Tiff Holland on The Social Distance Reading Series
Tiff Holland grew up in Northeast Ohio and has lived, worked, and studied there, in Georgia, Mississippi, Hawaii, and Texas. Tiff has worked as an insurance adjuster, a 911 dispatcher, and as an English Professor.
Brought to you by The Vermont School and Green Mountains Review
In the wake of book event cancellations due to COVID-19, this pop-up series is designed to offer poets a platform for launching new collections of poems. Stay tuned for a new reading each Wednesday and Sunday.
Here’s Tiff reading from My Mother’s Transvestites out from Finishing Line Press.
In My Mother’s Transvestites Tiff Holland takes a head-on look at issues of gender expression, starting with “Hot Work,” a poem that lovingly recalls the men who came to her mother for discreet help with unfamiliar wigs and makeup, and concluding with “The Last Dress,” where Holland expresses the uncomfortable realization that she eschewed jewelry because “all adornment was drag.” Drag becomes a touchstone in this book. Once I walked along a mountain path, and there were places so narrow that ropes had been strung for hikers to hold on to. Drag is like that rope for poems that peer down into gaping depths. It’s a lifeline through these deeply personal poems, and together, they offer a peak reading experience.
–Karen Craigo, author of Passing Through Humansville (Sundress, 2018) and No More Milk (Sundress, 2016)
At this moment in time when it seems everything is telling us to move more quickly, the poems in Tiff Holland’s collection somehow slow the world down and navigate the space between what can’t be said and what must be; they are both the eclipse and the box designed to view it. Rarely does a book so perfectly capture the past, the present, and the future, but somehow Holland’s poems accomplish this feat with both precision and beauty. This is truly a stunning debut from a remarkable poet.
–Adam Clay
Tiff Holland’s My Mother’s Transvestites is a salon where patrons can request any service without shame; where they are enhanced with empathy for the roughly used, and worlds of tension and heartache become the elegance of exact language. These honorable poems live among the everyday in service of difficult truth and the barely caught nuance of absolute beauty.
–Angela Ball
How do you begin a new piece of writing? What conditions help your writing process?
I start a new piece of writing in a variety of ways. I belong to a group that has been using prompts—one a day for about 3000 days! Generally, I get a kind of feeling, an itch, an echo in my brain, or a phrase that wants to tell me something. So, I stop what I’m doing and listen, transcribe. Very often, I am inspired by things that happen in my life or things people say to me. I love to incorporate conversation into my writing.
What was an early experience that taught you language has power?
I always knew language had power. My mother grew up in the hills of West Virginia, but was very careful never to let anyone know it by her language. I was captivated when she called us “hair-brains”—does that mean our brains are made of hair? Once, I absolutely decimated her in an argument by describing her death. I never, ever spoke to anyone that way again.
What poets or writers do you continually go back to?
Again and again, I go back to John Berryman, Bruce Weigl, Bob Hicok, Roethke, Plath, and Mark Strand.
What is your favorite childhood or adolescent book?
My favorite books as an adolescent were Catcher in the Rye, Ordinary People, The World According to Garp, and Birdy. However, I was always reading poetry anthologies.
What are your thoughts/experiences on social distancing?
My thoughts on social distancing are complicated. I’d only started going out in the world again this fall after my husband was killed two years ago. Still, my small family: Bill, Tori, and I rarely went much of anywhere. We were happy to be alone together. Now, I feel like this would be so much easier if he were here with us.. I do know that social distancing is absolutely necessary. As a former military cadet and member of the law enforcement community, and as a human being, I believe it is our duty.
Where can we find you? Link to your blog or website:
You can find me on Facebook or by email at tiffholland at sbcglobal.net
The Social Distance Reading Series
Brought to you by The Vermont School and Green Mountains Review
We’re thrilled to host The Social Distance Reading Series, a collaboration between Green Mountains Review and The Vermont School poets. In the wake of book event cancellations due to COVID-19, this pop-up series is designed to offer poets a platform for launching new collections of poems. At this point, we are focusing on collections by poets whose book events have been cancelled between January through May 2020.
Stay tuned for a new reading each Wednesday and Sunday.
Thanks,
–Didi Jackson, Major Jackson, Kerrin McCadden, and Elizabeth Powell, series curators.
–Kylie Gellatly, editorial assistant, interviewer.