Interview: Barbara Henning on “Girlfriend” and the Craft of Poetic Memoir

Our selves are collages of the people that impact us; we are products of every person we have met. To put this in familiar terms, no man is an island.

No woman, either. Barbara Henning’s recently published poetic memoir Girlfriend is a gorgeous homage to the women that have shaped, influenced, and informed Henning’s life. The subjects of these poems range from teachers and family members to friends, authors, and fictional characters. Through the stories of these women, Henning’s story emerges: an eldest daughter in working-class Detroit; a Bohemian, a yogi, an artist, a mother, and a lifelong lover of literature. Throughout Girlfriend, the death of Henning’s mother, which happens during her childhood, haunts many of the relationships and connections explored throughout the work.

Accompanying the prose poems that compose this collection are photos of the women, many of which were taken by Henning herself, and all of which act as windows into the times and places of Henning’s subjects. 

I loved reading Girlfriend. Despite knowing Barbara for several years as a phenomenal instructor at Writers.com, I learned a lot about her life and felt like I had actually just lived it myself—if only for a moment. I’m grateful for the chance to have read it, and for her willingness to do an interview about Girlfriend with Writers.com.

Below the interview is a recording of the Zoom reading we hosted with Barbara, as well as links to her books and other writing.

Interview: Girlfriend by Barbara Henning

Sean Glatch: Girlfriend is a poetic memoir, or a memoir written in poetry. This feels like a relatively contemporary approach to memoir, where the work is written in essays / vignettes / snippets, rather than attempting a longer, more coherent narrative (as in a novel). What did the format of this collection allow you to do as you approached this memoir project?

Barbara Henning: One of the ideas behind the book is that our stories are not just about us but about our relationships with others. I didn’t start with a form or genre in mind other than loosely planning at first to write prose poems about my childhood friends. Years ago, I wrote a few sketches and then a few years back I decided to pick it up again. For many years I had been writing poetry using collage, disjunctive breaks and interruptions in poetic prose/prose poems. These techniques eventually became almost second nature. So after a while I could fluidly think and/or construct the poem or prose with collage and interruptions, while still seeming like a stream of consciousness. I had these ideas in mind as I remembered my relationships with girl and women friends, as well as characters and authors.

Our stories are not just about us but about our relationships with others.

SG: Girlfriend is comprised of prose poems. I’ve taken your Poetic Prose: The Prose Poem course, and I remember in the epiphany section, I think you talked about accessing the unconscious to generate sudden epiphany. What did writing these poems in prose allow you to access in the work?

BH: In that course, in one assignment we experimented with epiphanies that are so subtle you might call them “anti-epiphanies,” like James Joyce’s. We also worked with dreams and the unconscious in another unit on surrealism. I hope most of my endings are subtle, more like anti- epiphanies. I think you are asking why I wrote these particular prose poems in prose rather than using lines. I didn’t want the flow of words, images, ideas to be interrupted by line ends. I didn’t want to highlight the phrases and words. I wanted the reader to be swept up in the continuity from one thought to the next, and then notice the rhythm or repetition or disjunction. I intended each piece to be like a mind reminiscing about a particular friend.

SG: Girlfriend explores the women who have influenced you throughout your life, from childhood to present. What did you learn about your own life after having written the prose poems in this collection?

BH: Through my friend’s lives, I saw myself and who I was and how I related to others. I think I may have become more forgiving of myself and of others. I learned that often I have been attracted to friends who experienced similar losses or difficulties, especially in my youth—even in the books I was reading. When I gathered together the memories about a particular friend, I often realized how much we need each other, and I often felt a surge of gratitude. I was reaffirmed in something I had witnessed and learned as a child with my grandmother and aunts; it is usually, but not always, women who support each other during difficulties. Also, I learned that I could access memory through my imagination in the same way a dream revises memory but might catch the truth of it. It might not be identical to what happened, but still there is a truth revealed. Throughout my life, and even now, it is my women friends or my sisters who I can call up and talk through a difficulty, or just to ask for a recipe.

I learned that I could access memory through my imagination in the same way a dream revises memory but might catch the truth of it.

SG: A few ending lines in Girlfriend really stuck with me. For example, in “Virginia”, you end with: “…who now, without realizing it, carry along the stream of their familial consciousness.” And, in “Martine”: “I lost the child, or he lost me, but if you had not said these words, I might never have loved in the way I loved.” There is something here, the blending I think of the individual and collective, the conscious and unconscious, the personal and political.

BH: I think the blending you are speaking of is very present in “Virginia.” In the line you quote, I’m referring to Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, and I’m thinking about the way we pass along our language with each other through dialogue, from mother to child, friend to friend, ancestor to the next generation. Our consciousness is composed of our dialogue with others. The minds and lives of the characters in Woolf’s novel (based on her family) are forever shaped by her family’s way of talking. And my consciousness is shaped by the language exchange with my family and friends and the books I’ve read. We are all related. And maybe the link from one friend to another in Girlfriend is one way of charting that. With the last line in “Martine”, I’m dwelling on something Martine Bellen said to me that I took into my thinking, and it then influenced a decision I made. Her language and thought became intertwined with my language, and mine with the language of my mother and so forth and so on.

