Meet Claire Coenen
Claire Coenen is the author of the new collection The Beautiful Keeps Breathing. With a professional background as a clinical social worker, she helps people connect with self-compassion, resilience, and joy through imaginative self-expression. We’re happy to share our recent conversation with Claire!
Tweetspeak (TSP): Tell us about your personal introduction to poetry. Fast lane, slow burn, or something else altogether?
Claire Coenen (CC): Good question! I always enjoy hearing how poetry-lovers initially connected with poetry. Looking back, I see poems as little candles glowing in my life as I was growing up. I didn’t read a lot of poetry as a kid, but I remember having warm feelings when I did connect with poems. When I was in first or second grade, my parents encouraged my siblings and me to memorize some classic poems to recite for our grandparents. I memorized “Chartless” by Emily Dickinson and Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost, and I remember really liking both these poems and feeling very intrigued by their messages. I grew up in a house where there was always music playing, and I think poetry felt like another kind of music to me.
The first time I remember truly being entranced by poetry was when I was reading The Prophet by Khalil Gibran in 9th or 10th grade. There was so much in that book that I didn’t get intellectually, but the language struck something deep inside. The words felt so alive, and musical and radiant with truths. And I remember thinking, “you can evoke this much power with words!?” I’ve re-read The Prophet many times since, and I continue to feel a lot of gratitude to Gibran for writing with so much beauty and soul-force.
TSP: What has been one of the unexpected highlights of your poetry journey?
CC: Connecting with James Crews was definitely a highlight of my poetry journey and our connection really became a catalyst for me to live into my life as a poet. I had participated in his “Poetry of Resilience” group and loved it. On a bit of whim, I emailed him in spring of 2023 to see if he could consult with me about some of the poems I’d written. I’d written so much over the years but had never taken the time to really focus on refining my work. James kindly agreed to meet with me. He became a guiding presence and really shepherded me in putting my first collection of poems together.
TSP: You have a new collection out. How did it come about?
CC: In 2016, I was in a Master of Theological Studies program, and for my master’s thesis I had the opportunity to write a spiritual memoir. In the chapters of this manuscript, which I titled The Beautiful Keeps Breathing, I dove into my past experiences with grief, mental illness, and spiritual searching. I briefly considered trying to publish the memoir, but I decided it wasn’t ready to be out in the world. After divinity school, I continued to write, and I devoted a significant amount of my free time to writing and studying poetry. When I met with James, he helped me revise my poems and consolidate the writing I’d done over the past several years into a full collection of poems. Beauty, loss, and breath were themes that kept emerging in my poems, and it became clear to me the title of my master’s thesis, The Beautiful Keeps Breathing, was really meant to be the title for this collection of poems I was creating.
TSP: Speaking of that new collection, you did a beautiful, beautiful book launch party. What inspired you? How did you pull it together? If you were advising another author or poet, what might you tell them if they wanted to do something similar?
CC: Thank you! I did spend a lot of time imagining how I would like to celebrate my book’s entrance into the world. I knew I wanted to create a gathering that was ultimately a celebration of poetry and beauty where everyone (especially folks aren’t especially into poetry) felt welcomed. I also knew I wanted to bring the poems to life as much as I could.
Nashville, TN, is a city with so many creative people, and I thought it would be special to collaborate with other creatives who are passionate about beauty. I chose to host the event in a gorgeous co-working space for women, with big windows and comfy pink chairs. Since flowers appear throughout The Beautiful Keeps Breathing, I knew I wanted to have lots of them at the event. There is a local garden in town called Boscobel Gardens, whose flowers I’d admired on Instagram, and I reached out them about create arrangements with flowers from their garden for the launch party. The owners of Boscobel Gardens put me in touch with this incredible local caterer, BoTanique, who specializes in incorporating edible flowers in her arrangements, BoTanique created this delectable spread of food inspired by the poems.
There was an up-front investment of time and money, and in the days leading up to it I had spikes of feeling like I’d bitten off more than I could chew. That said, I will always remember that evening with so much gratitude and joy. So, if you are an author wanting to create a memorable book launch, I encourage you to channel your creative energy into envisioning how you want to bring your book to life. It’s also helpful to think about the creative folks in your community whose work you admire and to connect with them in bringing your vision to life.
TSP: If you could meet any poet from any era, who would you like to meet and why? (Sure, you can share one or two of your favorite lines from their poems.)
CC: This is a hard question! There are lots of poets I’d like to meet. In this moment, I think I’d like to meet Maya Angelou. There is a poem in The Beautiful Keeps Breathing that expresses my gratitude to her, and I’d love to sit down with her over tea and just let her know much I appreciate the ways she was such a courageous human, woman, and writer. In her poem, “When Great Trees Fall,” she writes:
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.
Maya Angelou is someone who lived a “poetic existence,” and I know I am better because she existed.
TSP: The world of poetry is wide. And the seasons of life keep turning. Is there a poem you’ve kept by your side over time? (Maybe you’ve even memorized it?) What is it about the poem that has made it a keeper?
CC: Rilke’s poem, Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29 (translated by Joanna Macy) has been a deeply important poem to me. I memorized it without meaning to. I just read it so much during a season of life when the poem felt so relatable to me, and the words in the poem became a part of me. In 2016, I was diagnosed with a condition called Spasmodic Dysphonia, which causes dysfunction of the vocal cords and makes it difficult to speak clearly. I remember reading this poem and feeling as though Rilke was writing the poem directly to me, that I was the “quiet friend.” The words “feel how your breathing makes more space around you” and “what batters you becomes your strength” have become two mantras for my life. I also wish I could thank Rilke for writing a poem that made me feel so much less alone during a lonely season of life.
Photo by Daniel Seßler, Creative Commons, via Unsplash.
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Bethany R. says
Thank you for sharing this inspiring interview. I would love to read her new collection.
Bethany says
I’m going to try and attend one of her upcoming readings.