Lulu Rasor joins Maine Poet Laureate Stuart Kestenbaum in conversation and to read her poem "Grendel’s Mother Takes the Mic," featured in A NEW LAND, a poetry anthology from The Telling Room. Stuart and Lulu discuss authorial voice, character point of view, Beowulf, the anonymity of female characters, authentic characterization, Maine as a setting, and why she can’t stop writing. Lulu is now a student at Oberlin College. She published her poetry collection, “An Open Letter to Ophelia,” through the Telling Room’s Young Emerging Authors Fellowship.
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.
Stuart Kestenbaum: What's it like to write in somebody else's voice, to become that person?
Lulu Rasor: It was interesting for this because Grendel's mother is not at all a human character. So I kind of tried to flip around what we might think are important or human ideas about stories or legacy, and how someone who's just completely unnatural to our mind and just thinks in a completely different way might view things that we think are essential to stories.
Stuart Kestenbaum: Welcome to Voices of 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 nonprofit 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 thirty 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. Lulu Rasor graduated from Yarmouth High School and now she's a student at Oberlin College. She published her poetry collection, An Open Letter to Ophelia, through the Telling Room's Young Emerging Authors Fellowship. In this episode, Lulu and I talk about reimagining mythological and fictional characters with a modern voice. First, she reads her poem, “Grendel's Mother Takes the Mic.”
Lulu Rasor: “Grendel's Mother Takes the Mic.”
Listen up! I don’t care for your petty battles, your
forgettable epics. Your tongues can’t pronounce
my name, so don’t even try. They say to name a thing
is to tame a thing, so I’m safe from domestication. Just hand
me that mic—while you still can. A tooth for a tooth, an eye
for an eye might not be your class of justice, but I make my own rule
beneath the murk and algae, over silver-darting slashes
and the endless sway of reeds. Where’s your hero now, safely
sleeping in dreams of victory? Your swords and soldiers can’t hold
me—I line my kitchen with the bones of kings. I won’t pretend
I’m here for parley or peace. We don’t have diplomacy
down in the mud and sludge. Teeth are the only treaty I know.
I’m unnamed, untamed, unnatural, unloved because I know
the silent death of womanhood. Mother sister wife
daughter lover princess queen—they stitch the world
together when your honor slashes it apart,
but who knows their names now? Tell me how it’s worthwhile
to follow rules when all you get is a gouge in the family tree.
Names are overrated, legacies a scam—that’s the harshest truth
you only find alone at the bottom of a lake.
And here’s a secret: wicked witches always have more fun.
I’m going down, but I’ll claw my way into your epics anyway,
nameless as I am.
Stuart Kestenbaum: Thank you. That's such a powerful poem. When did you write it?
Lulu Rasor: I wrote it senior year of high school when I was part of the Young Emerging Authors program, after I read Beowulf.
Stuart Kestenbaum: There's so many lines that I love like, "Teeth are the only treaty I know." You're writing in the voice of Grendel's mother from another work of literature, so was it the first time you'd done that?
Lulu Rasor: I think I'd written other poems that were from similar perspectives from the point of view of a mythological character, but I think it was the first time that I tried for a more modern voice almost, because I had almost this image of Grendel's mother literally doing slam poetry, which is why it's called “Grendel's Mother Takes the Mic,” and I wanted to add this modern boldness to her voice, which is why she doesn't use very old-sounding language. I wasn't intending to start out writing a poem about Grendel's mother when I read Beowulf, I was just like, "I own a copy of this, trying to research the mythology for this book, it's not super long. I'll read it and see if anything comes up." And I read the whole story and I was not feeling a huge spark of inspiration because it's kind of a traditional hero kills monster, hero kills another monster story. But then I turned to the back of the book where there was a family tree and I noticed that there were all of these blanks in the family tree, where it would say, "Unnamed male character married to unnamed wife," and then you had an unnamed daughter and then his son was named or something. And I noticed that pretty much all the people who didn't have names in the family tree were women, and then I was like, oh wow! Even Grendel's mother who was arguably the most important female character is defined by being someone's mother. She doesn't have a name of her own. And I started wondering, is having no name a bad thing? It means you're not defined by the narrative, but it also means you might not have a story. So eventually I just started writing about that and I wanted to write about Grendel's mom not having a name in relation to all the other women in the story who remain nameless.
Stuart Kestenbaum: When you started to write about Grendel's mother, well, you started with, "Listen up." How did that flow for you? Do you remember the flow of your process?
