Poet Meredith Davies Hadaway eyes my toasted english muffin as I slather it with butter and jam. “That smells good,” she says, somewhat longingly. Due to a doctor’s orders gluten-free diet, Hadaway is having only coffee.
Although her diet is restricted these days her creative output is anything but. This month her publisher, Word Press in Cincinnati, Ohio, released her second collection of poetry The River is a Reason. The book is already getting attention. Two poems from the collection have won honorable mention in separate poetry contests and a third has been nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize. Poet Peter Campion says of the book, “As they balance between the everyday and the mysterious, as they flow between praise and lament, these poems are dignified throughout by a master’s feel for sentence and line.”
Hadaway will read from The River is a Reason on January 26 at 6 p.m. in Tawes Theatre, Gibson Center for the Arts on the Washington College campus. Open to the public, the book launch is being billed as a tribute to the Chester River in words, images and music. The event will feature works by artist Marcy Dunn Ramsey, whose painting is featured on the cover of Hadaway’s book, and performances by local musicians.
That Hadaway has published two collections of poetry in five years, while working full time as vice president for college relations and marketing at Washington College, is a testament to the passion she feels her craft. But the road to a daily, disciplined writing habit took its share of twists and turns.
“I wrote my first poem in elementary school,” says Hadaway. “I kept on. Then when I was an undergrad, the poet Linda Pastan visited my creative writing class. She made an unbelievable impact on me that day by completely opening my eyes to the fact that I was and could be a poet.”
Hadaway’s grey-blue eyes widen, as if she were having an illuminating thought. “Whoa,” she says, shaking her head, “it really makes you think when you go out and give a reading.”
The die may have been cast in Hadaway’s creative writing class, but there was still the problem after graduation of how to make a living.
“I took a long hiatus to try to figure it out. You know how busy the working life is. I worked as a sign painter, a social worker and a substitute school teacher in the local public schools. Then I took a job in publishing as a marketing production person. In 1983 Washington College hired me to promote literary events, so I started going to all the readings. They gave me the nudge to go back to poetry.”
She then earned an M.F.A. in poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts. And in 2005 she published her first collection of poetry Fishing Secrets of the Dead, an elegy to her husband. “People get it wrong about my first book. They think I was sitting around writing poems while my husband was sick. But all I was doing everyday was taking care of him, trying to give him the best day possible. He died in September and I didn’t write the first poem until January.”
A young widow, Hadaway found herself acutely aware of how precious time is. That understanding translated into a need to carve out time for what is truly important in one’s life—a condition Hadaway refers to as “a negotiation with the inevitable.” Now she rises every morning at 5 a.m. to write before going to work. And if on a certain morning she doesn’t write, she will sit in her easy chair under a reading lamp with a book of poems. “Always with a book of poems,” she says, ” There has to be some time set aside every morning for thinking, or I would go insane.”
The River is the Reason is dedicated to her late father, although the book didn’t start out that way. Hadaway was well into the writing before she sensed her father’s presence.
“He just showed up one day and then stuck around for the duration. My father was an admiral in the navy and an aviator. He studied navigation; it was his thing. He taught me everything I know about it. And he was a great sailor, always learning something from the water. That’s my experience. I don’t get in my boat and go out there with a plan; I go out on the river to listen.”
Nowadays in the midst of juggling several poetry projects, Hadaway finds herself thinking about slowness and memory. “Rushing through our lives, everything goes by in a blur. We all have so much going on. We can’t remember things because we never really experienced them. Slowing down to think is essential.”
And then, seeming to slow down herself, and looking very much the postulating poet, Hadaway leaned back in the booth and cradling her coffee mug said, “You cannot ever be in a hurry to go anywhere on the river.”
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For information on Meredith Davies Hadaway’s January 26 reading and reception, call the Center for Environment & Society at 410-778-7295. To visit the poet’s website, go to https://mdh.washcoll.edu
Mary Wood says
What a nice portrait. Our family has worked out many a problem by going out on the river .
Misty Corbin says
Awww, Davies. What an excellent interview. I love you!