Katie Budris is a Philadelphia-area poet and professor (and professional tap dancer). Her latest chapbook, Mid-Bloom, is an exploration of grief and love for her mother, who died from Lymphoma cancer; most of the poems were written after Budris’ recovery from breast cancer. Mid-Bloom is available on Amazon or from Finishing Line Press.
While we both sipped iced teas at a local café, Budris discussed her writing process, her chapbooks, and her plans for the future. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Grace Fisher: I wasn’t surprised that you’re a dancer, because both poetry and dance are arts that are very expressive, but I was a little bit surprised that you did tap, because that’s not what I would immediately associate with poetry.
Katie Budris: I think tap and poetry are actually very related, because they’re both so rhythmic! For me part of what is exciting about poetry is how you lay out the lines on the page and create a rhythmic pattern when you’re reading the piece out loud, and that’s what tap dancing is, right? It’s a dance form that’s very much focused on the musicality and creating those rhythms.
GF: Is that how you approach poetry? Do you start with a meter in mind?
KB: No, I totally don’t! I very rarely write in meter, so for all I’m talking about rhythm that is not a thing that I’m good at: that kind of formalist poetry is not my style. Typically, when I write poetry, I write freehand in a paragraph. I always handwrite first; my page just comes out better that way, and then once I have a draft, I type it up and that’s when I start to put rhythm and shape to it. As I’m typing I instinctually put line breaks in, and that’s where the rhythm comes in, and that’s also when I start to cut words, add things, or decide “this metaphor is terribly cliché, and I don’t need it.”
GF: Do you start with an image, or do you start with words?
KB: Usually I start with either an image or an experience, something that I want to reflect on or write about. A lot of my poetry is about my own life. I write a lot about relationships that I’ve been through, and so I start with either a specific incident or a specific image that reflects the story that I’m trying to tell. Most of my poetry is narrative. Even though it may not tell a complete story, it’s a little piece of the story.
GF: Do you normally have a plan to write a short poem or something long?
KB: No, I just go with it and see what comes out. A lot of times when I write things that are longer, I end up cutting a lot or splitting it into two separate poems. I tend to not like long poems, which is just personal, but if a poem goes onto a second page you’ve lost me!
GF: Poetry as a genre is very compressed.
KB: Absolutely. I always joke that I don’t have the attention span for writing novels which is why I write poetry, but it’s kind of true—I’d much rather tell a really concise little story or a little piece in this story than try to develop something much longer. You really have to focus on every word, every image, every sound.
GF: You’ve been writing for a long time. How would you say your writing has developed? Do you go back and read your old poems?
KB: Oh God, and they’re terrible! I’ve been writing since I was a kid, and poetry early on—little poems on birthday cards for my parents or creative writing assignments in school. The first poems that I published were in 7th and 8th grade in youth magazines. I look back on those and they’re so cheesy and cliché—they were like “rhyme scheme!” and don’t have any imagery, and they’re so direct in what they’re saying, but I think that’s how a lot of writers start. It’s all self-expression and you don’t really have the tools yet. I don’t think I started to really develop as a writer until college, when I was in classes with instructors who could give more specific guidance. Even some of my poems from the beginning of college have a lot of emotions just named on the page. Some of the stuff I wrote later in college I don’t hate! Some of it is in my new book, revised, of course. Some of that really developed into something that I’m proud of.
GF: Can you tell me a little bit about your two books?
KB: The first one I published in 2015, Prague in Synthetics, is about my experience studying abroad in Prague. [I was] writing about feeling displaced, being in a new place where you feel uncomfortable. Some of those poems are related to family and romantic relationships because I can’t get away from those things, but a lot of them are just about things I observed, various historic buildings that we saw, and that feeling of being lost in a new place. One of my favorite poems I use Alice in Wonderland as a metaphor for that feeling.
Mid-Bloom is about my mom and myself. My mom passed away when I was in high school. She had lymphoma cancer for several years and she was only 54 when she died, so that has really shaped my life and shaped my poetry in particular. I’ve written tons of poems about her, many of which I don’t ever feel are done— I don’t feel I’ve really accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. But then I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2018. My mom died 20 years earlier, so 20 years—you move on. Not that I don’t still miss her, but I’ve adjusted. But then going through cancer treatment really made me miss her. I think it’s natural when you’re sick to want your mom, but then when you’re sick with something so big and so scary that your mom has also been through…. I felt like she could understand me in a way that other people couldn’t, but she wasn’t here. And I remember, because I was a teenager when she had cancer and went through treatment, I don’t think she let us see what she was feeling, I had no idea what she may have been struggling with, what kind of pain she might have been in and then going through treatment….
Cancer itself, for me at least, wasn’t painful. It was treatment that was difficult. Chemo hurts you—it’s toxic, it’s poison, and so the digestive discomfort, and bone pain, and fatigue, and exhaustion, and emotional mood swings…. I had no idea that my mom might have been experiencing those things when I lived with her. I was really struck with that idea of how she had been so strong and hidden all that from me, and at the same time wishing that she hadn’t—that I had been able to see her be vulnerable or that I could have supported her. Of course, in retrospect, I was 15! Of course, I couldn’t support her, it would have been awful to see her in pain, but now as an adult looking back I feel I have this connection and empathy that I didn’t have before. I wrote several new poems exploring that connection and what she may have been feeling. The last poem in the book is an imagined conversation with her where I ask whether her experience was like my experience, [and] tell her that I get it, it’s okay to fall apart. I think it’s a heavy collection, but I think that I write about it in lighter ways. I hope my poems are beautifully reflective.
GF: They must’ve been hard to write.
KB: Yes and no! It felt like a way to make meaning of it, this totally crazy, life-altering thing that happened to me…it was another way of processing.
GF: Where do you feel like you’re going now as a writer?
KB: Great question! I don’t know… I’ve published 2 chapbooks and they’re both very thematic. I’m sort of at a blank slate right now, where I think my next step is to just start writing more, drafting more… I’ve written about all the things that I have to write about, the subjects that I’ve been writing about over the last few years I’ve finished with, and now it’s time to try something new. What do you write about when you’re happy and healthy, and everything’s going well? I don’t know how to do that! I’ve written a lot of poems about struggle. It’s a different thing to write when you have everything you’ve worked for. So, I don’t know, we’ll find out, I guess!
GF: It’s exciting.
KB: Yeah, it’s exciting and terrifying! All at the same time.
GF: What do you want readers to take away from your work?
KB: Whatever they need! I hope that readers can see some of their own experiences in my work, that they can connect to it, or it allows them to experience something that they wouldn’t otherwise. Anybody who’s able to see their own family experiences or loved ones and relationships in my work and feel some sense of catharsis— that’s a win.
GF: One final question. What would be your advice to anyone aspiring to write poetry?
KB: Start by writing, just let the words spill out on the page—because you can do something with it once you do that, you can’t do anything with it when it’s in your head. And then read, read poetry, because through reading poetry you start to see what’s good, what’s effective, and that can really help you move from just naming the emotions on the page to using imagery, and metaphor, and other ways of helping the reader feel the emotions that you’re feeling. So read a lot, write a lot, and then see how you can make what you’ve written more like the things you’ve read.
GF: I guess naming the emotion is the first step.
KB: Yeah, that’s the first step. You have to know what the emotion is, what you want to say, and then you can figure out a better way to say it, a more concise and effective way to say it.
Grace Fisher is a junior double-majoring in English and Dance. She enjoys writing literary analysis, argumentative essays, and poetry. Her favorite authors are Dorothy Dunnett, C.S. Lewis, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Dostoevsky.