The Story of My Book: Megan Peak
Published periodically, “The Story of My Book” posts bring our collections to life through a series of five questions we ask all of our poets that highlight what makes every book unique and why Perugia is the right home for each of them (and may be for you and your book too).
Megan Peak on Girldom (Perugia, 2018)
1. What was the genesis of your Perugia Press book?
Like many who go on to get their MFA in Creative Writing, I wrote a version of Girldom during my time at The Ohio State University. I was young, living in a new city, and navigating heartbreak and homesickness and the unwieldy process of learning who I was as a writer, a daughter, a woman, and a teacher. The first part of the book clings to the past, to girlhood—Texas summers, wasps and hornets, sisterly bonds and breaks—while also propelling forward into a colder space of processing trauma. The book came into itself after graduation when I moved back home and continued to write and revise the original manuscript. When I reread the book, I see the self in the poems passing through the pages like an arrow, from beginning to end, girl to woman, fragmented to a bit more whole.
2. How did you find out about Perugia Press?
I believe my mentor, Kathy Fagan Grandinetti, told me about Perugia and their commitment to publishing women poets. As my advisor during graduate school, she knew my work better than anyone and thought Girldom had a good chance at catching the eyes of the prize’s readers and judges. I’m so glad she was right.
3. Can you describe an experience that confirmed Perugia Press was a good fit for you?
When I got the call from Becky, I had just left the NICU where my son, who was born at 24 weeks, had been for almost a month. Not only was she kind and celebratory, but she was immediately a source of tenderness and care as I explained my loss for words and current situation. Poetry felt so far away those first few weeks of the NICU, but when she called, I had a sense of something coming back to life. That call made me remember that I wasn’t just a mother. I was still a poet. I was still someone who could pay attention and write about it and share the experience with others.
4. How have you changed as a poet, writer, or creative person since your book came out?
I think, as a mother of two young children now, I have changed in many ways. I’ve had to become more protective of my time, better at managing it. Writing is slower these days, and I’m not as concerned with pushing out poems for publication like I was in grad school. I’m much slower now. I’m also writing more prose, which is new and incredibly difficult and exciting all at the same time. I started a Substack, My Inner Child Started a Substack, where I write about everything from my daughter screaming bad words under the water to my first girl crush. It’s a work in progress…as we all are.
5. Other than poetry, what moves and motivates you?
Just being in the world, I suppose. There’s a hummingbird outside my window right now where all the flowers are in full bloom. My children are upstairs, jumping on a bed and singing a Taylor Swift song together. It’s my husband’s birthday today, and I love him very much. There will be rain tomorrow, which means more green, more flowers, more birds. It all moves me. How could it not?