I tried not to dominate the poems with too much about myself.

SG: One thing that intrigues me about Girlfriend is that the “I” feels incidental to the work. Certainly, the “I” is present, but in all of these prose poems, you’re more the lens than the subject, and so a portrait of who you are emerges almost like an aperture. How did you situate yourself in this collection, and what did you learn about yourself through this approach?

BH: I tried not to dominate the poems with too much about myself. Some are more focused on me and some less, but I tried to stay mostly focused on the girl/woman friend and on our relationship, inserting something now and again about me—something we shared or something that drew me toward the friendship. I guess you’re right, part of remembering in this project involves seeing myself with the other, so maybe I’m kind of functioning as a writer-witness. In a way these are also like letters to the person I’m remembering. Maybe they are also a little like what Frank O’Hara referred to in his playful essay “Personism”: “one of its minimal aspects is to address itself to one person (other than the poet himself).” I hadn’t thought about that before. I’ve always been attracted to the New York School poetics: personal, intimate, and experimental.

SG: A somewhat obvious observation about the work is that the prose poems become much longer as the collection goes on—of course, because as you age, your stories grow more complex, and because you probably remember more about the women you knew as an adult, not as a child. Do you find that the speaker in these poems evolves in other ways as the work progresses?

BH: Well, as I got older, I read more books, became better educated and more situated in my life as a poet which entailed more complex friendships. I raised children and maneuvered my way through ordinary and extraordinary difficulties. That must come through in the length and complexity of the poems. Some of my friendships began when I was in my early twenties and have continued until today. So that’s a lot of time. But maybe the poems are longer because I have always been very talkative, and my mind is full of thoughts. The older I get, the more words I have . . .

SG: What role does memory play in this collection? Did you find yourself having to speculate or guess at details in any of these poems, especially the poems set in your childhood?

BH: My goal has been to tell truth, but if possible, not to cause harm to others. Therefore, I shared many of these stories with my friends. And there was always something, some minor error in memory pointed out. If my reaction was – Oh yeah, I remember that – then I made a change. If I felt it was more important to stay true to memory, I stayed with the error. When I couldn’t remember something and I didn’t know how to find the person or I didn’t want to find the person, I imagined what I couldn’t remember. As I explain above, I believe imagination holds a truth of its own. Possibly when we dream or imagine, we might even be more accurate. I encourage my students to use their imagination combined with memory to write their memoirs.

Imagination holds a truth of its own. Possibly when we dream or imagine, we might even be more accurate

SG: Most of Girlfriend is chronological, but you reserve the end of the collection to talk about your family, including your mother and daughter. Why did you situate family at the very end, rather than embedded in the work’s chronology as with the rest of the poems?

BH: My sisters have been with me most of my life. If I had put their stories (our stories) in the beginning section, I would have given away what happens later. The book wouldn’t be as engaging for readers. I wanted the conflict and difficulties to open up a little at a time. My mother stays present with me throughout—even though she died when I was eleven—so it also felt right to have her at the end. Also, there’s a way that the narrator (the author, me) is learning about herself as she writes. Maybe having family at the end is a little climactic.

SG: You are currently at work on a companion poetic memoir, tentatively titled Boys & Men. Does your approach to this collection differ from your approach to Girlfriend?

BH: The shape is the same, prose and photos. The collage-like structure of a mind reminiscing is similar. The point of view is the same, a first person speaking to the subject. I have had some very close friendships with men as well as women, and these poems may be similar to those in Girlfriend. One thing I realized today while working on “Boys and Men” is that many of them are less homage-like than those in Girlfriend. Maybe the reader will see something I don’t. One thing—when I’m writing about men who I’ve had passionate and intimate sexual relations, the tension and tone is different. In 2001, my teacher in India warned me away from other sexual relations except in marriage. If you want to meditate, you don’t want to be chasing along after your desires. I didn’t listen to him, however. I continued along that bumpy here-and-now path. When I’m finished with this book, perhaps I’ll have learned something about myself and men, something that I don’t yet know because I haven’t yet finished the book.

SG: What advice do you have for Writers.com students interested in the project of a poetic memoir?

Make lists of events/people/places, memories that return and return, moments that were important to your life.

BH: There are many ways to write memoir. An interesting book to read is Joe Brainard’s I Remember published by Granary Books. It’s poetry and its prose and it’s easy to read. It’s a beautiful book. He writes lists of memories, all starting with “I remember…” One sentence or one paragraph each and the catalogue builds, not chronologically, but following memory. I just remembered it today and I’m going use it in the memoir class I’m teaching in the spring.

Advice for students? Off the top of my head. Make lists of events/people/places, memories that return and return, moments that were important to your life. One by one, write the story. Write the sketch. Write the flash. Write the poem. Write the image. Write the analysis. Let them accumulate. You will have a draft.

Recording: Barbara Henning Reading from Girlfriend

We had the pleasure of hosting Barbara for a poetry reading with Writers.com. Watch the full recording here:

More About Girlfriend

Buy Girlfriend here, from Hanging Loose Press.

Read selections of Girlfriend from MER here.

Read MER‘s review of Girlfriend here.

Read The Arts Fuse‘s review of Girlfriend here.

Learn more about Barbara’s writing and teaching.