During her poetry reading on Oct. 18 in Weinstein Auditorium, Smith professor Arda Collins explored the themes of the underlying humor in grief and the uncontrollable nature of creativity in her latest book, “Star Lake.”
“Star Lake,” as poet Franny Choi put it in her introduction, tackled “grief, rage and the absurdity of life,” myriad emotions that Collins blended perfectly through her demonstration of humor, darkness and creative consciousness.
While the poems themselves focused heavily on topics of grief, rage and loss, Collins kept an air of humor throughout the reading, introducing her first poem with the assurance that, after it, “you’re all going to cry for the rest of the time.” This garnered a collective chuckle from the rows of students and faculty that filled Weinstein. As she dove into her poems, her persona shifted, her tone became softer, and her voice took on a soberness that fit the poems’ reflection on love and loss.
But after each haunting line came Collins’s attempts to lighten the mood. After a contemplation on the persistent nature of loss and death realized through visceral, haunting imagery in her poem “Wind,” Collins stated, “It’s hilarious when your parents die. It’s a barrel of laughs.”
After the reading, Collins addressed this humor in conversation with Franny Choi, poet and author of three books of poetry. “With sorrow, with mourning … your sense of humor and absurdity has to be there or else you wouldn’t survive it,” Collins said.
Collins bared her grieving process through the natural flow and consciousness of the poems. In her poems, the speaker often interrupts themselves, changes the subject or becomes someone else entirely. This is the case in “Easter,” in which Collins’s inner counterpart, named Barbara, takes over the poem. These instances where the speaker turns away from one train of thought to face another arose from what Collins called “writing through the hard moments,” and it was these instances of natural thought process and interruption that gave her poems their genuineness and intimacy.
The nuanced combination of absurdity, mourning and the natural flow of creativity were appreciated by the audience. “I think I was most impressed by the way she wove together grief and humor and her discussion of the importance of the comic when writing about loss and grief,” said Smith professor Lily Gurton-Watcher. “And I loved the way the poems were interrupted, the way that she wrote through the places that were most difficult to write about and showed us that through these interruptions.”
Sadie McRae ’26 also appreciated the insight into Collins’s creative process. “It has just been very exciting to hear her talk about her poems, and talk about these deep things,” McRae said. The depth of emotion that filled these poems was a clear expression of Collins’s grief and showed the importance of art as a method of surviving loss. “I feel free after writing this book,” she said.
