Sara Aldrich Winner Spotlight
On July 1, 2022, The Aurora Journal announced its biggest endeavor yet– a summer-long poetry contest that entailed free workshops, resources, community and $375 worth of awards. After a long summer, our winners were chosen here. Intrigued by their stories. our EIC, Sophie Chiang, had a wonderful conversation with our second place winner, Sara Aldrich about her journey as a writer and person.
Now it’s time to grab a snack and start reading this inspiration-packed spotlight.
Q: What was your inspiration for what's the point in swimming when all that waits for you is silk? And going off from that, what generally inspires you?
A: I draw inspiration from a handful of places. When I’m writing about myself and my own experiences, I am hyper-aware of the fact that someone may read something that’s essentially my diary. I’m always thinking about the post-mortem – what would I want to tell someone in my absence? What if they didn’t know me at all? Or worse, what if they did know me? Sometimes I’m writing poems as if they’re letters to or about people in my life, or I’m leaving behind traces of emotion for people to stumble upon. The creation process itself is very private and all about my own psyche, but in the end, it feels as though someone, somewhere, sometime is inevitably going to lay eyes on my work (and, by extension, me).
When I’m not writing autobiographically, I’m often inspired by the media I consume. As someone who also writes fiction, I am fascinated by character creation, and I’ll often attempt to enter the headspace of characters as an exercise in emotion and empathy. what’s the point in swimming is one of these. These character sketches (for lack of a better term) are probably some of the most fun pieces for me.
Q: Which workshops/resources did you use, and how did they help you?
A: I watched “grasping at the real to achieve the surreal” by Megan Lee Gong and “surrealism in poetry” by Annalisa Hansford multiple times – once each before even beginning, and then again during the process. I think I watched the Hansford workshop three times. They both really solidified the bare bones of what surrealism looks like and how it’s meant to function. Their workshops clued me into the fact that my style had evolved into something surrealism-adjacent within the past couple of years unintentionally, and having that information clearly laid out before me helped gather and coalesce the fragments of what was already trying to form.
Q: What does surrealism mean to you?
A: Surrealism is a bridge between the internal and external; the psychological and physical; the fantastical and real. Or rather, it makes the fantastical real. It breaks down the rules of the natural world, and the absence of barriers allows for freedom of expression. There are no restrictions – anything can be used to describe anything. Once the poem is finished, it’s up to the reader to decide how two seemingly disparate things are related, and what that means in the greater context of both the poem and the world itself.
Q: How did you first get into the literary scene?
A: I have been writing since I was six years old, but I didn’t start writing poetry until I was about fourteen and I read a poem my friend had written. The next day, we read since feeling is first by e.e. cummings in class, and that was it. I was self-taught until I went to Hamilton College, a liberal arts college in New York State with an incredible writing program and community. I took several workshops, co-founded a writing club, and joined the executive board of the campus literary magazine. I met so many wonderful people and learned so much about not only the craft but also the dissemination of it. I actually heard about the Aurora Journal from someone who had worked with me on the board.
Q: What is your typical writing process like, if you have one?
A: Usually I begin with line fragments that end up somewhere in the middle. They act like a sort of set piece for the poem that I can start to build scaffolding around. Most of the time it’s a very specific image or wordplay. For what’s the point in swimming, they were “to know absence is to need it but hate its breath” and “rainboots in the snow make little sense but the rubber is bright against the flat white when it is all you have.” Obviously, edits were made to them, but I have the old version because I’ll preserve the drafts when making major edits.
Once I have a rough draft done, I’ll let it sit for a while so that when I return to it, everything is fresh. I usually go through about 2-4 rounds of edits, and I’m mainly making sure there are consistent imagery/metaphors and that those images are unique or texturally interesting in some way (thus the change from “make little sense” to “breed icicle toes” in the final draft, for example). This is usually where the bulk of the poem comes from, as my poems tend to get longer the more rounds of edits they go through. I only know I’m finished when I can read it out loud and it feels right in my mouth.
Q: Why do you write?
A: I write because it’s a functional part of who I am. It’s how I process the world – myself, my friends and family, the places I go, the things I do, even the media I watch. It all becomes words in the end.
I write for me, and I also write for other people. Bo Burnham wasn’t wrong when he said my generation is seeking to perform (for better or for worse). Sometimes it feels as though I’m on a stage even when nobody is watching at all. It can result in a strange sort of self-censorship, in a way. However, if someone reads my work and feels something, or perhaps is even inspired to create something themselves, none of that will matter at all. I’ll have gotten everything I could ever want.
Q: What are your goals in the future?
A: I’ve been in the process of writing a series of YA/New Adult fantasy novels for a few years now. I would love to publish them in the hopes that people could immerse themselves in the world I’ve created and learn to care for the characters just as I do. If they happen to relate to them, or find solace or comfort or distraction – if I can do what other authors have done for me – that would mean the world to me.