Homer author to debut her third poetry collection

By Christina Whiting

For Homer News

Homer writer Erin Coughlin Hollowell’s most recent collection, “Corvus and Crater,” features 54 poems exploring winter, all with the main character as a crow.

“The poems share through Crow what it’s like to experience all the different things that happen over six months in one place,” Hollowell said. “Her character considers constellations, seasonal rituals, landscape, bodily autonomy, the struggle to claim a home, and the myths and stories that form us.”

Inspired by a commitment Hollowell made to herself on her 54th birthday to write a small poem every day, “Corvus and Crater” includes 54 poems with 54 sextets of 54 syllables apiece. “Corvus” refers to the crow character and “Crater” to the constellation Hollowell viewed from her writing desk.

With the release of this book, Hollowell has now published three full-length collections of poetry, as well as a chapbook. “Pause, Traveler” debuted in 2013 and includes poems she wrote while pursuing her master’s degree, and was later revised. In 2018, “Every Atom” was released, centering on Hollowell’s reflections upon her mother’s rapidly declining health and her way of making sense of what was happening to her mom during that time.

While her first two collections focused on her life and relationships, “Corvus and Crater” is a departure from that trend in that it is less autobiographical.

“These poems contain things that you see in winter in Alaska and certainly some of the things I was thinking about, but it’s not a book of poems about my life in particular,” she said. “At that time, I didn’t want to keep talking about me.”

By removing herself from her poems, Hollowell shared that this collection is more intuitive, wilder, and feral in its language than her other books.

“I wasn’t tied to having to be scrupulously honest to the real facts of my life, but instead, I could follow my intuition more and take leaps of logic that you don’t get to do when you’re telling the story of something that really happened,” she said.

Hollowell became serious about writing in ninth grade and today holds two degrees in writing, including an MFA from the Rainier Writer’s Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University.

She received the Rona Jaffe Scholarship in poetry for the Breadloaf Writer’s Conference in 2010. In 2013, she was awarded a Rasmuson Foundation Fellowship and a Connie Boochever Award by the Alaska State Council on the Arts. The following year, she was one of the inaugural recipients of the Alaska Literary Awards and was awarded residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and the Willapa Bay Artist in Residency Program. In 2017, she was awarded a second Rasmuson Fellowship to work on “Corvus and Crater.”

Most recently, her writing has been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, EcoTheo Review, Orion Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Ireland Review, Stony Tuesday, and Terrain: A Journal of the Build and Natural Environment.

Hollowell considers good poetry an unhindered conversation between two people.

“Poetry has a resonance that nothing else has and is less tied to a specific story and more tied to emotions and moments,” she said. “For me, poetry is the thing that is the sound of what our mutual story is and we turn to poetry in times of great emotion — weddings, funerals, heartbreak, celebration. As a poet, you don’t publish to be famous or rich. You publish so somebody out there can find your work and if you work on something over your lifetime, you want to share it.”

Serving as the executive director of Storyknife Writers Retreat, a residency for women writers, and director of the annual Kachemak Bay Writers Conference, Hollowell values the opportunity to nurture others’ writing.

“We bring writers together to create intentional community around the idea that everyone’s story is important and the way they tell it is important too,” she said. “Seeing people supporting each other and reading each other’s work gives me hope that more diverse stories means a better community and a better world. To be a tiny grain of sand during this poetry renaissance is inspiring.”

Among her own writing mentors is Peggy Shumaker, Alaska’s State Writer Laureate from 2010-2013, the author of eight books of poetry, and Hollowell’s thesis advisor.

“Peggy has mentored me on how to be a good literary citizen and how to be in the world so that you are always open to something that might show up in your writing,” Hollowell said. “She is a strong example of what it means to support other people.”

While dedicated to supporting other writers, Hollowell works hard to nurture her own writer’s life.

“I don’t want to be that person who is living through other people’s writing,” she said. “I’m writing all the time, every day. I’m sitting at my writing desk with a half a cup of cold coffee and a piece of toast, fitting writing into my life. Poets are all that — we’re changing the tires on our cars, working our day jobs, spending time with family and friends, all the other things we do in our lives, and writing. You can be the person stocking produce and a writer, the person driving the school bus and a poet, doing taxes and writing essays.”

Hollowell is already working on her next two books, a collection of reflective poems linking her grief over ecological changes and grief over the loss of friends who had been writing about environmental issues, and the other a collection of poems tied to a very specific historical story that takes place in Ireland.

“Corvus and Crater” releases nationwide on June 30 and is available locally by pre-order through the Homer Bookstore, as well as from other independent and online bookstores. Follow Erin Coughlin Hollowell at beingpoetry.net and on her personal Facebook and Instagram pages.

Hollowell’s poetry collection, “Corvus and Crater,” was published by Salmon Poetry in 2023 and slated to be released June 30.

Erin Coughlin Hollowell, in her role as conference director, welcomes Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference attendees and faculty on Saturday, May 13, 2023 at Kachemak Bay Campus in Homer, Alaska. (Delcenia Cosman/Homer News)

Homer poet and Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference director Erin Coughlin Hollowell (left) and 2018 conference keynote Anthony Doerr (right) present during the conference in June 2018 at Land’s End Resort in Homer, Alaska. Photo by Michael Armstrong