Lulu Rasor: Well, I remember that I wanted to start the poem with "Listen up," because Beowulf starts with "Listen," because it was originally an oral story that was written down presumably, so someone's saying, "Listen," is literally like, "Okay, listen up people. I'm going to tell a story. All gather on the fire and I'll tell the story of Beowulf." So I want to start the story with "Listen up," which is like a more modern take on that, with the idea that it is something that she's saying. And I remember I wanted to discuss the physicality of living at the bottom of lake in parts because it really hammers home the fact that she's not human because she literally lives at the bottom of a lake, which is why I wanted to write lines like beneath the murk and algae. And I also wanted to explore the idea that she's not human, which is why she discusses teeth at one point, lining her kitchen with the bones of kings. I was kind of interested in the way that she physically exists in this different location, that the hero has to go invade in order to kill her, but I also just wanted to write a character who's very unapologetic and defiant in the way she talks, which is why there's no apologies. She's like, "I'm wicked, and I enjoy it. I get to be in the story because I'm the villain. If I was quiet, I might not be here at all." She's proud of the fact that she's a villain because it means that she ended up in the story.
Stuart Kestenbaum: Yeah. It's definitely feels like, just from the very start of it, it's like, she's there. There's a real presence.
Lulu Rasor: Yeah. I really wanted to write her as like a very unapologetic there character, because she's pretty badass in the story because she's the final boss that Beowulf fights because he kills Grendel and then he's like, "Oh, we're all good. I saved the day, I killed the monster, I'm the hero. Oh no, the mom is coming for revenge!" So I wanted to write a character that embodies that same very powerful idea. She's powerful, not only in her actions, but in her words.
Stuart Kestenbaum: And you gave her a voice.
Lulu Rasor: Yeah, which is interesting. The retelling of Grendel that I'm reading right now, she can't speak, which I thought is interesting. It's from Grendel's perspective and he's very literate and can talk and thinks about the world, but in John Gardner's Grendel, his mother is kind of this illiterate, animalistic monster, which is interesting. It's such an opposite take on the Grendel's mother character that's kind interesting to read about.
Stuart Kestenbaum: What's it like to write in somebody else's voice to become that person?
Lulu Rasor: It was interesting for this because Grendel's mother is not at all a human character. We don't know what she looks like exactly, but she's definitely not a regular woman who just lives at the bottom of lake for some reason. So I tried to lean into this idea that she doesn't necessarily have human values or ideas, which is why she says stuff like, "Teeth is the only treaty I know," or the way she rejects this very human idea of legacy or names being important. So I tried to flip around what we might think are important or human ideas about stories or legacy, and how someone who's just completely unnatural to our mind and just thinks in a completely different way might view things that we think are central to stories.
Stuart Kestenbaum: Something about it feels very authentic.
Lulu Rasor: Thank you.
Stuart Kestenbaum: But also there's just a certainty to her voice. Have you continued to write in other people's voices?
Lulu Rasor: Actually, not as much. One of the things I've been trying to push myself as a writer is to, instead of occupying the voices of other people, try to write from my experiences in words, because for the book I wrote through Young Emerging Authors, An Open Letter to Ophelia, a lot of the poems were me inhabiting other stories or other characters, even if I was putting my own perspective or imagining how they relate it to my own life. Ophelia is lover of the main character in Hamlet and at the start of the story, she's scorned by the main character. Eventually she loses her brother and her father and she drowns. It's potentially a suicide, but no one's really sure in the story. I wanted to explore the character from her perspective, rather from that in the play where she's treated like an object and bad things happen to her and the people she loves, and eventually she dies. So I was curious, like, she's not the main character, but what would she say if she had a chance to go on long monologues like Hamlet does? But I did that for a while and I was like, this is fun, but now I want to try and imagine how I can write from my own words and perspective, which is an interesting challenge because it's a little harder to be more authentic because “Grendel's Mother Takes the Mic” is not about my life or my experiences, and that gives you kind of uneasiness because you're pulling from something, but it's not necessarily something from your heart. There is emotion to it, but it's not the same as like taking something that's very personal to you and putting it on the page. Now I'm trying to push myself to write other types of poetry.
Stuart Kestenbaum: Right, because I think when you write as a character, it's you, and it's not you. And sometimes you can be more you because it's not you. You have a screen. So you're in college now, you're at Oberlin. And have you always written? When you were young, were you a writer? Did you write stories?
