By Vivian Kalla
Catherine Barnett peers over black and red glasses at the rapt audience gathered in Smith Hall, white hair falling lightly over her shoulders, one eyebrow arching up, a detail of her face she poetises with affection. Her strong voice fills the room, weaving tales of imperial moths and her father, the moon, loneliness, transcendence and skorts.
Barnett graced Lewis & Clark on Feb. 18 as part of the Visiting Writer series to share poetry from her four books, the most recent of which was published in May 2024. The Hoffman Gallery on campus also featured her work alongside artist Catherine Fairbanks’ creations in an exhibit called “On Being a Porous Boundary,” which ran from mid-November through the end of February.
First and foremost, Barnett is a teacher. She will say she teaches creative writing, but only when pressed will admit to writing poetry and having published a few books. Barnett keeps her poetry close to her chest, protective of the creative work that comes from hours dedicated every single day to processing, refining and searching for the one nugget of interest that she then builds her poetry off of.
“It makes me a little bit secretive. Someone will say ‘You should write a poem about that’ and as soon as that happens and becomes conscious, it loses some of its power to investigate in writing for me. I often have to keep quiet so I can protect the creative energy,” Barnett said.
Barnett writes three pages every day, not just poetical revelations about love and life, but a brain dump about her day, what she has been reading, mullings over her preoccupations.
“Usually, I’ll have some kind of restraint,” Barnett said when I inquired about the structure of her creative process. “Maybe I have to use lots of repetition, or certain kinds of sonics or certain words over and over again to try and reinvent, some kind of exercise that distracts me from the fact that I am trying to make something.”
As a teacher, Barnett instructs her students to do a modified version where they are to write every day for 21 days.
“If at the end of the 21 days you don’t feel like it’s useful, I say you don’t have to keep doing it. But myself, I’ve never made it to 21 days without the muse coming down and helping me out,” Barnett said.
Artists of all vocations call upon muses — whether it manifests as a physical body that sculptors appreciate into their clay or more of an internal state where creativity flourishes in the mind’s eye of painters, Barnett’s muse is a flow of creative energy.
Without the barriers of politeness and social acceptability, the privacy and creativity that can be garnered through poetry reveals the importance of fluidity in artistic intelligence.
“The muse could be when the brain is very elastic, very plastic, and the movement from thinking to feeling, noticing to wondering to remembering. It’s very, very fluid. I think that’s what she feels like,” Barnett said
Moreover, the structure and dedication in pursuit of the art of poetry is a factor that Barnett finds yields confidence. It is not about writing well, but rather fulfilling a structure that allows a consistent flow of ideas and external processing that often bear hidden gems.
“If you just keep showing up, and much of that is never going to be anything, just the fact of showing up, I think trains your mind to be ready. Either when some emotional apprehension comes or some image, you are sort of ready to catch it,” Barnett said.
Barnett found her footing in creative writing as an art journalist, where she eventually decided traditional journalism was not her calling. After connecting with a teacher who helped her explore language as a material that she could manipulate and stretch, she began to pursue something new. With a multifaceted background in art writing and working around creatives, Barnett writes in search of the punctum, a tiny distinct point, that she then works to explore and expand.
“(The punctum is) a quality, a stillness, there’s some detail there that is a key there to some larger feeling” said Barnett.
Rather than sitting down with the intention to just write a poem as a job, Barnett’s process is a way of thinking about the world, which guides her to profound ponderings of the world around her.
As students, we are taught to explore the endless possibilities and morals that authors offer in their work, but rather than intending to impart her own definite conclusion, she would rather let her readers receive a feeling of tenderness, of increased attention.
“Maybe we could walk through the world with more tenderness, more alertness, and I’m very interested in the responsibility we have to each other,” Barnett said.
Barnett’s poetry is not overly indulgent in eccentric language, nor self obsessed and solipsistic; instead, she delves into moments of stillness where her word choices invite the readers to peer into her mind. In the Hoffman Gallery, her careful consideration of what the life of a mantis shrimp must be like, her steadfast reconstruction of loneliness from an oppressive power to a medicine and her dedication to repairing things rather than throwing them away, is deeply striking.
Breaking lines, parsing out and reorganizing, repeating and leaving space, Barnett’s poetry encounters the profound beauty that can be discovered through her dedication to always growing and stretching, appreciating the absurd and honoring the mundane.
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