Featured Artist: Dorinda Wegener

Last year, I traveled with friend and fellow poet Angelica Julia Davila to attend our first AWP conference. The drive from Illinois to Kansas City could be completed in a day and we were both eager to attend a series of offsite readings and informative panels dedicated to the craft we love. We were also, I must add, eager to spend a lot of money on as many books from the AWP book fair as we could fit in the back of Angelica's car. In fact, that is where we headed first upon arriving at the conference, hours early before any panel or reading was scheduled. As I passed the tables for various independent presses, my eye caught the cover of a book placed prominently on the table for Trio House Press. It displayed a pair of elegant hands--one bearing a thimble at the end of its middle finger, and the other posed as if pulling thread. The book was titled Four Fields by Dorinda Wegener, and it became the first and one of the most precious purchases I made during the conference.

What struck me about Four Fields was not only Wegener's writing--which was and is exquisite--but the text's generosity and endurance of voice. Wegener's speaker possesses a desire to communicate that is often discouraged in favor of secrecy or outright silence. However, instead of maintaining those silences and leaving the speaker in that same voiceless place of frustration, Wegener articulates her speaker's desire for expression, redeeming what was once thwarted.

One does not feel locked out of language in Four Fields. Instead, the reader is enfolded into Wegener's verse, becoming both witness and confidant, ally and conspirator. In the following conversation, Wegener and I talk about the writing process behind Four Fields, her approach to voice, and the significance of the secret in her work.

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Eniko Deptuch Vaghy: Hello, Dorinda, thank you for agreeing to do this interview as Lover’s Eye Press’ latest Featured Artist. I’m looking forward to talking about your approach to writing and your incredible collection Four Fields (Trio House Press, 2024).

Dorinda Wegener: Thanks, Eniko! I’m very appreciative to be here with you today to talk about poetry and Four Fields. Our time together means a lot to me.

EDV: How did you come to your writing career? What has the course of your writing life been like and how did it bring you to write Four Fields?

DW: Writing poetry has always been something I’ve done as far back as I can remember. I was actually brought home from the Naval hospital, where I was born, to Robert Frost’s first home in Derry, NH, prior to his move to the famous Frost Farm. To say writing career... that is new to me. Throughout my years, I have held medical jobs with writing being for myself, my lifework if you will. I never thought of writing as a career until Four Fields came to fruit. I know the Get The Word Out publicity cohort offered by Poets & Writers Magazine aided me immensely in developing a plan to engage with readers and enhance my early career stage. I would say 2023 is when I noticed that perhaps I could have both: nurse life, writing life.

Decades ago, I did attempt to obtain an MFA in my 20s. The literary community was different then: to obtain an MFA at that age was not the norm. I had trouble getting into programs, where there were mentors I desired to study with because of finances. So that dream was given up and life went on. In my mid 30s, I tried again at New England College because of the amazing poets teaching there (I attended prior to the faculty schism). Fortunately, my writing quality secured a Joel Oppenheimer Award, which offset tuition; I was able to attend and hone my craft. But as I mentioned above...from grad school to 2023 the focus had to turn from poetry to family (spouse and child), my medical jobs, the full time bills, and ultimately securing and building my nursing career.

EDV: When we hold a work of literature, it’s so easy to take its existence for granted. You turn a page and another magnificent poem or chapter presents itself. I’d like to highlight the labor contained in drafting and publishing Four Fields. What was the experience of writing these poems like for you? When someone approaches this collection, is there a story behind the creation of Four Fields that you would like them to know?

DW: The experience would be in retrospect because at the time when I was writing the individual poems, I was not thinking of an artifact, a book, per se. Now that sounds like a lie because of course I thought abstractly about the concept of ‘book’... I thought too much about it. I believed a book was the end goal, the achievement that would prove my voice worthy. I was mistaken. It’s not the end, it’s a rung on a ladder that I think each poet needs to contemplate and decide where on the ladder they are happiest. I wasted years wrestling with ego when I should have let it be.

