A written interview with Carol Krause, author of the poetry collection, A Bouquet of Glass. She discusses her love for caves, life with a disability, future writing plans, and more!
Could you share what got you into writing and sharing poetry?
I started writing poetry because I had to. It was my way of expressing the turmoil and joy of being human. Writing poetry has helped me through many struggles over the years—it has helped me survive periods of desperation and devastation. Writing poetry has also been a way to celebrate: to whirl and tumble and frolic and lie flat on the ground.
My friend Sarah came and sat with me in a frightening time when I reached out for help. While I had some awareness of my struggles, I was being pulled into another world. My gaze was somewhere between vacant and jammed, as I spun around the ceiling. I was preoccupied with my special powers. I had already been writing poetry for many years, but I hadn’t started gathering my poems together into a collection. She told me to: “Put all your psychosis into your poetry. That’s your special power.” The next day I wrote the first poem in a manuscript that has not found a home so far. She read my poem and said it would be more helpful than any psychology textbook. My friend Howard encouraged me to share my writing and trust in my voice, as well as offering specific suggestions on how to improve what I wrote over the years. Many other friends have encouraged and supported me as a writer every step of the way. They are part of my journey.
A Bouquet of Glass explores living with a "life-altering disability." If comfortable, could you share more about that?
The stories in A Bouquet of Glass emerge from my perspective living with a life-altering disability. I share my experience roaming in different realities that are often marginalized and misunderstood by the mainstream world. These realities span the range from spooky to sublime and everything in between. I also share my experiences having trouble navigating the city and feeling vulnerable in a razor-sharp world. I share what it is like to feel bombarded by the sights and sounds around me. My poems also explore the experience of living on disability and family support.
A Bouquet of Glass shares a sense of loss about the life I could have had if I didn’t have a disability. This sense of loss is an important part of my story. However, A Bouquet of Glass is also about the delight and magic in my experience of the world. As a disabled person whose plans have often been disrupted, I have discovered joy in unexpected places. My writing explores the value of connecting with other realities and practicing coming alive. My altered life opened me to a new sense of wonder and mystery.
“People like us. We’re often called sick. Because we don’t fit. We stare at a squirrel and our tail bristles. We often get caught gazing at the sky. And rummaging through the dark. This is what they call an emergency. It’s when danger happens. Because people like us. We break often. Get hurt often. Fall and trip often. But when we lie flat on the ground, our eyes inside of the sky. People like you. Well, you might want to join us.”
You write about your love of caves in A Bouquet of Glass. On your website, you describe the difference between "decline" and "descent" when it comes to your perspective on life. Could you share what you love about exploring caves and what you have learned from caving?
For me caving is a way of coming home. As someone who is very sensitive to stimulation and who sometimes takes specialized transit for people with disabilities to move around the city, I find the quiet darkness of caves deeply calming. I feel comforted having the earth surround me. Being in a cave is like being in another world while fully in my own body. It helps me be present with my knees and toes and beating heart. Caving also helps ease my sometimes paranoid and obsessive mind.
At the same time, caving helps me face my fears. I learn to do things that scare me, like crawling on hands and knees and sliding on my butt across a downwards sloping ledge over a fifty-foot drop. I was scared of falling, and my fellow companions encouraged me and showed me how to move my body. With their help, I faced my fear and found my way across!
Caving can be contemplative as well. I love letting my fellow travellers move on ahead of me, as I sit alone in the dark, with the whole world in my heart. Sometimes I share poems I have memorized with friends under the earth.
I have slipped into dark places many times in my life. I have found myself trapped in frightening inner worlds. I have experienced terror and paranoia. By moving downwards into the darkness of caves, I am learning to inhabit the dark places of my mind in a healing way. Caving helps me to touch my inner strength and understand my challenges as a courageous journey into hidden places. It is both a metaphor for discovery and an actual embodied practice.
One psychiatrist wrote on my disability income support application: “For someone who has graduated from law school at 26, her decline has been rapid and severe.” While I have lost a lot and have felt a lot of grief at needing to step back from a meaningful job as a peer supporter, I would rather speak of a sense of descent. My journey is not a downwards slide but a deepening. I am on a voyage into the unknown, a voyage that asks much of the heart. I frame my life story as an adventure, rather than a tragedy.
Do you have any writing plans you would like to share? What is inspiring you?
I have a number of manuscripts that I might like to find a home for, including a creative nonfiction book and a speculative novel about a heroine who travels into the underworld and learns to heal from her earlier descent into hell. Also, I have been enjoying writing poetry that is different from what I have written in the past. I went through a period where I wasn’t writing much, so I am happy to be writing again.
I am inspired to integrate some of my transcendent experiences into an emerging novel with characters who see visions of the other side when they are suffering. It is a story of queer friendship and adventures in hidden realms. The relationship between spirituality and madness is a mystery that propels me to try to put words to the nameless. I am inspired by the moments I have touched the eternal and been left in a state of awe. I hope that my writing can invite people into their own inner worlds.
Is there anything else you would like to add about yourself and/or your writing?
I wrote about having a naturally psychoactive mind in A Bouquet of Glass. This is a way of framing my extra-ordinary experiences in nonmedical language. At the same time, some of my poetry in A Bouquet of Glass gives life to dark and colourful expressions of what is called schizoaffective disorder (a combination of schizophrenia and a mood disorder and a part of the schizophrenia spectrum).
One term for my experiences is psychotic condition. Another term is human. For what can be more human than having your ups and downs and in betweens and back and forths? No matter what extremes I have experienced, I am always on the spectrum of humanity.
In my own life I have found that having a divergent mind can be messy and inconvenient and even scary, and it can also be a gift. It can open doors to new perceptions that are needed in this world. I hope my writing can welcome people as they are. To all those people who feel that there is no place you belong, here is a little welcome from me to you:
“and when i look at you i see myself and i feel we are part of each other and i can’t explain it so i invite you into my home and you take off your feet and we kneel together and i say you are beautiful please don’t saw away at your edges.”
About Carol:
Carol Krause is a poet who found herself trapped in the underworld and ended up decorating the darkest corners with stars. She is grateful for all those who have sat with her in the darkness. Carol has accompanied many people through the struggles and delights of life as a facilitator, supporter, and friend. Though it has been a source of grief to have had to step back due to disability, her current task is to practice the art of receiving care. And Carol is learning that her care can be offered in many ways. She hopes her writing can benefit those who struggle, which is all of us some of the time.
Carol’s writing has appeared in The Fiddlehead, Soul Forte, and Room, among other publications. Her debut poetry collection, A Bouquet of Glass, is published by Guernica Editions. You can find her in a cave at carolkrause.ca.
Photo by Marcus Buck