NEA Art Works Interviews Hadara Bar-Nadav

One of the summer conversations at the NEA Art Works blog is devoted to poet and NEA Literature Fellow Hadara Bar-Nadav, author of, most recently, The New Nudity (Saturnalia Books). "Bar-Nadav’s work asks what it is to bear witness, what it is to grieve, what it means to remember, and ultimately, what it is to be human at a particular moment in history," writes Paulette Beete. About that NEA, and more:

[BAR-NADAV:] …The NEA enabled me to take a semester off of teaching, cover some of my childcare expenses, and have time to finish my latest book, which is called The New Nudity. It was published a couple of years ago from Saturnalia Books, and I wouldn't have been able to do that work without the Arts Endowment. It may have taken me another five years to write my book, but the fact that I had months of uninterrupted writing time was absolutely what I needed. I did also use some of the money to go on book tour, which was wonderful. I was able to talk to probably thousands of people about poetry and why it matters. I'm sure I taught hundreds of students during that tour as well. I wouldn't have done any of that without the NEA; I'm extremely grateful for that award.

NEA: What is it that you want the writing of a poem to do in the world?

BAR-NADAV: Especially in these times, I hope that [poetry] makes people feel less alone, that they feel like they have a community and they have people who hear them and see them. I also hope it helps people have a space to feel and to think in a world that doesn't allow us a lot of time and space to hear and to think and to feel. The quiet and the connectedness is a tremendous life-affirming gift. Yesterday I got a piece of fan mail from somebody whose wife had passed away, and he said something like, "Your book, Lullaby (With Exit Sign), "could stop a flock of geese and a group of men lifting weights. My wife died, and it brought me such comfort." He told me to go to his Facebook page and I could see a picture of his wife who had passed if I wanted to, and that he was just grateful for the poem. I had just gotten a poetry rejection and was feeling badly about it. I’d just gotten a bunch of terrible news from the university about my job. I was just feeling awful, and this note came through to say, "Thank you for your work. I hear you. Here's what I've been dealing with," and I just wept. We exchanged a couple of messages and I thought, "This is what poetry could do."

Read the full conversation at Art Works.