with words, and because my poetry is so often related to God or his Word, it has also been a kind of wrestling with God, on the page. It’s more like prayer than anything, at this point in my life. Something also shifted in me about 5 years ago. I began to sense that poetry was more than just something I enjoyed doing on the side, when I had the energy and extra time. I experienced a sense of calling while working on poems, a whisper of God’s yes as I worked on line breaks and punctuation and extended metaphors. I remember rather suddenly realizing that writing poems had become something more like obedience and less like just a literary hobby. And the last thing I’ll say about how my poetry has changed over the years, is simply that I hope it has gotten better! :)

Who are your favorite poets and why?

Some of my favorite poets are Denise Levertov, Franz Wright, Tracy K. Smith, A.E. Stallings, Malcolm Guite, Gerard Manley Hopkins, T.S. Eliot, and all the Psalmists. I love them for different reasons, of course. Malcolm taught me how to write poetry that takes the Bible seriously, but has a kind of creative playfulness, too. Denise Levertov was the first poet I read who arrested me, especially her collection The Stream & The Sapphire. Franz Wright’s line breaks are so brave and so well-crafted, I hope to accomplish some line breaks in my lifetime that do what his do. Tracy K. Smith makes me laugh and makes me weep — I love her earnestness. A.E. Stallings seems a master to me at the ordinary turned transcendent. I think a lot of poets aim for this, and there is a lot of it out there — but Stallings’ title poem in her collection, Olives, nearly undid me one day, sitting in a beach chair, on vacation, thinking I was just opening a little collection I’d heard good things about — the title poems is about olives! And yet, it’s also about everything. I’d love to quote the last line of that poem here, but that’s so unfair, I’ll let your readers go find it, if they like! Hopkins’ musicality is of course one of the things he’s so beloved for, and true enough, some of his poetry seems otherworldly, to me, in its music, like angels hummed it into his ear. But the thing I love most about Hopkins is surprise. I love his surprises. The Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot have shaped me permanently, as perhaps any poet writing in English could (should?) say. The genius of the whole long thing, and the beauty of its every tiny part are astounding. I have read it more times than any other poetry, and I imagine I will continue to. And lastly (though not lastly in importance) — the Psalms are my heart language. Especially the NIV. They are lines and unfolding stories and repetitions that have sunk right into my soul and I think will be there for eternity. The language and the lament and the praise of the Psalms inform just about every poem I write.

You mostly write poetry that directly relates to Bible stories—and especially the Old Testament. What draws you to this particular topic?

Well, I’m a Christian. I was raised in a pastor’s family, and both of my parents really love God’s Word. I began to read and love the Bible, too, at a young age. This love has never waned. I’m a reader in general, and have read a good bit, I’d say, but none of it comes close to the Bible. It is a book unlike any other, God-breathed, and I find it endlessly fascinating, creatively inspiring, and at times confusing and frustrating, but again and again I find the words of life there, that lead me to The Word, Jesus. So, I spend a lot of time reading and meditating on the Scriptures, and they inevitably end up in my poems!

Can you share about how your faith is reflected in your writing and how your writing influences your faith?

I answered this, to a degree, in some of my answers already, but I’ll add that I simply like writing poems in conversation with the Bible. I even sense I’m meant to offer this to the world — but that doesn’t mean I think every Christian who is a poet needs to only write about God or the Bible explicitly. The world is charged with the grandeur of God! People can and should write about any- and everything. In the past, I’ve spent years writing nature poetry (especially about moths and butterflies) or crafting poems as gifts for people — and all of that was good and meaningful work! But in this season I’m currently in, I’m just really jazzed by writing about the Bible, especially the Old Testament. So that’s what I’m doing.

Much of your poetry is freestyle, but you’ve experimented with different structures. (My favorite poem of yours is a villanelle!) Do the differences between freestyle and structured poetry have significance for you?

I’m certainly informed by and enjoy reading formal poetry, either historic or contemporary. My introduction to writing poetry was writing 3 sonnets, after all! And one of the most challenging things I’ve done as a poet was to write 4 villanelles for my church, to be read during the 4 Sundays of Advent in 2024. Writing in form is difficult in some ways, but it’s also quite freeing. You know the rules and you work within them. Free verse, on the other hand, demands attention to the inner music of the poem and the line breaks in a different way. A poet who has more recently been a mentor to me, Ben Myers, tells me some of my poems have “ghost meter” - ha! I really liked that. I don’t prefer one over the other (form vs. free verse), but I have definitely written more free verse.

What is your favorite poetical device?

My favorite device is enjambment. I’m smitten by that little breath that happens by forcing the eye up against white space and down to the next line and what poets are able to make of that. I still have a lot to learn about using enjambment, and sometimes fear I’m sloppy or too obvious with it, but I am committed to getting better at it!

Is there a question I haven’t asked that you would enjoy answering? If so, I’d love to have you answer it!

I’d love to add that I’ve just completed my second manuscript — this one is made up of 33 poems responding to some of the questions in the stories of Elijah and Elisha in 1 & 2 Kings — questions like, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” or “Have you come to murder my son and remind me of my sin?” or “What do you have in your house?” It was a wonderful endeavor to undertake, so fruitful and challenging for me personally, and I hope to have it published within this year. The working title is Yahweh Loves a Desert. I’d love for any of your readers who are interested to keep their eyes open for it!

You heard her, everyone! Remember--Yahweh Loves a Desert.

Thank you so much, Ms. Friedrich!