I burned through Philomath: Poems, the debut poetry collection from Devon Walker-Figueroa, in one sitting. A narrative coming-of-age poetry collection laced with searing imagery and gut-punch single-line revelations, Philomath is about Walker-Figueroaâs childhood in Benton Countyâs rural community, Kings Valley, and in nearby town Philomath. (You can read the collectionâs titular poem, one of its best, here.)
Philomath, which came out this week, is a 2020 National Poetry Series winner, and blurbed by the likes of Joyce Carol Oates and Sally Keith.
âI never wrote with the assumption they would read it,â Walker-Figueroa says in a recent interview with the Mercury. âItâs a wild dream come true, but it also doesnât feel entirely real to me.â
These days, Walker-Figueroa lives in Brooklyn, and is working on her second Masters of Fine Artsâthe first was in poetry, and this one is in fiction.
âItâs interesting to be promoting poetry and working on fiction,â she says. âIt feels a little bit like having two gods. Which is fineâIâm definitely pro-pagan, in true Oregon fashion.â
Hereâs more of our conversation, which touches on Biblical themes, Oregoniansâ paradoxical relationship to nature, and the challenges of writing about people you know.
MERCURY: My first question is the most obvious one: What made you want to write about your childhood in rural Oregon?
WALKER-FIGUEROA: For one, these people haunted me, this place. I havenât lived there for a number of years, but I come back and visit my familyâthis place really went with me everywhere Iâve gone. Iâm not sure I couldâve written this first book about anything else, to be honest. Maybe itâs an inevitability to have a fascination with where one is from, to have a point of origin. But beyond that, there were a lot of people I encountered in that area, that I felt like their stories, what I had of them to tell, were worth sharing.
Thereâs a sense, living in a rural place sometimes, that no one knows what happens to you or the people there. Thereâs a sense that your life might pass unseen. Maybe this is just a way to let those lives be seen a little better.
"Coming of age in that setting, being immersed in that culture, upsetting things happen to you, and you donât have the bandwidth or the vantage or outside perspective to identify the problems as theyâre occurring."
Something I noticed while reading Philomath is that you write about some really traumatic issuesâabuse, addiction, natural disastersâbut never seem to cast judgement on your characters. Was that intentional?
I thought about that quite a bit, actually. One thing I wanted to capture in the book was that coming of age in that setting, being immersed in that culture, upsetting things happen to you, and you donât have the bandwidth or the vantage or outside perspective to identify the problems as theyâre occurring. I trust my readers enough that I think theyâll understand if something troubling or wrong is happening without my editorializing it.
My mother was one of these Good Samaritan types, and she liked to care for those she felt most needed it. Itâs a wonderful idea, but also, that can bring issues with it when youâre raising a family and inviting relative strangers into your home.
Speaking of a Good Samaritan, this collection also felt very Biblical to me. There are overt references to church and Christianity, but also Biblical themes: male violence, blood and fire, a rotating cast of mysterious characters that appear and disappear just as quickly.
For me, that connects to the region. There are a lot of small towns in Oregon that are steeped in Christianity. A lot of the social opportunities arise around churches or bars. Itâs probably a product of being in a space like that.
Kings Valley doesnât have a lot of buildings besides houses and barns, but it does have a few churches. Culturally, thereâs not a whole lot of activity going on, and yet thereâs a vacation Bible school, and a church thatâs doing a better job staying alive than a school. These are spaces people can rely on for connectionânot everybody, but itâs definitely part of the culture out there.
Itâs easy to idealize landscapes⌠But to be in those landscapes and to feel small and humbled in them, and yet to recognize how fragile they are, really drives home to me how fragile we are.
Something Iâm always very aware of when writing anything based on real life is that youâll have to face feedback from the people youâre writing about. Youâre brutally honest in these poems; did you worry about loved onesâ reactions?
I very much thought about that. When I wrote a number of these poems, I never necessarily thought theyâd be seen by people. The first poems I wrote, I was an undergrad at Bennington College in Vermont. I was trying to just begin writing poems; I hadnât set out to write a book yet. So I felt a real sense of freedom in not feeling looked-at or examined.
I protected peopleâs identitiesâI changed names, and combined people. When you grow up in a small place like that, people will recognize themselves, but [friends I grew up with] gave positive feedback.
It was very stressful to share the book with people Iâm closest to⌠My dad actually hasnât read the book yet. Heâll be getting his copy in the mail. Iâm nervous about that, actually. There are some people in my extended family who, I kind of hope they donât read it, because it feels like an exposure to criticism⌠Iâve tried to be as honest and fair and transparent with people as possible. Now I just hope for the best. It doesnât belong to me anymore.
Another thing that stood out to me in Philomath is the way you write about Pacific Northwest nature. A lot of writing about the natural beauty here can verge on being boring, but you focus more on the dark side of nature: dying cedars, animal carcasses, fires.
It occurs to meâthere are all these premonitions of fires in my book, and now the real fires. Itâs very surreal.
Growing up in that area, itâs an area where the logging industry still has a very strong presence. I remember seeing clear-cuts happen. Youâd see where they were happening: One little spot on a hillside, and then theyâd spread. I remember how upsetting that wasâit was like my world was being dismantled when I saw that happening.
I grew up in a relatively conservative household. My parents were pro-logging industry, and yet they also, paradoxically, loved the landscape and took very good care of their own property. My mother interviewed a lot of the last remaining steam-age loggers in Oregon, and collected their tall tales. ⌠The reverence that they had for the landscapes that their work employed them to destroyâthose paradoxical relationships to nature in Oregon in particular, that really struck me at a very young age. I can hardly remember a time in my life when I wasnât aware of that.
It seems incumbent upon us to note the ways weâve affected our environments, and not to pretend theyâre pristine when theyâre not. Itâs easy to idealize landscapes⌠it really can be so beautiful. But to be in those landscapes and to feel small and humbled in them, and yet to recognize how fragile they are, really drives home to me how fragile we are. This landscape seems so permanent, so overwhelming and beautiful and secure, but itâs not. What does that mean for us?
Philomath came out on September 14; you can purchase it from Milkweed Editions.
