H. Lee Coakley Talks Inspiration for “the Capitol gives testimony”
Interview by Gabriela V. Everett & Katie Lynn Johnston
This week we sat down with the wonderful poet, H. Lee Coakley, to talk about their poem, the inspiration behind it, and what drew them to poetry in the first place.
What drew you to the craft of writing? Specifically that of poetry?
What drew me to the craft of poetry specifically, is that I find that poetry is often able to communicate things that it feels like no other medium can. A lot of my inspiration for poems draws from the complexity of emotion and memory and felt sensation—I often find that poems give me the space and flexibility I need to really convey that depth.
Your poem, “the Capitol gives testimony” radiates a sense of power, a calm before the storm, with a sense of defiance and political undertone. How do you think the past six years, considering their political strife, have affected your writing and what you write about?
This is a tough question!
I definitely feel that the past six years have shaped the nature of what I write about and the urgency with which I write. And, as you can see in this poem, it’s also shaped the content of what I’m writing. I often find myself feeling really powerless or grief-stricken or deeply angry or very afraid when I am engaging with our shared political life, so I’m finding that poetry is an avenue for moving through some of those emotions and also hopefully giving other folks a space to feel witnessed in their own emotional experience.
The rhythm of your verse feels like a march or heartbeat. What did you consider when breaking up the poem or choosing the phrasing?
The rhythm for this poem came about pretty naturally as I was writing it. I was really trying to think of the reverberations of sound during the insurrection as they echoed through the capitol building. I thought, if a building could give testimony, what would that testimony sound like? And to me it might sound like an echo of all of the noise and confusion and cacophony of the day in question.
I also wanted to capture that sense of militancy that was present there that day—how the symbols and language of both militancy and, surprisingly, Salt n’ Pepa are sitting side by side. So a bit of that was a nod to the way whiteness co-opts Black culture for its own purposes.
The image of the dog and woof that we receive at the early middle of the poem meets the image of a beast barking at the end. What does this transformation mean to you?
It’s funny, because I originally had the final word as “starving” rather than “barking.” And there’s a part of me that thinks I should have changed it back! However, I think that what we’re pointing to in either case is that same idea of growing dread or the way that the emotional register of a mob can seem to overflow its container and become something deeply threatening and destructive.
The way we as humans can also move from a recognizable animal to a beast, from a growl to a bark.
What have you been working on recently? Anything you would like to share?
I’ve spent a good bit of time this past fall refining and submitting poems that were written during the past few years. It feels really nice to see a lot of those poems find homes in magazines and journals. Otherwise, I’m really at this point playing with the influence of haiku in my work. Using small glimpses of language and white space to their greatest effect.
I’d also like to share that I’m very open to hearing from folks about their experience of my poem! I don’t have much of a social media presence, but I’ll be looking at the comments on the blog and on IG, [if anyone wants to share their thoughts]!
H. Lee Coakley (they/she) is a queer poet & nutritional healer currently based in Brooklyn, NY. They hold a BA from New York University & an MSPH from Johns Hopkins University. Their work has been featured in The Lavender Review, Utterance Journal, The Voices Project, Blueshift Anthology and The Mad Farmer Reading Series.