I think I need to answer this question in stages to help me make a sensible response. Crafting the individual poems is where I could explore my environment, my thoughts, it was exploration, play. Some poems came quickly, all at once, as if I wasn’t the writer... just the conduit for the poem. Other poems took years to write with significant variations in drafts after drafts. Crafting the poems is the sweet spot for me. Reflecting on the process of manuscript to book, there was quite the gambit of experience there. This is the start of bringing an artifact to an audience; for me, this caused the ego to flair, as well as the self doubt to sabotage. Community was essential. Good friends, who are poets themselves, that I trusted read and reread variations of the manuscript offering suggestions and support. They kept me honest, yet encouraged. Truly, Four Fields has been a journey: 7 years, 41 submissions, 3 different titles. And in the end, the manuscript was an editorial acquisition. It doesn’t feel real on some days! And speaking to the time between acquisition and launch, my Primary Editor, Natasha Kane, and Supporting Editor, Ali Shafer, as well as my Publisher, Kris Bigalk, at Trio House Press, where I dream-team to work with. A poet could not ask for a better independent Press.

Concerning Four Fields’s backstory: I cannot deny that it is a first book nor that it doesn’t escape the ‘write what you know’ conventionalization. I think what may be helpful to a reader is that Four Fields transverses loss, trauma, growth, and maturity of a narrator from maiden to mother to crone...the first three sections are driven by the maternal: whether instinctual or generational. Section four is the nurse/poet in me: caring for my father while he diminished from dementia. So the book is very much a journey from how people break each other apart but also how we put ourselves back together again.

EDV: What was the first poem in Four Fields that made you think “Oh my gosh, I think there’s a book here”? What was it about that poem that was so generative for you and this work?

DW: I love this question, Eniko! I’ve never been asked this and I love that! Unfortunately, the answer is not as exciting as this question is... it would be the title poem and book’s namesake, “Four Fields." When I was in MFA, I had the wonderful experience of studying with Anne Waldman. She has this amazing practice where we take the ‘I’ out of a poem we have written to see what is truly there. By removing the narrator, it allows the diction, the line breaks, the syntax, the images, the metaphors, et al, to speak. Usually this voice holds a truth truer than the narrator’s take. Afterwards, if need be, sprinkle the ‘I’ back in, but do so judiciously. Through this process, “Four Fields” created itself. It’s my family photo album. Each field represents a different photo, a different memory, a different ghost, or the secrets which you deftly picked up on. It’s all here: my siblings, the growth of a child and children, my mother, my father–here is the one poem that contains everything–even how the book should be laid out. This is where your poetry community and your friends come in: Terry Lucas, friend and early reader, was the one who recognized the book should be in four sections: each being a broader macrocosm for the introspective micro-photo view. Shameless plug, Terry now works as a writing coach for poets, just saying!

EDV: Along with being a writer, you are also a Perianesthesia Certified Registered Nurse. I have other friends in the writing community who also have careers in medicine and I wanted to ask if you ever find your writing connecting to your work in nursing, and/or vice versa? Do you feel there is a connection, or are they inherently separate in your mind and thus able to claim their own professional space in your life?

DW: If I may do another plug, I am very thankful for LitHub offering a platform for an essay I wrote that speaks directly to this question: “Gravity & Grace: What Becoming a Nurse Teaches You About Being a Poet”

(https://lithub.com/gravity-and-grace-what-becoming-a-nurse-teaches-you-about-being-a-poet/)

Yes, for me, there is a connection, sometimes wanted, sometimes not. Yet either way, I strongly believe in the Medical Humanities, and I’ve been fortunate enough since the publication of Four Fields to be a guest speaker of such at universities & colleges from the East Coast to the West. I love lecturing or hosting workshops around writing and nursing, whether to new RN grads or college folks obtaining an English degree. Also, on the hospital floor, if I see a patient who is struggling to comprehend, or digest, or work through a complex diagnosis, or if I see a co-worker the same; I gently introduce writing to them–when I say writing, in this instance, I mean basic: pen to page. Sarah Winn introduced me to a lovely poem by W.S. Merwin called “The Unwritten,” the last lines read: it could be that there’s only one word / and it’s all we need / it’s here in this pencil / every pencil in the world / is like this” I carry both: a pencil and a hypodermic syringe with needle. It’s really a gift to be able to blend my loves: writing, nursing, teaching.

EDV: Let’s talk about your incredible work Four Fields. Like I said in my introduction, these poems have a conspiratorial tone which makes the reader feel like they are being brought into the speaker’s psyche. Your work is deeply intimate and generous, and there is something instantaneous about the events and emotions your poems cover. Can you talk a little more about the way you have approached voice in Four Fields?

