by Robert “Bob” Bussey
I had the pleasure of interviewing Lola Willis the other day. I’m not sure I was ready for the depth of the interview, or ready for the frankness that her poetry brings to the table. But here it is.
RLB: So tell me a little bit about yourself.
LW: I have been writing all my life. As long as I can remember. I started journaling when I was eight years old. My mom gave me a journal for my eighth birthday. She told me that I could write whatever I wanted in the journal. It’s only for you. No one else will see it. So when I was eight, I started to write down my feelings. My secrets. My poetry and stories. The first novel I wrote was in seventh grade on lined paper. It was about a sentient Camaro. I’ve written poetry and short stories for years and years.
RLB: How long was that first novel?
LW: I want to say it was about 97 lined pages long. Back then, I wrote mainly about dealing with life and hardships. Back then it was not any easy life. I had good feedback from my English teachers. I was in the honors program and my teachers had good feedback for me. However, at that time it was not really an endeavor of mine. It was more of a coping method. Life was tumultuous. My dad was a martial arts master, so I came up in martial arts. My parents divorced when I was about 13 years old.
RLB: Did you have brothers and sisters?
LW: Yes. Two brothers and a sister from my mom. I was the eldest. My dad had seven of his own. I stopped writing around 2014. I stopped for about ten years. That was a difficult era. Lots of personal hardships. I did not write at all. But my kids encouraged me to write. Especially my eldest, Rain. I have seven of my own children. I have raised them to use their creativity as coping methods, too. Because it worked for me. It’s a healthy method of coping. You turn your difficulties into something productive and beautiful. Something that you can give back. My eldest, Rain, encouraged me right during that down period. All my writing is self-taught. With seven kids there was really no time to get a college degree.
RLB: In the gifted program did you gravitate towards the English side of your studies?
LW: Very much so. I also had English as a major in college, although I did not complete that degree program. With a concentration in creative writing. I’m very much right brained. I pursue workshops online. The best advice I ever received on writing was to read, read, read and then write, write, write. So that is my method.
RLB: When did you start to concentrate on poetry.
LW: When I got back into writing. The reason I got back into writing is because I lost my eldest, my daughter. I lost her, Rain, last year. I started to write again when I lost her. I lost her on May 17, 2024. Coping with her loss, and with her always encouraging me to write again, I felt compelled to start writing when she passed away. I needed to honor her wishes. So, my next project is about Rain. I am pouring myself into that project. Most of my kids are grown up now, so I can devote time to my craft. Now I write every day.
I usually wake up at about 3 o’clock in the morning. The first thing I do is write new material. Then I edit. I spend a couple hours writing and a couple hours editing. Then I take a break. For the rest of the day, I am usually in writing critique meetings. And I also do some reading and research.
RLB: Do you have a writing group?
LW: I do have a group that I am a part of. While I stopped writing, I was still a non-active member of a writing group that would meet on-line. It is called Writers &; Critters and has been around basically since the internet was created. When I finish a piece, it can be sent out and people in the group can then critique it. It is an international group. Right now I have one reader who critiques my work on a regular basis, and I have a writing instructor who also edits my work, Anna Scotti. The writing instructor is in California. I don’t work with anyone locally. I went to the New Orleans poetry festival in April. I’m
going to a workshop put on by Clare L. Martin in Arnaudville. She is hosting a poetry workshop.
RLB: Let’s get to your poems.
LW: These are out of a collection, a chap book, that will be titled “Thunderbird.” This is my current project. The book is inspired by the daughter that I lost. She ended her life last year. The poems were written over the past year. It is about my grief; it’s about her life. She was a transgender female. She was homeless at different times. She dealt with depression and other mental illnesses. So the poetry in the book covers a wide range of these topics.
RLB: The first one is “Things You Said to Me the Week Before You Left.” “You” I guess is “Rain.” So this poem is very personal. When I read this, it was like daggers being thrown at someone. The language is very strong. Was there an actual “unsent message” and why did you not include the language of the unsent message.
LW: There was no verbiage, no words. It was literally an unsent message. There was no writing in the text. Just a blank message that was sent to me but was completely blank. Rain had sent me a message and then had unsent it. So, I will never know what she wrote. The lines of the poem are from various text messages and things she said to me the week before she committed suicide. They are all literal truths.
RLB: What was your goal with this poem? What were you trying to convey to the reader?
LW: There is a progression that shows her state of mind. She had attempted suicide once before. The line, “I fucked up, Mom,” is about that first attempt. The statements show a vacillation between wanting help and not wanting help. Being scared and not being scared. What goes through someone’s mind when that are planning this? She was no longer afraid of being hurt just because she was transgender. She was living in Denver when she ended her life. Rain was a musician, an artist, and an animator. She was wildly intelligent with mental illness issues. It was like a perfect storm. She was taking medication for her mental illness issues and hormones for her transgender changes. At the end, she went off her medications and her transgender hormone treatments. I think coming off those medications contributed to her demise. She had no therapy or medical guidance. She was basically blowing around in the wind.
With that, let’s look at this poem. Perhaps you know someone who is also vacillating, someone who shows these same emotions.
