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Recent St. Olaf College graduate Clair Dunlap ’15 has just published her first full-length book of poems, titled In the Plum Dark Belly.

Dunlap wrote many of the poems that would eventually make their way into her new book at St. Olaf, where she majored in English and French. Serving as president of the Poetry House and completing an independent study with Assistant Professor of English Juliet Patterson, she says, were crucial moments in her writing career.

Dunlap’s poetry has also been featured in Souvenir, Harpoon Review, The Fem, and more. She lives, writes, and teaches preschool in Minneapolis.

As Dunlap celebrates the launch of In the Plum Dark Belly this month, she took time to answer a few questions about why this book is scary to publish, what inspired her to keep going when she felt unsure, and how writing communities have been important in her work.

Tell me a little about your book. Are there any key messages that you want to come across to your readers?
In the Plum Dark Belly is not at all what I thought my first book was going to be. It is made up of poems that deal with emotional abuse and its aftermath, disordered eating and other destructive coping methods, and — at the heart of this book — trust and love and the ways that those two huge feelings fit together.

So, you can imagine that it’s a little scary to put out into the world, especially as a first book. Throughout its writing I thought about scrapping it many, many times but ultimately kept working through these poems to give a voice to myself and others who have gone through similar situations. That’s what I would like readers to take away from this book — you are not alone on your journey, and there is someone out there who believes you and believes in you.

What did you draw inspiration from as you wrote this book?
Anis Mojgani is a constant literary influence, as is Richard Brautigan. I also listened to a lot of music while writing. Or, more accurately, I would listen to music before writing.

When I felt uncertain about what I was doing this for, I turned to this quote from Sarah Kay: “I write poems when I have something I am trying to figure out. It is the way I navigate the world and the issues I am struggling to understand. There is a saying that another poet taught me which goes, ‘Poetry doesn’t have to be fact, but it does have to be true.’ That is important to me. Sometimes my poems dive into fantasy or fiction, but there is a truth within them that is very personal to me.”

What was the most frustrating moment in the publication process?
I don’t think there was a frustrating part of publication besides the writing part, which involved a lot of tears. Many of the poems in the book did get turned down several times in journals before finding homes in really amazing ones, and rejections hit a little hard since I knew the poems were ultimately going to be in my book. So if a journal didn’t want them, were they even any good? That was a thought process I went through quite a few times, but it was important to me to place many of them in journals before the book came out so I would have a wider audience to work with.

What advice do you have for St. Olaf students who have an interest in becoming writers?
Besides the usual ‘write a lot, read a lot, practice your craft,’ I’d say that it is equally — or maybe most — important to find a writing community. I would not be the writer I am today if not for the many communities I’ve been a part of throughout my writing career, both long before St. Olaf and during my years there. It is terrifying to share your work — and if you don’t want to, then don’t — but there is also something liberating and grounding in knowing that others have felt the same way and that, perhaps, you’ve helped them find the words to describe it.

Was there any courses or any professors that inspired you to pursue this path?
Jennifer Kwon Dobbs was my professor for Intro to Creative Writing and Advanced Poetry, and I did an independent study with Juliet Patterson on the history of spoken word poetry in the United States. In Advanced Poetry, Jennifer challenged me to break out of the soft poems I was writing and get angry, a piece of advice and criticism that I really needed. I think I finally managed to do it with In the Plum Dark Belly. Diane LeBlanc has also been such a mentor to me after she served as our advisor for the Poetry House, and she graciously read In the Plum Dark Belly to provide some advance praise. I also got so much support for my writing throughout my career at St. Olaf from my advisor [Professor Emeritus of Economics] Steve Soderlind, who never knew what on earth I was doing with my two majors but who would always talk to me extensively about my writing whenever I came in to see him.