DW: That would be my neurodivergence. My brain is wired differently and that’s OK. It makes me an excellent nurse because when the code button goes off: I got you, but move my pencil: and I’m unable to process anything for hours... just because someone touched my pencil, so yeah, the instantaneousness of the events, the jumps of images, of metaphors, it comes from who I am. MFA honed the craft, but the kinetic movement existed inside before I knew there was such a thing as craft elements and how best to apply them. The way I approached voice in Four Fields and in my poems now, I hope, is authenticity: communication of an experience through my own corporealness executed by spirit given gifts of diction, syntax, and sound-play. I want my voice to be the best it can be for the poem, for the reader, and for myself. I want lyricism in my voice, always.

EDV: Parents are significant in this collection. In the beginning to middle sections, I feel the speaker’s late mother is the more dominant presence. In “Summer Solstice,” the speaker says to her, “Even in sleep, you’re still a myth / maker” (50). As a big fan of apostrophic address—what the literary critic Jonathan Culler also calls “invocation of impossible addressees”—I find it makes the loss of the mother all the more palpable. Later on, there is a series of poems about and for the speaker’s father. What made you want to foreground your speaker’s parents in Four Fields? What complications, if any, arose in this process?

DW: O, my... this will be a very personal answer... I am of my parents and it is through this ‘of,’ through this creation ‘of’ theirs: physically wrought, then emotionally upbrought, then taught: the mental aspect, and the Irish Catholic of my heritage, my Spirit... I cannot escape them, even if impetus at times was to. How can I not foreground them? It is a trifecta: the Trinity, whether Father, Son, and Holy Ghost or whether Maid, Mother, Crone of my Celtic ancestors, or a divorce court hearing of Mother, Father, Child. In a way, I could not not foreground them. The book is even dedicated to them and in turn my spouse and child. The trifecta continues, but certain cycles have been broken.

The first three sections of the book have a heavy focus on the maternal. What is it to be/not be mothered? to be/not be a mother? I look at the poems and to life like this: I am going to grieve the loss of my mother whether I grieve my actual mother or I grieve the loss of the myth of mother when my biological mother dies. I have a choice: reconcile or not; forgive or not. Every person will answer this question differently and with sound and just reasons. I chose to answer it with mental therapy and create the best relationship I could with my mother while she was alive. My daughter was the catalyst. Only by becoming a mother did I understand the ‘being’ of mother... now that does not excuse behaviors, but it allows me to reconcile. Some may never reconcile and that is ok. Section four is much easier, it's a direct eulogy. Complications arouse within me: guilt, shame, how many family skeletons do I pull out of the closet. There was a dance I had to do in my writing ... as there was a dance I had to do as a child... while my mum was alive to make sure that I didn’t divulge things that were not mine to divulge if that makes any sense. The book was published, perhaps by luck or spirit, after both parents passed. This does make it easier... Martin Espada once said in a class, “if you ever need to hide something, put it in a poetry book.”

EDV: When I read your first poem “I Write You with the Intention of Amendment,” I was immediately captivated by your use of line breaks, specifically the one between stanza three and four: “I have orphaned myself from the word // mother...” (14). What is your relationship to the break in Four Fields? Did you approach it with a specific intention, or is your relationship defined by a deep-seated, poetic intuition?

DW: Thank you for noticing... and for thinking I have a deep-seated, poetic intuition! My goodness, I’m honored... unfortunately, I am a poetry snob... craft-wise. There isn’t anything in the book, down to its last period that is not meant to be there. Ha! Yes, the break was very intentional in the poem, and (hopefully) to the book. Here I am writing a poem about forgiveness, and a foreshadow for the book in total. It was important to break before the term ‘Mother” so that the reader would notice. Then I continue to pull back the lens, further and further: mother, to matriarch, to metronym...all this in a poem of forgiveness, which should be personal, colloquial, but doesn’t pulling back (and aligning to metronym with the ‘create anew’) only drive home the power of the term ‘momma,’ the power of the narrator’s journey to this forgiveness (I hope it does)... poems should never sell their readers short, everything should be crafted with purpose to deliver the best artifact to the reader as possible, the best puzzle, the best story, etc. while staying authentic to the narrator’s voice.