Things You Said to Me the Week Before You Left
1. I fucked up, Mom.
2. You did a good job raising me.
3. I’m not scared anymore.
4. No one can hurt me worse than I can hurt myself.
5. I need a ticket home asap—I need a hard reset.
6. Hold off on that—I’m gonna sleep on it.
7. If I disappear, don’t call the cops.
8. No one can help me now.
9. I love you too so much.
10. unsent message
LW: These are things that might sound familiar to some readers. I joined a suicide prevention group after Rain died. I have been active in fund raising. And I’ve been in the “Out of the Darkness” walk. I also have a goal to help with the transgender community.
RLB: So let’s talk about the next poem, “Birth Day.” Is there a significance to the title being Birth Day, two words, instead of Birthday, which is one word?
LW: Yes, this is the day that Rain told me that she was transitioning from male to female. This is about the day of her birth as a woman. At that time, I was working at an Albertson’s. Rain came to the store. She had been working for a company that required her to travel, and she moved a lot. Hence, the reference to being freeway-beaten. She was very nervous about what she was about to tell me. I had no idea that she was thinking of transitioning. The conversation was short and direct. That is set out in italics.
“I wanted to labor you all over again” refers to my wanting to mother her all over again, to experience the bonding, getting to know her as a daughter. Going through all the events as a mother and daughter. I would have loved the experience of raising Rain as my daughter.
With that let’s look at the poem.
Birth Day
That 2021 July you turned 29,
I sank into Albertson’s break bench
pulling at a Virginia Superslim when you tripped
up out of the air, NOLA street baby
booted and backpacked, denim cat-black.
I lit and ran to you, my freeway-beaten son,
wrapped you in lemon-ribbon kisses
to stay your shakes—way too much
nicotine caffeine other stuff people noise,
trembling like orphan duckling fluff.
You began…my last day a man,
prepared for something awful or sad.
Oh, my love, my love…in any shape—
I love you in any shape….
I wanted to labor you all over again,
grow with my daughter into minty sunlight
and rebirth you, seed by petal by tree
but my break was up and the world slipped
back onto cold steel rails, booming
into fate’s swallowing yawn.
We couldn’t know the Quarter would break
all your crayon colors, pluck all
your major and minor keys.
As you disappeared behind the coffee shop,
neither of us could know how you,
my magical witchy black cat,
would fight for your life.
LW: When Rain lived in New Orleans she was an artist and poor. She tried to make a living doing street art. New Orleans can eat people up and spit them out, especially if you are poor. Rain lived there for several years. She lived an artist’s life. She experienced a lot. She was the “black cat.”
RLB: Girls Night Out. Why that title?
LW: It’s about Rain going out and presenting feminine. The hounds are mean men. The night out happened in New Orleans. Rain was out with a group of friends. It was a traumatizing experience for her. The poem is about the trauma. The wicked hardback hounds are people who basically said, “how dare you present yourself as a female.” They verbally attacked her. The experience was emotionally painful. The poem reflects a first night being “out of the closet,” being openly transgender. The poem is about a particular night out, but it is also about the fears that Rain had any time she went out in
public. There was always the fear of being verbally or physically attacked.
Writing these poems is challenging. Understanding Rain’s life is challenging.
Girl’s Night Out
Wicked hardback hounds and battle boars drew
sharpened sticks, invaded your silk-spun spaces
hanging like sugar-webs in cool drafty shadows.
Blackthorn bites and snakes raking like plague:
all cookie prayers, nails and asphalt hemorrhage.
How dare you paw these lively paths, black cat.
Who said you could be out, on the street with me?
You caught the open eye of the dead-pale moon,
mystified by the leaden-gray of her violent iris.
Here is the final poem the Lola presented to me. I leave it to the reader to determine its meaning.
Tiny God
At my breast, flawless, you were light-imbued, sparkling blue, irises searching mine, searching the heart of this strange humanity you were summoned to. At three, you questioned heaven’s intent, how the Great Creator made telephone poles from trees, as he must have done because these things were good for the world. And at seven, MLK was truly a king to have freed many people, oppressed like yourself in your fleshy little body, too tight for your mind. Then grown and strong, peering down on us all from your cold young perch, watching as gods do, learning our faults and false starts, our clumsy
triumphs. Realm-weary by the days you should’ve raised a divine army, our foul hanging fog choked you back to take your place in space.
As you can tell, Lola’s next publication will be about Rain and the things Rain had to go through. However, Lola already had a chapbook of poetry published. “November Keepsakes” is a collection of poems and short stories that had been sitting on some shelf for ten years. When Rain committed suicide, Lola took them off the shelf, dusted them off, and had them published. I think it was a way for her to get back into writing. Even if it was editing and publishing poems and short stories, she had written ten years earlier. It was, in my opinion, also a way to honor Rains wish that her mom keep writing.
“November Keepsake” can be found on Amazon. Just search for Lola Willis.
Lola also enters her poetry into various competitions. Here are some of the chapbook competitions she told me about:
Chapbook Competitions:
• Rattle Chapbook Contest
• Tupelo Press Snowbound Chapbook Award
• Wolfson Press Poetry Chapbook Contest
• Iron Horse Literary Review Chapbook Competition
• The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize
• Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize
• Cow Creek Chapbook Prize
• Omnidawn Poetry Chapbook Contest
• Black Lawrence Press, The Black River Chapbook Competition