Lulu Rasor: The joke is that I used to just read so much that eventually I had to produce some kind of word content. I started out writing mostly fiction and fantasy fiction because that was what I was reading, but I took a really awesome poetry class in junior year, which was just because I liked the teacher and I was like, "I'll take any class you teach because you seem cool." But then she made me fall in love with poetry and I got really into that for a couple of years, but now I'm going back a little bit to prose as well and writing fiction, but still writing poetry on the side.
Stuart Kestenbaum: And where did you go to school?
Lulu Rasor: Yarmouth High School.
Stuart Kestenbaum: What was your teacher's name?
Lulu Rasor: Marita O'Neill. She's actually a published poet.
Stuart Kestenbaum: And you've definitely always read a lot.
Lulu Rasor: Yeah. I'm wearing a white t-shirt that says "Book Nerd" in rainbow letters, which was given to me this past birthday by someone who knows me very well and was like, "That sounds a lot like you."
Stuart Kestenbaum: When did you start to read?
Lulu Rasor: I remember there was definitely a period in early elementary school where the teachers were like, "Oh, we're worried that Lulu isn't reading enough. Could you encourage her to read more at home?" And then the problem came like, "Can she please stop reading and do her homework?" So I don't know, I've always been reading since early middle school, I was always that kid who was lugging around a really thick fantasy book or the teachers would be like, "You already have a new book. Surely you can’t have finished that already." So pretty much all the time, this is what I do to relax, or what I do to learn information, or would I do when I'm bored, basically all the time.
Stuart Kestenbaum: Your poetry training came partly from The Telling Room and partly from Yarmouth High School, and being... You've had a long involvement with The Telling Room then, right? When did you first start?
Lulu Rasor: I remember that I came here and I did summer camps in the physical building of The Telling Room. I remember coming in and it was just filled with light and books and I was like, "Oh man, this is a nice place. I'm going to have fun."
Stuart Kestenbaum: And were you writing them? Or was it, you wanted to do it because you wanted to try writing? Or your parents thought you might like it?
Lulu Rasor: I was pretty solidly doing writing at that point. I remember in fifth grade English class, I would get in trouble because I was writing short stories in my notebooks instead of grammar exercises and stuff. So I signed up for it because I was already into writing, but I dragged friends along and be like, "This is fun. You should come as well," even if they weren't writers.
Stuart Kestenbaum: And so, when you got to Oberlin, it seems to me that your sense of the craft of writing is pretty refined. You've been at it for a long time. When you're in the literature classes, do you think your perspective is like a writer looking at writing? Are you... have part of a writer's mind when you're in an English class?
Lulu Rasor: Yeah, I guess so. It's impossible to turn that off in some way. I'll be reading something and I'll be like, "God, that's really interesting. I wish I could do that." Or I took a class my second semester that was on the archetype of the femme fatale literature. And that was really interesting to me because I was like, "What femme fatale if I considered writing?" Or, "How could this inspire something I want to write?" And I'm, like, scribbling ideas in the margins. So I feel like at a certain point it's like impossible for me to turn off the writer part of my brain, even if it's just jealousy and I'm like, "Oh, I wish I could write something that good."
Stuart Kestenbaum: Do you see yourself coming back to Maine when you're done with your education?
Lulu Rasor: The end of college feels so far away that it's hard to conceptualize it, even though I'm a fourth of the way through it, I guess. I feel like Maine is something that even if I don't physically live here, it will always be very close to me because, growing up here, the natural world is just all around you and it feels like living in a postcard sometimes, and I feel like that will always influence my writing even if I'm not physically living in Maine. There is one poem in this that I think is influenced by location and it's not about Maine at all, it's about the time I was driving to Ohio as part of college visits and was banned from driving on the highway because I drove over a cone because they were doing work on the highway, and I was not allowed to continue driving after that because my mom was like, "You're going to crash the car." So I sat in the back of the car and read the entire Iliad because I had nothing else to do. So there is a poem about location, but it's not about Maine.
Stuart Kestenbaum: Did you write about that?
Lulu Rasor: Yes, I did. It's called “The Iliad Across Ohio.” So that turns up in this. I don't think Maine has much of a presence in the poems that I've written here, but it definitely has a very strong presence in the fiction that I'm writing right now because I naturally set stuff in Maine and the town in the book that I'm currently writing is very closely based off of the town that I live in, and setting is something that I really like playing around in fiction, but I would say it hasn't turned up in my poetry as much, but that's something I want to lean into. So I might not return to Maine physically after college, but I feel like it will definitely turn up in my writing again and again.
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 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. To learn more about The Telling Room and its programs visit tellingroom.org. I'm Stuart Kestenbaum. Thanks for listening.