Henry Spritz joins Maine Poet Laureate Stuart Kestenbaum in conversation and to read his poem "Hunting for Light," featured in A NEW LAND, a poetry anthology from The Telling Room. Stuart and Henry discuss the energy and creativity among young artist communities in Maine, finding grains of inspiration, writing about the juxtaposition of familiar places and people in poetry, taking wild ideas that matter into filmmaking, and Maine as the central inspiration in all art forms. Henry is currently attending Bowdoin College. He was part of The Telling Room’s Young Emerging Author’s Fellowship when he published his novel THE ROAD TO TERRENCEFIELD.
Voices of the Future is hosted and conceived by Stuart Kestenbaum, produced by Josephine Holtzman and Isaac Kestenbaum at Future Projects, with help from Carly Peruccio, mixed by Merritt Jacob, and music by Jordan Kramer. Voices of the Future is curated and distributed by Molly McGrath and Rylan Hynes of The Telling Room. This series is made possible by the Academy of American Poets with funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
To learn more about The Telling Room and its programs, visit www.tellingroom.org.
Henry Spritz: Right now, there is a lot of creative energy, especially in my generation. And there are so many kids who are coming from all around the world who now live here and who want to make movies and who want to write and who want to make music. And there's just such a great art scene in Maine right now.
Stuart Kestenbaum: Welcome to Voices of the Future. I'm Stuart Kestenbaum. In this series, I'm interviewing young writers and poets from Maine, all of whom have participated in programs of the Telling Room, a non-profit writing center in Portland. The Telling Room’s mission is to empower youth through writing and to share their voices with the world. All of the authors in the series are featured in A New Land, an anthology of 30 poems written at the Telling Room. When I read or hear the work of these writers, I am moved by their enthusiasm, skill, and courage. Some of them were born in Maine. Others have come here from Africa and the Middle East. All speak with urgency about their lives and their futures.
Henry Spritz graduated from Waynflete School, and now he's a sophomore at Bowdoin College. He was part of the Telling Room’s Young Emerging Authors Fellowship when he published his novel, The Road to Terrencefield. In this episode, Henry talks about how Maine is a central character in all of his creative work from writing to film. First, he reads his poem, “Hunting for Light.”
Henry Spritz: “Hunting for Light.” Henry Spritz.
You knew them when they were bodies of water,
born from pine-tilled earth and northern summers,
raised on coastal rock and splintering piers.
As soon as they could find the surface they ran,
pulled from carpeted station wagons and the heat of day,
leaving morning and screen doors swinging behind them.
Pulled, spilling down wooden stairs, running over great lawns,
to crest above the blue, and the green, and the eggshell
and the rippling dark schools of guppies.
They could see it all in
those moments of weightlessness, when their feet left the dock
and the ocean seemed to sink back in anticipation.
From the stone to the sky to the sea
they felt the water rushing up their backs, into their hair,
pulling them into an embrace.
This is where you met them
when you were too young to remember, friends
with faces and names you have forgotten.
After seasons apart,
a decade,
the time it takes for a childhood to end,
you meet them here still.
Those who are swept up on these shores,
as you are, after so many tides.
Below the surface
their forms mix and become
lost with yours and the kids you once were.
Their bodies turn to churning water,
the pull of a current near your ear,
the presence of someone close by.
You paddle and turn among them,
wrinkled and sleek, eyes closed.
You are different creatures here.
Those kids, who went missing
summers back, for other states and other lives,
they could be swimming around you.
Those kids, dead or dying in the morning,
under a fluorescent bulb and different stars,
they dance in the thermals and murmur near you now.
Currents shift, bubbles climb, and you pull, pull, pull,
leaving them in the dark behind your eyes,
to emerge on the sunburnt dock.
Chalked by salt prints like ashes,
there they lay, the tired and the dried ones,
embalmed in light.
Faces wrapped in sleep and bleached towels
even then you can pretend they are the old friends,
hiding beneath worn skin and fresh cotton.
Even when the sun joins the game and is pulled under too
and the silhouettes trail toward frames on the hill, hunting for light,
you can imagine they are the old ones,
and you give their faces and names to those forms,
bodies you once knew in the sea.
Stuart Kestenbaum: Thank you so much. So Henry, when did you write “Hunting for Light”?
Henry Spritz: I would say probably around 15, and I'm 19 now, about to turn 20. The poem was written for The Telling Room. It was a project I was working on here, and then I've sort of revisited this poem over the years, again and again, appropriately, because that's sort of what the poem is also about, is sort of returning to this place and how its meaning has changed to you in the same way. I felt like I just kept coming back to this poem, its meaning kept changing for me, and this past year I sort of spent a little bit more time to really chisel it down, figure out what was at its core, and sort of also make it reflect the few years that had happened since I originally wrote it. I really feel like I've finally kind of finished it, but yeah, it's been a few years in the making.
