National Poetry Month’s Feature: Poet Claire Dorsey

Poet’s Bio: Claire Dorsey studied acting at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. She has worked as an actress for almost 20 years Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway, originating roles in Pearl Cleage's Late Bus to Mecca at the Judith Anderson Theater and Diana Son's Stealing Fire at SoHo Rep. She appeared in an episode of the TV show The Wire. She worked as an artist-in-residence in NYC public schools and performed her poetry at venues throughout the city. 

She collaborated with NYC photographer Kwasi Noire to self-publish a volume of poetry entitled Rhythms of a Life. Her work appears in volumes 1 and 2 of The Fire Inside: Collected Stories and Poems from Zora’s Den. Claire works as a proofreader and copy editor and is the mother of one amazing daughter. 

Readers can learn more about Claire and her work at:

• Facebook: Claire Dorsey
• Instagram: kleyrmoon 

Deliah Lawrence: What inspired you to be a poet?

Claire Dorsey: I am one of nine children. I was nicknamed Idy (short for I Declare War). I was my parents’ highly sensitive, emotionally expressive child—and not very tactful with it. I tended to be punished or isolated as a result. I began to guard my feelings. There were few that I trusted to be vulnerable in that way. 

In high school, someone gifted me with a journal, and I began writing, experimenting with poetry as an outlet for my unsavory, uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. I was encouraged by my English teachers and had a few poems published in the school’s art magazine, and my emotional outpourings became ART! I have been writing ever since. Combining acting with poetry really created space for me to honor my feelings and to inspire others to find creative ways to express their own. 

DL: Is there any particular poet, author or book that influenced you in any way either growing up or as an adult?

CD: As a young actress in rehearsal for a performance piece at the Richard Allen Center for Culture and Arts in New York City, I got to hear a seasoned actress read the poem “The Mother,” by Gwendolyn Brooks. The combination of the images in the words and the way the actress brought the poem to life provoked an emotional response in me. I wanted my words to evoke emotions like that: 

Abortions will not let you forget

You remember the children that you did not get …

You will never neglect or beat

Them, or silence with a sweet

You will never wind up a sucking thumb

Or scuttle off ghosts that come….

 

A mixture of lofty language and raw exposure fed me. I started using “The Mother” when I auditioned because of the range of emotions I could express in reciting it: fear, regret, guilt, grief, accusation, apology, love, surrender. I have never known the experience of abortion, but I do know the fear and regret of having hurt someone. Gwendolyn’s works have inspired me to expose feelings without a whole lot of explaining, allowing images to be a source to move people.

 

DL: What tips would you give to aspiring poets?

CD: Write down what you’re feeling without judging it. One thing that has worked for me is to keep a journal beside my bed, and in the morning before anything, I write down whatever comes to mind. I don’t correct the spelling or the grammar. I just get the thoughts on paper. Sometimes the words may begin with fragments of a dream or something I want to happen in the day, and I see where those words take me. Sometimes I surprise myself. Then I go back later and read over what I wrote. I underline images that stand out or word combinations that excite or intrigue me. 

My other advice: Write for yourself. When You write to please others, you lose your true voice. One of my greatest teachers, a singer/songwriter/musician named Vinx, told me: “Everyone is not supposed to get you.” Write from your heart, from your experiences—that is where your true voice lives. Write! There are people waiting to hear your words just the way that you write them. 

DL: In celebration of National Poetry Month, can you share with us a few of your poems?

CD: Sure, here you go!

Study

I can’t imagine what enticed you to test my waters.

You avoided streams, brooks, reservoirs,

But you chose to stand on my shore,

Surveying my expanse,

Seeking your reflection on my surface and
Decided to explore my depths.
You immersed yourself in my currents.

You found the pull too strong and

Clung to the edges rather than be swept away.
I let you stay there, hesitant of rushing you
Allowed you to slowly construct a dam that inhibited my flow
Manipulated a stillness that stagnated

Sweetness to brine, clarity to distortion, confidence to questioning.

I couldn’t fathom that my waters didn’t keep you buoyant,

That they threw you off balance.
You didn’t wade, or dive, or play or thrive in them
You never reveled; they never soothed.
Until that rainy day, abruptly standing,

You threw off your uneasiness like a dog drying its coat,

Scrambled to the shore’s safety,

And turned to face the silent wave that followed you in

And kissed the bank where you stood.

It shocked me to see you pull out a clear glass vial,

Skim it across my living waters
Tightly tamp down a cork,

Jail my essence and tuck it away in your raincoat pocket.
But you shook my residue from your shoes, and never looked back.
I watched the fog eat you up,

Drain my memory of every pleasurable moment we shared,
Realizing that I was merely an episode in a study:
You collect women’s unravelings
For years, cataloguing and filing them
Capturing them between glass slides
Viewing them under a microscope lens
Our salty tears,

The constellations they yield—
Geometric shapes of bliss or bitterness,

Grief or glory, complexity, simplicity.
You brood over your recollections,
Dissecting how in your presence our happiness always drained away
Never understanding it was your incapacity

To find comfort where your feet never touched the bottom.
But you notched your belt with the brine of women’s noncompliance.
You preferred instead to collect our salt, our sweet, our silt, our spirits
To season your discontent and water your dusty soul.

Copyright Claire Dorsey 2023

 

Another Life

If I had my way, and I could come back as anything

You know what I’d be? Honey, I would be a moon

I would slowly make an appearance

Inch by inch until I was squarely placed in the sky—

A little sliver here, a little sliver there 

Until blam! Wham bam, there I am

My full self. A star of the sky

But I can testify that I’m just the front runner for the sun

His light makes it seems like I’m doing sumpthin

But I’m just setting up there cool as you wish

And while I’m setting up there With my legs crossed all pretty like

Watching people acting a fool and howling at me like wolves in the darkness,

I flick a finger and the waters leave the shores, baring the seas’ belongings  

Honey, I’d be an inspiration—A mystery

People seeing things in me that don’t exist–a face, some cheese! Please!

You will wake in the middle of the night, right close to dawn, 

And my reflection will be sprawled on your freshly mowed lawn, 

An imprint that inspires you to look upward. 

That would be me you see, 

Causing people’s gazes to rise 

And to mourn when I turn my back and give them black

Leaving the sky void of expansive light

Here and now you got folks sun bathing, burning themselves to a crisp

But as the moon, I would offer protective light, you see, healing insight, 

The right time to plant seeds and grow something—even babies!

POW-erful that’s me: People taking pictures of me, Writing pretty word, 

Naming me luna, lune, or Mamma Killa

And telescoping me, trying to solve my mysteries, trying to understand how I operate

They’d even try to walk on me

But they wouldn’t be able to, no matter how hard they tried, 

’Cause I ain’t nobody’s doormat, baby doll

I would just turn and shrug them off like water on a duck’s back

You see, ’cause the sun may be hot, But I’m cool, I’m a healing salve—or a heel

It all depends on the phase you find me in. 

Copyright Claire Dorsey 2022

DL: What new projects are you currently working on?

CD: I have been reading my poetry at several venues recently. Afterward, people have come up and asked where they could get copies of the works I read. I had nothing to offer—not even a website. I am working on a book of poetry called “My Living Waters.” Water for me is a symbol for emotions and shows up often as a theme in my work.

DL: Thanks so much for being here with us today. I know my readers will enjoy getting to know you and your work.

CD: Thank you for this opportunity!