By Michela Arlia
In early January, adjunct professor and alumna Chelsea Harlan was awarded the American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize by the American Poetry Review for her piece “Bright Shade.”
Originally from the Appalachian region, Harlan holds a B.A. in Literature and Visual Art from Bennington College and earned her M.F.A. in Poetry from Brooklyn College in 2017. Her award-winning work “Bright Shade” is a manuscript of poems all created by Harlan, where every individual piece is a retelling of an experience.
Harlan describes her process of creating the manuscript as similar to that of children’s playtime activities.
“I’ve never spent years building a toy boat with tiny hammers and nails before, but putting ‘Bright Shade’ together is approximate to what I imagine that hobby must feel like,” said Harlan.
Having spent copious amounts of time working on this overall piece, Harlan says the process of writing “Bright Shade” followed her through cross-country moves, quality time writing in her hometown, as well as the isolation that the pandemic initially offered.
Harlan then found her way to highlighting her work through the American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize, an annual open-call for poetry manuscripts, where the winning title is selected by a guest judge. The winner is awarded a prize of $3,000, publication of their manuscript with a standard book publishing contract, and royalties, according to the American Poetry Review website.
With what Harlan describes as straightforward guidelines in formatting, once submission by the author is complete, the guest judge makes their decision within months, a process Harlan regards as a very quick turnaround for poetry. This year’s judge was American poet and author Jericho Brown, who selected Harlan’s piece from over 1,000 entries.
“[Brown] chose ‘Bright Shade,’ to my utter honor and astonishment,” Harlan said. “I’m still not convinced this fortune isn’t some elaborate COVID fever dream, but here we are […].”
Harlan considers writing her specialty in life, having loved it as long as she could remember. She started writing poetry and other stories from a young age.
“My mom and I lived in a small cabin by a creek called Gunstock when I was really young, and without television or anything I started writing stories about creatures that carried on epically over countless flimsy spiral notebooks.”
Her main source of inspiration is the storytelling of creatures, influenced by major world events around us on the daily.
Harlan speaks of her inspirations listing “living things, the natural world, small miracles we’ll never understand, like squirrel noises and intrepid wild fruit trees. The world we’re losing in the devastating wake of climate change. The socioeconomic and racial impacts of climate change in a world unprepared and unwilling to take care of itself.”
Thinking ahead with her writing, Harlan says she is continuously writing and jotting ideas down, but doesn’t quite know where the writing will take her.
“I’m never not jotting notes and making lists, so I’ll just keep doing that and see what happens,” said Harlan. “A lot of poets talk about the element of surprise in their process, and I like to think I respect that sacred lightning, too. Not having any expectations about my own work makes for a much healthier relationship with wherever it is it comes from.”
As for any new pieces in the works after “Bright Shade,” Harlan says her focus right now is creating short stories, mainly for her eyes only, and a notepad full of ideas for writing a novel.
After temporarily relocating to the Catskills recently, Harlan works at a rural public library with hopes of teaching again soon. For now, you can catch her writing postcards to family and friends, reading a lot, and making up songs that occasionally pop into her head.
Her award winning manuscript “Bright Shade” will be published in September 2022 and will be distributed by Copper Canyon Press through Consortium.