Stuart Kestenbaum: What is at its core for you?
Henry Spritz: For me, it was really about these sort of cycles that you have in your life that aren't measured in sort of constant intervals. It might not be in years or in days or in decades, but you have these certain places and certain people in your life that you return to, again and again and again, and it might take you five years before you see them or a year before you go back to that place. And just about that idea of sort of, well then how do you measure the space in between those visits or between those experiences? Because you can't just say, “Oh, it was another year,” sometimes it's been ten years since you've seen someone. So, that was really what it was about to me.
Stuart Kestenbaum: How'd you start writing it?
Henry Spritz: This poem is written about a place that I go to, or that I've lived for most of my life. And it's funny, actually, usually when I'm writing, I tend to sort of avoid things that are very personal or that are actually my real life experiences. I like to draw from what I'm seeing in the world around me and sort of use little grains of inspiration and sort of then develop a whole story around that. And I usually sort of shy away from stuff in my own life. So I think that's sort of another reason why this poem, I've been working on it for so long is because, you protect those moments so preciously for moments from your own life. This has just been something where I started a long time ago and I've always known that it was very precious to me, so I've been very careful and very sort of delicate with it.
Stuart Kestenbaum: Where's the specific place?
Henry Spritz: This is up near Belfast. It's a small town outside of Belfast.
Stuart Kestenbaum: Do you still tinker with it in your mind while you're having coffee and you'd go, “Oh yeah, I think I need to change that line or want to add this”?
Henry Spritz: With other pieces of writing and with other projects, that does happen to me, but with this piece actually, it really has been something that I've only revisited very infrequently. And when I do revisit it, then I change everything, and I completely rewrite it. The meaning of this and the purpose of this poem changes every time I feel like I have one of these sort of full circle moments that this piece is about.
Stuart Kestenbaum: There is a part of it that's very poignant when you talk about people who may have passed on, but just the sense of a passage of time—your life over time and the constancy of the place, juxtaposed with the things that change all around it.
Henry Spritz: Exactly, right. That's the perfect way to put it. Another part of this poem is also, if you do have people in your life who pass away or who are no longer part of your life, you still, I think, you attach a part of your connection to that person to other things. There's a certain place you always knew that person or a certain song that always reminded you of them. You still have these connections to that person, even if they're not in your life. And when you've had such a strong connection to both a person and a place, like this poem is sort of about, if that person is no longer there, then you still have that very strong connection, and that's sort of what I talk about in the poem—sort of swimming under water and sort of almost pretending like these bodies around you, they may be strangers, but when you have your eyes closed and all you can sort of feel is just the presence of someone nearby, you can sort of almost pretend like it's someone else, and you can still almost make that connection. Exactly like you said, part of this is about how these places in our life might seem like they remain constant, but what actually makes them up—the people, the experiences, the memories—all that stuff, it's constantly changing and constantly evolving, and just that sort of dance of both the constantly ephemeral, that's also what this is all about.
Stuart Kestenbaum: It has a dreamlike quality, and it also strikes me that your sense of place seems very strong.
Henry Spritz: Absolutely. Maine is the most important character in every serious project I've ever worked on. And I've also done a lot of stuff in film and that's sort of where I've been focusing a lot of my attention recently. I've lived in Portland, I've lived up near Belfast, and now I'm living in Brunswick and I feel like I just really have a good understanding for this place, and there's a lot to be inspired by here. It's an incredibly beautiful place, and when you also have just a lineage of experience and history here with your family… Yeah, I just, I have a very strong connection to Maine.
Stuart Kestenbaum: So you went to Bowdoin last year and you're moving into the dorm and people are coming from all over the country and abroad, and somebody says, “Where are you from?” You say, “Maine.” And they say, “What's it like to grow up here?” What would you say when, did you have any of those conversations?
Henry Spritz: I always wanted to leave Maine. I was planning on going to California or to New York City for college, and I ended up staying here. And that's because I think that Maine is a place that, there is still so much to explore and so much that's undiscovered and so much that is… There are like worlds in the small details, you know? And I think that people can come to Maine and say, “Oh, it's, a lot of it is just forest. A lot of it is just coastline.” But, if you take the time, there are so many incredibly rich stories that are all sort of hiding beneath the surface, just as many as you could find in New York or Los Angeles, you know?
Stuart Kestenbaum: What stories are inspiring you?
