Etta from Pilgrims Knob, VA
Episode 8 of the Granny Love Podcast
Are you ready for our final helping of Granny Love? This week we’ll be enjoying the mesmerizing work of Pauletta Hansel as she writes about her granny Etta from Pilgrims Knob in Buchannon County, Virginia. Pauletta Hansel’s tenth poetry collection is Will There Also Be Singing? (Shadelandhouse Modern Press, 2024), poems of witness and protest. Heartbreak Tree (Madville Publications, 2022) won the Poetry Society of Virginia’s North American Book Award. Pauletta was Cincinnati’s first Poet Laureate and 2022 Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County Writer-in-Residence. She leads writing workshops and retreats virtually and in the Greater Cincinnati area and beyond.
and, if you’d like to enjoy a little more of Pauletta’s work, you can also watch her Meter Cute interview as well!
1) What did your granny love (other than her grandchildren, of course!)?
As I say in the poem, “Family Math,” fishing and hummingbirds. The fishing I knew from personal experience, as she would try to take me fishing when I stayed with her as a little girl. I was far too much of a town kid. I know she liked peppermints, as Mom always included those in her Christmas gift. Granny loved her mother, who died when Granny was only 17, and would talk about her some. I wish I could say more, but as too often happens, I didn’t begin to be curious about her until it was too late.
2) What’s the best advice your granny ever gave you?
She told me not to be hateful, or to spend time with hateful people. “Hateful” was not a term I was familiar with until she used it when I described the actions of a boy I liked. I hadn’t though of it that way. But he was being awfully full of himself. She valued kindness; it took me far too long to understand just how important that quality is.
3) What advice would you give your granny if you could go back in time and talk to her when she was young?
I think I might tell here the same thing, not to spend time with hateful people. Her father was not a kind man, to say the least, and my grandfather wasn’t as bad as him—but he was selfish and did not consider the needs of his wife and family. Full of himself! Of course, that would be dangerous advice to give, as the union produced my mom, who then produced me. I think Granny’s life got easier after Grandpa died, at least until she became ill herself. She spent her final years with the children she had taught to be kind.
Are you ready to do some writing?! Me too!
1) Set the timer for 10 minutes. Freewrite about a time one of your elders tried to teach you something and it didn’t go quite as they’d planned. Remember, you’re freewriting, so keep that Editor Voice turned completely off. Just write. When was it? Who was it? What were they trying to teach you? How did you feel about it? Write for the full ten minutes. Can’t think of what else to write? Start writing about what your favorite TV show was at the time of the event (or whatever, just keep writing, your brain will tell you what it needs you to know).
2) Set the timer for 10 minutes. I am really taken by Pauletta’s lines “Girl, you would have made it here some other way” (sorry, I don’t have the text so I’m not sure where the line break goes). Freewrite about those lines. If something had been different in one of your ancestors’ lives, would you have made it here some other way? Follow your brain wherever it goes. If you run out of things to write about, write about your favorite time travel movie (or whatever, just keep writing, nothing is off topic, start with the prompt and then go where you need to go).
3) Let’s en-rhythm! This is a process where you repeat a rhythm that you might want to incorporate into your own work. This process helps it get into your mind and soul, so that it can come out in your work with minimal conscious effort on your part. Set the timer for 10 minutes. Read a single poem or dance to a single song over and over for the full 10 minutes. I suggest Julia Randall’s poem “Appalachian.” Randall was originally from Baltimore, but spent much of her adult life in Virginia. Known for her rhythmic cadences that rebel against limits and boundaries, she was a bit of an anti-Romantic and often beefed with Wordsworth in her literary scholarship.
If you want to en-rhythm to music, here are a few options. If you want to enjoy a singer from southwestern Virginia, check out Evan O’Quinn’s cover of the song “Landslide.” Or, maybe try The Blessed Madonna’ remix of Dua Lipa’s “Levitating.” The Blessed Madonna is an American DJ who also happens to be Pauletta’s niece. The remix has a trance-like quality that I think might be really fun to en-rhythm to.
4.) Now let’s draft! Set the timer for 10 minutes. Write a poem, short story, or essay about whatever is on your mind right now. Let that Editor Voice come up to about a three or four. It can give a few suggestions on shaping and images, but otherwise “Shh! Cool stuff’s happening, come back when we’re revising!” Not sure what to write about? How about writing a response to someone who asks you to teach them whatever it is that your elder tried to teach you in part one.
And there you have it! In just forty minutes, you’ve got a draft of something you can work on revising this week, next month, or the 12th of Never.
Thanks for letting me stop by!