Interviewed By: Kylie Petrovich
Caitlyn Osborne Parris is a middle Tennessee high school ESL teacher, PhD student, and certified yoga teacher. She grew up in the mountains of east Tennessee and now resides in middle Tennessee with her husband (Ben), 2 dogs (Suki & Bumi), and cat (Momo). In her writing, Caitlyn seeks the mystical in the mundane, strives to be perpetually curious, stubbornly hopeful, and unflinchingly honest. (Written by Caitlyn Osborne-Parris)
In an engaging conversation, poet Caitlyn Osborne-Parris shares her insights into her creative process and the underlying themes of her poem “We Have Been Advised.” She reveals the diverse sources of inspiration that helped shape the piece.
Osborne-Parris takes life’s odd moments and turns them into captivating poetry. “A phrase or something will come to me,” she explains, “and I’ll just put it in my phone, and then I’ll sit down every once in a while and look at my phone and write down in my journal the snippets to see if anything comes out of it. That is what happened with this poem.”
Two ideas served as the catalyst for her creativity: encounters with a stranger in Montana during a spate of forest fires and a dream about spiders involving an enigmatic message. “I’m drawn toward nature,” she says. “It inspires me a lot.” She also recognizes the influence of renowned poet Mary Oliver. “She was one of the first poets that I really was drawn towards,” she adds.
“We Have Been Advised” adopts a unique format, with episodic elements serving as a unifying force. Through this stylistic choice, Osborne-Parris weaves together diverse experiences and explores interconnected themes. “I imagined flipping through channels on the TV in my mind,” she explains. “I’ve seen other poets do that when you have these disparate elements that thematically go together. I’ve tried it before and it didn’t really work, but with this one it actually worked. I was just kind of experimenting because I don’t usually do that.”
In one of her dreams, spiders spelled out the word “help.” The spiders reminded Osborne-Parris about the weaver spiders in the porch of her childhood home, so she included them in her second stanza. “They are beautiful,” she says, “especially the yellow and black weaver spiders, and I don’t want to be afraid of them—because I think they’re really cool—but I’m terrified of spiders, unfortunately. I put them in the poem because the yellow and black is a symbol of caution, danger.”
The third stanza is also based on the lived experience of visiting her grandmother in Kentucky, where she would run around barefoot outside. “She was convinced that the starlings’ poop would infect my feet and I would get really sick,” Osborne-Parris recalls. As for the language in the third stanza, she confesses, “It was funny because I just love the word ‘murmuration’ and had been trying to use it in a poem.”
Osborne-Parris further explains the third stanza and the starlings. “They’re an invasive species,” she says. “I’m sure we brought them here or we caused something to happen that they’re so new in the South. I think they’re beautiful; it’s just like the spiders. They’re not necessarily in the place they’re supposed to be, but they’re still beautiful.”
The final stanza, depicting Osborne-Parris’s ever-panting black dog, serves as a poignant reminder of the immediate impact of climate change on individuals and their loved ones. “The poem starts out in this place where I don’t live and I’m seeing how climate change is affecting where I’m vacationing, but it’s not affecting me directly,” she says. “Then there’s a dream, which is very abstract, and then it moves to my grandmother, so this interpersonal relationship to the last stanza is very direct. This thing I’m caring for is being affected and I’m seeing this information on my phone—it’s the hottest it’s ever been where I live. The idea was the movement toward myself.”
The title of the poem reflects that climate change isn’t a surprise, but rather a growing ongoing crisis. Osborne-Parris acknowledges the delicate balance between personal agency and governmental action. “We don’t have control of what corporations do,” she says. “We don’t have control of what governments do. When I say, ‘I wish they would,’ I definitely lean more liberal. I wish the government would enact more regulations.”
The main theme of the poem is that climate change is personal. “It affects you,” Osborne-Parris says. “Not that people should only care about things that affect them—it’s just human nature. We’re going to care more about stuff that we can see. If we keep our eyes open, we will see these things.”
Her advice to fellow writers is to forge ahead with determination and perseverance. “Just keep writing,” she says. “Eventually, you’ll find the gem underneath all the dirt.” Osborne-Parris also offers guidance on getting published. “You submit it,” she says, “and if it’s not right for that journal, it’s not right for that journal. It’s not personal. Keep looking for journals, keep reading journals and seeing what they accept.”
Now Osborne-Parris is working on stepping out of her creative comfort zone. Writers she respects, like Jericho Brown, Ada Limon, and Jose Olivarez, are encouraging people to write from the unconscious mind, but Osborne-Parris says that is novel to her. “They say just write,” she explains, “and whatever it connects to, you write that down. That’s hard for me because I want to say, ‘Wait, why is that connecting or what does that mean?’ I think Ada Limon said you don’t have to understand what it means, but I want to know what it means because it came out of my brain.” Osborne-Parris also cites writing prompts as useful tools for getting out of her comfort zone and writing about new topics.
“We Have Been Advised” serves as a poignant reminder of the power of personal experience to ignite change and inspire a deeper connection with the world around us. Osborne-Parris invites readers to reflect on their own journeys, hopefully paving the way for a more environmentally conscious future.
For more information on Caitlyn Osborne-Parris, visit https://caitlynoparris.wordpress.com/
To read the latest volume of SHIFT, in which Osborne-Parris’s work is featured, click on the purchase tab!