Henry Spritz: Right now there is a lot of creative energy, especially in my generation. There are so many kids who are coming from all around the world who now live here and who want to make movies, and who want to write, and who want to make music, and there's just such a great art scene in Maine right now and especially in Portland. And it's really beautiful to see all these different sort of perspectives and voices and cultures coming together. And that's something that The Telling Room is a huge part of. I mean, The Telling Room is really helping make that happen and giving kids a voice and a chance to express themselves.
Stuart Kestenbaum: When did you first come to The Telling Room?
Henry Spritz: Seventh grade. Yeah, that was when, I was part of the first class of Young Emerging Authors, which was, yeah, seventh grade. And at the time it was just, it was the first year of the program, and I met some amazing people in that program. And from there on, I was involved in different programs, I've done different things. Everything from running a 5k or 10k to doing some film projects and stuff for the Telling Room. So I've done everything.
Stuart Kestenbaum: Do you remember what it was like when first came in here in seventh grade? Did you think of yourself as a writer then?
Henry Spritz: No. No. I mean, when you're in seventh grade, you have all these wild ideas and these sort of these huge ambitions, and I remember coming here and feeling like I'd finally, at the time, it was like, I'd finally made it. It was like I'd found the people and the place that were going to propel me and sort of push me, give me the push that I needed. And that was huge because also just to have someone say, “Your ideas, you knoe, we like your ideas, we want to help you, we want to make this, too.” That was, that's huge. Just having someone give you that confidence, that's invaluable.
Stuart Kestenbaum: So in addition to the poetry, you're mostly working on films now?
Henry Spritz: Yeah, I've been doing lot of screenwriting, and then I also am a filmmaker. So I've been writing scripts and making films for the past couple of years. I see that as the exact same muscle as writing poetry, and I really try and take all of the skills and all the techniques that I learned the past almost like 10 years now of writing, and I try and use all of those when I'm making films and try and make the film have the same rhythms and the same structures and the same, musicality that I would try to apply to a poem or to apply to a piece of writing. So, I see it as a direct extension of all the work that I've done at the Telling Room and outside.
Stuart Kestenbaum: Tell me about a film, your favorite ones or one you're working on now.
Henry Spritz: Right now actually this past year when I was at Bowdoin my first year, I spent the year writing a feature-length, which is something I had never attempted before. The two central characters are two young artists in a small Maine town that for several reasons is sort of, kind of disappearing off the map, and they're really the last of a few kids left from their generation. And so they, over the course of one summer, try and create a project that captures what the essence of their generation, what was the essence of their childhood there? And what was, what were the key moments, what were the key memories? What were the key experiences, the feelings that defined growing up in that town, before they're gone and potentially anyone else who remembers what it was like has gone?
Stuart Kestenbaum: Where did you film it?
Henry Spritz: In Portland, actually up in near Belfast where this is written about, a little bit in Sanford where my Mom is from, Westbrook, all around in the southern Maine area.
Stuart Kestenbaum: Who were some of your filmmakers who inspire you?.
Henry Spritz: So I'll shout out some local artists. I know Daniel Kayamba has actually done some stuff with The Telling Room, but he's another Portland filmmaker who I've done a lot of work with in Portland and who is an incredible filmmaker. I'm inspired by him. My friend Claude, who I also worked in this film with. In general, I find that I actually draw most of my inspiration for films from music, or from writing, from poetry. I actually rarely feel like I watch a movie and think, “Oh, that's something I'm trying to capture.” It's more, I listen to a song and think, “Oh, that's a melody that, it's a feeling that I want to incorporate into the film,” or I read a poem or read a piece of writing and think, “Oh, that's another feeling that I want to bring in.” It's all just about finding these little moments that speak to me in the world around me and bringing them into one project, and less about sort of trying to take one style or one aesthetic and then just copy it over.
Stuart Kestenbaum: And you've been making art since you were 13.
Henry Spritz: I'm privileged enough to have a lot of resources to be able to make projects like a feature-length film, and a lot of other kids are, I'm sure it's much more difficult for them to get up and to work on their passions and their projects. And, yeah, for me, it's really, I really believe that art is like the most transformative, powerful thing that you could, you could dedicate your life to. I really believe that, and when I see some of the things going on in the world, I really feel like that just, that's more of a need for us to push harder and to continue making and creating and working together. I mean, art is, you're collaborating with other people. You're understanding other people's perspectives. You're working together to create something greater, to create a piece of art, to create something beautiful that will hopefully inspire other people. And so to me, it is the most powerful force in this world is art.
Stuart Kestenbaum: Voices of the Future is hosted and conceived by me, and produced by Josephine Holtzman and Isaac Kestenbaum at Future Projects, with help from Carly Peruccio. The music in this episode is by Jordan Kramer. The series is made possible by the Academy of American Poets with funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. To learn more about the Telling Room and its programs, visit tellingroom.org. I'm Stuart Kestenbaum. Thanks for listening.