I love that you think I have poetic intuition! I am warmed through-out by this! Thank you. Sheepishly, when I’m writing the drafts, I don’t pay attention to any craft elements. I just write the drafts; so, they’re usually very sloppy, very ugly. Revising is my favorite part. It’s where I allow my knowledge gleaned from MFA to enter the ring, and then wrestle it out with any natural instinct, any intuition. Sometimes the rule needs to be broken (for me), but the rule should be known (or for me [damn sure better be known]) prior to breaking it.

EDV: The motif of the secret occurs many times in Four Fields. Very early on, in the poem “There is a Third Eye to Every Memory: Part II” you end the poem with the stanza: “I have seen Christ twice / once in the fifth grade he was: / tall, sandal-footed, robed, and glowing / he had no head / only a large revolving coin / walking Old Mammoth Road / he was coming for me / I lived on the second floor / a lie” (19-20). Then, in “There is a Third Eye in Every Memory: Part III,” stanza two begins with “the psychiatrist / told me to tell nothing: but / didn’t you know I was / lost? didn’t she know I was / ghost?” (22). In section II during the poem “Triptych Depicting an Average Morning, Miracles, and the Corpse,” your speaker claims to be “astounded” by their “memorylove,” and after being told to withhold, to hide so often in the first section, this claim to memory is so profound. What is it about the secret that brings you back so many times in this

book? Do you feel the unspoken fuels your poems?

DW: Eniko, I’m honored and humbled that you’ve read Four Fields so closely. And personally, I’m just so happy that our paths have crossed and we can spend time together. It’s wonderful to be here in communion with you. So secrets? Yes. There are many secrets in Four Fields. Sometimes I allow them to break the surface and readers will pick up on them; sometimes, I don’t let them fully bloom on the page. I use diction or such to hide the truth at hand. It goes back to voice, both narrator and my own. As a child, I had a speech impediment and I did not speak. Only after speech therapy and time did I use my voice. To this day, I still mispronounce words...words I even use in my own work. There is a cultural correlation to silence as ‘being dumb.’ This is wrong. So, yeah, voice and secrets run very deep in Four Fields, especially as the author of the poems. It took a long time to speak ‘correctly,’ it took awhile to feel safe speaking. I think that’s all I want to say. No deep dive; but, yes, you are correct. Secrets are hyperimportant to Four Fields. Their purpose is to pull the reader through the landscape. I hope they pull the reader through the landscape.

EDV: Here at Lover’s Eye Press we always like to hear about the themes, images, topics, etc. our writers are currently fixating on. What are you enamored with, Dorinda? Has it made its way into your work, or ideas for new work?

DW: I am much more interested in having my spirituality represented in my poems. More so than in Four Fields. I am also working on and fixated by how much medical, albeit jargon or images, can I actually put into a poem before the reader pulls back or away. I am always enamored by the body, what it endures, how it heals or doesn’t. I guess it's good that I work in trauma now. I’m striving toward a second book. I hope to call it, The Nurse. It’s what I am, in order to do what I do: write.

EDV: Dorinda, it’s been such an honor to speak with you. Four Fields is a triumph and I can’t wait for this book to continue changing the lives of its readers.

DW: Thank you again, Eniko for inviting me to be here with you and your readers. This is the gift, being together. And I hope that something I created, like Four Fields, can help somebody or offer a balm or buoy to somebody... that’s the care, and that’s what counts!

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To purchase Four Fields by Dorinda Wegener, please buy directly from Trio House Press here.

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Dorinda Wegener, a 2024 Poets & Writers Get The Word Out Publicity Cohort Participant, is a

neurodivergent, early career poet. Her debut poetry book, Four Fields (THP 2024), won an

Honorable Mention for the 2025 Eric Hoffman Poetry Book Prize; was shortlisted for the 2025

Eric Hoffman Grand Book Prize; Finalist for the 2025 Eric Hoffman Poetry Book Prize; and

Semi-Finalist for the 2025 North American Poetry Book Award. Her poems and essays can be

found in LitHub, THRUSH, Mid-American Review, Indiana Review, Ethel, Hayden’s Ferry

Review and Hunger Mountain. She is a Peri-anesthesia Certified Registered Nurse in Richmond,

VA, who holds an MFA in Poetry from New England College, where she was a Joel

Oppenheimer Award Recipient. www.dorindawegener.com