Q&A: Soft and Expressive, Rhiannon McGavin’s “Grocery List Poems” Heals Through Poetry
OPENING WITH A PIECE WRITTEN ABOUT COMING BACK INTO ONE’S BODY — Rhiannon McGavin’s Grocery List Poems opens with an exploration of self after a period of dissociation. Gathering inspiration from the likes of Agnès Varda, various early Yiddish prayer books, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and June Jordan, Grocery List Poems is a beautiful balance between lightness and darkness within one’s mind. Disguising trauma within sonnets, Rhiannon McGavin utilizes this book as a means of healing.
“Growing as a writer has been a lot of learning what to publish and what to keep to myself,” McGavin reflected. “I’m always afraid that I missed a phrase or something and I try to revisit every creative output that I have.” She transformed the very first poem she’d ever written for university and planted it within these pages where she experimented with form and technique, as well as voice and character development. Her favorite poem, discussed in the Q&A below, was constructed as a crown of 14 sonnets showcasing her knowledge of technique and form. Flipping through the pages of Grocery List Poems is like getting to know the sides of McGavin that her good friends know: a little messy but profoundly put together.
Read below to find out more about this Los Angeles native. McGavin takes us into her writing process, influences for Grocery List Poems, and gives us a bit of insight into how her mind works.
LUNA: What’s your favorite poem from Grocery List and why?
MCGAVIN: “Dream Diary,” which is the poem that sits at the exact middle of the book. The rest of the book is written around justifying the “Dream Diary” and making sure it hits at every level — the form, the emotion, and the speaker that gets developed throughout the book. For example, in “Dream Diary #14” there is a word “shvarts-apl” that is one of my favorite words. In order for that word to hit there’s a poem 20 pages before that defines “shvarts-apl” in context. I hope that by the time the reader gets to the last poem, they know what the word means.
I worked on “Dream Diary” for about three years, and it’s my favorite. I wrote a lot of this poem when I was in Prague on a residency about eight or nine years ago. Reading it back again, there are a lot of sweet memories in it about wandering around the city and getting lost. There’s a lot of Prague in the poem — it feels good.
LUNA: Do you have any intentions as an author?
MCGAVIN: It changes from project to project, I think. I worked on the book while I was doing my writer’s thesis for UCLA. Grocery List Poems is so soft in comparison. I keep telling my friends it’s going to be my “happy, feel-good, easy-listening” book. I wanted to make something that people can read before bed and end the day on a sweet image. My other, secret, goal was to talk about trauma and hurt in a way that was not immediately triggering to the reader.
LUNA: What is your favorite part of the creative process for creating the book?
MCGAVIN: I write by hand! I picked this up a couple of years ago — it was a good way to get offline. At the end of the day, my favorite part of the process is looking at all of the pages. I can see the physical changes of the poem throughout the day and see the difference; it feels really good, compared to writing on a laptop.
LUNA: Did you write any of the poems in a single day?
MCGAVIN: I spend a lot of time outlining before I get to a draft and think about stuff for a really long time. So by the time that I actually finally do write it, the actual poem usually manifests in a day. There was a phase last year when I was writing a poem a day, but it really depends. I feel like my writing process is very informed with growing up in LA and not having a driver’s license. I usually get to the end of the poem first, and I know exactly what the last line is supposed to be … I just have to figure out how to get there. Which feels very much like getting downtown by 6 using public transportation.
LUNA: What is your day to day like? Do you set aside time every day to write?
MCGAVIN: I like writing in long dashes, where I’ll spend a couple of weeks only thinking about writing. I’ll have longer periods of researching and outlining, and shorter periods of actually writing. I wake up really early and write for as long as I can, and then I will cook or do something physical after that. Going for a run or swimming usually helps me if I am stuck on a line. When I’m just focused on my body or the fucking pop sugar dance cardio move, that’s when I’ll figure it out, because I’m not thinking about writing at the time.
MCGAVIN: What are you listening to/reading lately?
MCGAVIN: I’m listening to my Grocery List mixtape — it’s really fun! I have one song per poem. But I love Paul Simon; I love Leonard Cohen. I read so much, though — I love reading. I read non-fiction more than anything else, but I still read a ton of poetry and novels. When I’m working on a big project, I dedicate a shelf to all of the books that influence my work.
LUNA: What are your two influential books for Grocery List?
MCGAVIN: The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel, and June Jordan just in general. Her essay collection Some of Us Did Not Die is one that I return to probably once a year for grounding.
LUNA: How do you get inspired when you are dealing with writer’s block?
MCGAVIN: So, I conceive of it more as a “thinking block” than a “writer’s block,” just for myself. It’s not that I have an idea and I can’t find the words to express it, it’s that I don’t have an idea but I’m trying to express it anyway. So in that case, no matter where I am in the process, I’ll just call up a friend and unsprill my brain. Or I’ll return to my influences or watch a movie.
I do think fear is a big part of it — I’m scared to articulate something. I think that writing things by hand is really helpful for that. I’ll write something out and see it and think, “Oh, that’s actually not that bad.” Usually those key points don’t end up in the final draft of the poem — I just needed to say it. I’m a big believer in free writers — it preserves the therapeutic practice of writing while creating a separation between diary entries and finished work.
LUNA: What is your definition of poetry?
MCGAVIN: Poetry is when the form and content of a thing are very well suited to each other. It’s when the message of something and its medium are complementary and in harmony. That doesn’t mean that every piece has to be perfectly structured in form or anything — choosing the best words or choosing where to break the line can make something.
LUNA: 2021 is flying by. What do you hope the latter part of the year will bring?
MCGAVIN: I’m excited to come out of all of the coping mechanisms that I’ve developed in the last year and I am excited for other people to do that, as well. I’m hopeful that people — and myself — will start to feel again: all of the grief, rage, and frustration, along with the sunshine, so that we can all be soft and caring to each other again.
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