Life & Work with Candice Kelsey of Reynier Village, Beverlywood Adjacent

Today we’d like to introduce you to Candice Kelsey.

Hi Candice, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I grew up consumed with music, from practicing Minuet in G or Fur Elise for hours on the piano to learning the moon walk listening to Michael Jackson’s THRILLER to strumming left-handed like Paul McCartney from the Beatles’ SERGEANT PEPPER album to front row concert seats at Madonna’s LIKE A VIRGIN tour. The idea that something could come from nothing, that meter and lyric could generate entire worlds, led me to explore literature. Soon I found myself engaged in midnight reading binges with Poe, Dickinson, Hawthorne, and a flashlight, which eventually pointed me down the fertile, all-consuming path toward that untamed land known as Being an English Major.

Unexpectedly, I found myself teaching high school. Sharing the very authors who had illuminated the world for me was a gift. For twenty-eight years, I’ve spent my days helping young people discover the power of language and my nights trying to harness that same power on my own pages. Most comfortable existing in my vibrant inner world, I am drawn to poetry. It’s the place where my obsessions converge: music, imagery, words, family, memory, desire, grief, and reinvention. I’ve always been fascinated by the way a handful of carefully chosen words can hold an entire life. The older I get, the more miraculous that feels. Writing poems remains my way of paying attention to the mysteries of life that continue to thrill me.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
If my writing life has resembled anyone’s journey, it might be Papageno’s in Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Unlike the heroic Tamino, who marches confidently toward enlightenment, Papageno spends much of the opera bewildered, hungry, distracted, occasionally cowardly, and searching for connection. I relate.

The road has been anything but smooth. I’ve accumulated enough rejection letters to paper L.A.’s graffiti towers, navigated divorce and a second helping of family loss, and balanced time trying to write poems while grading incredibly moving and insightful student work. Like Papageno, I’ve often found myself wondering whether I accidentally wandered into someone else’s grand quest.

But as The Magic Flute suggests, wisdom doesn’t belong exclusively to heroes. Papageno survives because he remains curious, hopeful, and deeply human. Poetry has taught me something similar, that my struggle has been and will always be to remain open to wonder despite disappointment.

Fortunately, unlike Papageno, I never had to play a magic glockenspiel to find my way. I just need an endless supply of poetry, a supportive community, and enough optimism to believe language can always, again and again, and no matter what, transform us!

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
While I raised my three children, I put aside my dream of pursuing a doctorate in literature; today, even though I would be the oldest student in America, I am finally ready. My love for Herman Melville and interest in 19th Century America have led me to see that Melville’s major works are organized around a recurring problem: how to represent systems whose behavior emerges from distributed interactions rather than from the intentions of individual actors. I think Melville was preoccupied with forms of order such as naval organizations, whaling enterprises, legal institutions, military hierarchies, and national formations. If I’m accepted to a fully funded Ph.D. program (send me all the good vibes!), I want to study Melville full time. Because poetry is my first passion, I hope to bring Melville’s Civil War poetry into the conversation, which presents America itself as a complex and often unstable system.

Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
My writing life would not be possible without an incredibly generous and supportive community, which consists first and foremost of my three children who weren’t always the busy, independent adults they are today. Georgia-Rae, Mikey, and Izzy grew up sacrificing many a day at the beach, my undivided attention during an episode of CLONE WARS, or that coveted third bedtime story in service to the makeshift altar of my poetry aspirations. For the record, they’re my best work!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.candicemkelseypoet.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/feed_me_poetry/