By Emma Marttinen
For Ava Nori, writing became a tool initially introduced to her in a high school creative writing class. During a period of her life, not unlike other teenagers, full of tumultuous change, it had become her quiet but persistent escape. With her continued attempts, Ava’s ability to harness language grew- it was poetry that allowed her to breathe.
“Poetry feels the most free and beautiful and artistic to me, it felt like the best vessel for my creative expression due to the power it holds”
It wasn’t until her last year of high school that Ava was approached by Bryan Davies, president of independent publisher Tagona Press. It was undeniable that poetry held power for Nori. Most especially, that she was interested in being honest with it, turning that power into something universal. Davies asked to see some of her work and everything snowballed from there.
While in conversation with Ava, I felt struck by her honest connection to poetry as a form, just as I was while reading her collection, 4:16am. There is a distinct initial tone to the novel, one of simmering, sometimes obscure sometimes overt, anger. As you continue however, the poems reveal themselves as something more hopeful. With each one, elements of rebirth and resurgence become present. It is as if you can see the tool of writing giving Nori levity between each line.
One of the earlier poems in 4:16am is titled Childhood, in which she recounts a traumatic experience from her youth. One where an innocence slips away into obscurity, stolen too quickly. Its words are deafening and profound, while reading it, I imagined a younger Ava Nori, unaware of the poetic conditions of her time. Despite its pain, there is a reclamation on Nori’s behalf, a reformation of the experience through the expressive nature of her language. As we chat, I ask her what the childhood version of herself would make of her now.
“My childhood self would be in awe of me. I used to stay up reading books under the covers with a flashlight or journaling my feelings with silly doodles. Knowing I’m pursing what I’m passionate about and creating something beautiful from my story- I think little Ava would be so proud”
I am continually brought back to Audre Lorde’s famous essay Poetry Is Not a Luxury, in which she highlights the forms importance, especially for women, in contextualizing what may be any other way inexpressible, in creating new visions of our future, in resisting.
“-[W]omen have survived. As poets. And there are no new pains. We have felt them all already. We have hidden that fact in the same place where we have hidden our power. They lie in our dreams, and it is our dreams that point the way to freedom. They are made realizable through our poems that give us the strength and courage to see, to feel, to speak, and to dare. “[1] (Lorde, 39)
Ava Nori and any writing woman alike, each represent what Nori describes as “the power of words”, in the same cadence as the brilliant Audre Lorde. Poetry is a ancient exploratory form, one that is most universally accessible and most constantly evolving. Nori explores various pains in 4:16am. Through this pain however, she gives voice to the childhood self who journaled insistently, who carried the burdens experienced by so many young women like her. She will not know then, that the trouble of her shared experience will help her find strength.
In closing our conversation, Nori says “I know some people say it’s [poetry] is a dying art, but I really hope that’s not the case.” Of course I agree in the moment. It is undeniable that poetry in it’s most classic conception, does not hold the same commercial power a lyric pop song does today. The form has shifted. People find more relatability in other art forms then they do between the poets lines. But after considering our time together more deeply I think of all the tremendous women who may not even consider themselves writers, who have used poetry to dare, as Lorde describes and as Nori did. In scribbles, in the margins of their journals, in a high school creative writing class, for a first love, for a first lost love, whispers between friends, whispers into their pillows. In this sense poetry can never die. It gives power to our dreams. In the smallest most menial scribbles, to a years long project of reclamation, it is within all of us. And it is with the love of writers like Nori, that the forms relatability will shift to embody a new power.
4:16am can be found on the Tagona Press website in physical and digital copies.
[1] Lorde, A. (2007). Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Crossing Press Feminist Series). Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed.
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