Professor Toi Derricotte, a current poet and Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, was born in Hamtramck, Michigan in 1941. She earned her B.A. from Wayne State University and her M.A. in English literature from New York University. “She has published six books of poetry, including Tender (1997), which won the 1998 Paterson Poetry Prize.”
However, the most impressive thing about Professor Derricotte is that she is genuinely a person that changes reality whenever she feels that something should be better, even if it is hard work. In 1996, with Cornelius Eady (another contemporary American poet), she co-founded Cave Canem Foundation, an annual workshop retreat for black poets. Whether she is reading ghazals1 aloud in her office, or inviting her poetry class to dinner at her house, Professor Derricotte is always excited to get to know her students and explore poetry, continually pushing the limits of how writing can literally change today’s world.
When did you first start writing poetry and why?
I started when I was a baby, when I was two. My aunt would bring home colored paper and I would draw on it, and I truly used to believe what I drew was real. You know I’d draw a car and I would think it was a real car. I think I’ve always felt that writing on paper has some sort of magical qualities. Taking an idea, and the longing, putting it on paper, and making it into a real object. I suppose I have always had the awareness that there was a separate world that always could fulfill my needs and desires. Because people seemed to be unhappy, because they didn’t have things, but I could always draw what I wanted. The things you want don’t need to be continually lost, and that’s something I just realized recently.
What subjects do you often explore in your work?
Form definitely. I really pay attention to the form in my poems, especially because it’s never been a natural talent of mine. I mean, some poems just come to me in an organized, stanzaic way, but most of the time, I spend years revising my poems because I am convinced that there is some form that fits the poem perfectly, and I have yet to discover it. I know that there is a place that already exists, where the internal and external meet, and I keep working on both until they click. And change. I like to examine change within a person and how people are affected by historical events and their surroundings.
You had a new book come out recently. What is it about?
Yeah, it just came out this past Friday and it’s called The Undertaker’s Daughter. Actually, my grandfather and father were both an undertakers. The book is about how people respond to violence in their childhood and bury their own voices and truths. And how this violence destroys the ability to trust, and it becomes difficult to form attachments. It’s about the unburial of the self and the risk of forming attachments in one’s present day life. And also it deals with change. Because creating a work of art, it’s changing the past and your relationship to it, which basically means that you’re changing yourself.
What is the hardest part of writing?
The process. It’s really difficult. I believe that when you’re there, that’s when you write about whatever it is you’re writing about. I’m not one of those people that can put an idea down on paper and write about it a day later. Getting down to the real truth of what your feelings are too – you want to escape it. Writing is really just a meditation. You just have to sit down and stop everything else and do it. This morning, I woke up at 5:30, and I didn’t want to, I just wanted to stay asleep, but I knew I had to write, so I did.
You’ve been a professor at Pitt for many years. What do you like best about teaching?
I love everything about it. I love teaching and I love people like you interested in learning new skills, ideas, and really just being there to explore anything with my students.
1. A ghazal is a type of poem consisting of rhyming couples and a refrain, with each line sharing the same meter. They are often focused on expressing the pain of loss and separation, and the beauty of love in spite of the pain.