What inspired you to write “Soundings” and “Fable”? Was there anything unique or striking about the writing or research process?

“Soundings” began in a pandemic exercise suggested by the poet Rae Gouirand: each day before writing, spend five minutes or so “visiting with silence.” It’s meant to help you push past the everyday noise and connect to something deeper. I was having trouble with the connecting part, so I often ended up writing about the literal noise. It gave me a way to ease into writing even when I didn’t feel like it.

My Amsterdam apartment faces a green with a canal running along one side and a busy street along the other, and the zoo is only a short block away, so it was a rich soundscape. I began to notice how much my mood infused the descriptions of sounds. Intrigued, I took the most evocative ones, whittled them down, and played with the order to reflect the course of the pandemic and the changing seasons.

“Fable” was also to some extent a product of the pandemic—at least that was when I became invested in the reproductive success of a pair of magpies that returned each year to the mulberry tree outside my window. The mulberry leafs late in the spring so I had a clear view of their nest as did the crows. Crows will eat other birds’ eggs, even their nestlings, and the magpie parents were at constant war.

One day, when the magpies were trying to fight off an especially burly crow, I leaned out the window and clapped to shoo him away. Instead, I scared the magpies who took flight across the canal, leaving their eggs to the crow. Originally, the poem ended with the image of the magpies flying away. “How pretty,” early readers said. “But it’s supposed to be horrifying!” I said. So I added the final couplets.

It went through a lot of titles—“Plunder” and “Unintended Consequences” stuck around the longest, but both felt overdetermined. In the end, I settled on “Fable” because the poem reminded me of Aesop’s fables—the crow, hubris, consequences.

Have you read anything recently that you’d like to recommend to readers?

I’m currently reading Mia You’s Festival  at the recommendation of friend and colleague Laura Wetherington. I love a poem that makes you laugh in the moment and has you still thinking days later. Mia’s a master at approaching weighty themes with a twisty sense of humor. 

Where we can learn more about you and your work? My author website is sarahcarriger.com – hopefully I’ll get around to populating it. Currently, it redirects to my bio at InternationalWritersCollective.com, the creative writing school where I serve as the director and teach.