TALKING BOOKS
Rachna Singh, Editor, The Wise Owl talks to Cynthia Anderson about her cherita collection 'The Far Mountain.'
Talking Books
With Cynthia Anderson
The Wise Owl talks to Cynthia Anderson about her recently released Cherita collection The Far Mountain.
Thank you, Cynthia, for taking time out of a busy schedule to talk to The Wise Owl.
RS: The Far Mountain explores such a broad range of themes—desert landscapes, health, family, relationships, and dreamscapes. What inspired you to choose cherita as the form to encapsulate these diverse experiences?
CA: I find cherita to be a flexible, open-ended form, easily adapted to different kinds of storytelling and subject matter. Throughout my poetry life, I’ve always written short poems with short lines—so cherita felt very familiar, and yet presented opportunities to expand in new directions.
RS: How did the pandemic influence your writing practice, especially your turn to cherita? Did it bring about new perspectives or themes in your poetry?
CA: As fate would have it, I began writing cherita in January 2020, just before the pandemic. Peter Jastermsky introduced me to the form and coached me through my initial trial-and-error phase. As it turned out, the pandemic was an incredible gift to my writing life. Though I’d written daily for years, all of a sudden a torrent of poems poured out of me and continued throughout the pandemic. Much of that outpouring consisted of cherita—hundreds of them, on every subject imaginable. I didn’t censor what was happening, just rode the wave. I’m grateful to ai li, the creator of the cherita form, for her encouragement and for publishing some of my efforts in her journal, the cherita.
RS: ‘The Far Mountain’ is divided into five sections: Desert Vista, What Air I Have, A Long Silence, Fateful Distraction, and Quantum Night. Could you share how these sections came about and what each represents in your journey?
CA: My husband and I moved to the Mojave Desert near Joshua Tree National Park in 2008, after decades on the California coast. I made a promise to the desert at the very the beginning: I would write about any creature or natural phenomenon that showed itself to me, and I’ve kept that promise—hence Desert Vista. Though I love the desert, it has challenges as well, and that feeling is reflected in What Air I Have (along with health challenges). A Long Silence touches on family issues, always present; Fateful Distraction does the same for friendships and love relationships. Finally, my nighttime dreams are of paramount importance to me, and cherita on that theme and alternate realities appear in the last section, Quantum Night.
RS: Cherita, by nature, relies heavily on brevity. What challenges and freedoms did this form offer you, especially when dealing with deeply personal or expansive themes?
CA: I love how short form poetry can say so much with so few words. That is the challenge: tapping into the expansiveness of what is implied, and allowing the reader space to imagine. In the years when I wrote only traditional free verse, I sometimes received negative comments on my very short lines and my choices for line breaks. With cherita, short lines and interesting line breaks are the norm. The challenge becomes, how can a line break add to the story? Which details are essential and carry the weight of emotion? I try not to veer into abstraction, but stick with concrete imagery that becomes larger than itself in the telling.
RS: The desert landscape features prominently in your work. In what ways does this environment shape your poetry and your creative worldview?
CA: I find that the desert is widely misunderstood or mistrusted, and even sometimes hated. There’s no place to hide from oneself in the desert. Whatever needs to come out will come out. My experience of the desert is that there are few distractions, vast vistas, and vast stretches of time to write. And, no one looking over my shoulder. The home I’ve lived in for 16 years looks nothing like the Sahara. It’s a diverse ecosystem—hilly, high elevation (3800 feet), packed with boulders and juniper trees and Joshua trees, and with cold winters, even snow, as well as hot summers. Geological time is palpable and lends perspective—the long view, as it were.
RS: Could you share more about the title poem, The Far Mountain? What significance does the image of "walking toward the far mountain" hold for you and the themes of the collection?
CA: That poem came from the daily morning walk I took for many years, out my front door and down the dirt road to the open desert with a view across the valley. In the cold of winter, the snow line of the mountains on the other side would be at my eye level. I could walk in that direction, taking in the view—but never get there. Not only was it way too far, but also the desert is deceiving when it comes to distances. Even if something seems reachable, it’s actually farther than you think. That’s an apt metaphor for the poems in this collection.
RS: Your cherita seem to go beyond mere observations, aiming to create a felt experience for the reader. How do you balance personal narrative with universal resonance in such a compact form?
CA: If I succeed in doing what you said even once in a while, for even one reader, I’m happy. All I can do is start with a sincere intention and proceed as honestly as I know how.
RS: Looking forward, do you envision cherita remaining central to your work, or are there other forms or genres you’d like to explore?
CA: Yes! I am always writing cherita. Not at the same breakneck pace as during the pandemic, but I expect to continue with cherita indefinitely. I explore all the short forms I can—haiku, senryu, haibun, tanka, sequences... I look forward to never being finished and maintaining a short form poetry practice for the rest of my life.
Thank you Cynthia for talking to The Wise Owl about your creativity and poetic craft. We wish you the very best in all your literary endeavours.
About Cynthia Anderson
Cynthia Anderson began writing cherita just before the pandemic, and it became an essential part of her writing practice.The Far Mountain is Cynthia’s thirteenth poetry collection. Other recent titles include Arrival (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions,2023) and Full Circle (Cholla Needles Press,2022). Her poems appear frequently in journals and anthologies, and her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of
the Net. Cynthia is co-editor of the anthology A Bird Black As the Sun: California Poets on Crows & Ravens. She has lived in California for over 40 years. Her website is www.cynthiaandersonpoet.com
A doctorate in English literature and a former bureaucrat, Rachna Singh has authored Penny Panache (2016) Myriad Musings (2016) Financial Felicity (2017) & The Bitcoin Saga: A Mixed Montage (2019). Her latest book is Phoenix in Flames, a book about eight ordinary women from different walks of life who become extraordinary on account of their fortitude & grit. She writes regularly for National Dailies and has also been reviewing books for the The Tribune for more than a decade. She runs a YouTube Channel, Kuch Tum Kaho Kuch Hum Kahein, which brings to the viewers poetry of established poets of Hindi & Urdu. She loves music and is learning to play the piano. Nurturing literature & art is her passion and to make that happen she has founded The Wise Owl, a literary & art magazine that provides a free platform for upcoming poets, writers & artists.
About Rachna Singh
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Hi Joanna. Thanks for talking to The Wise Owl
RS: Your collection of Cherita ‘river lanterns’ has been released recently. Our readers would be eager to know (as I am) what inspired you to write this beautiful collection of 90 virgin Cherita.
JA: I have been published in Ai Li’s Cherita journals for a while and love writing in this form. I mentioned in my email correspondence to Ai Li that I aspired to have my own Cherita collection published. She offered to edit my selection of poems from a large selection that I sent her. I would say my inspiration came from reading Ai Li’s own collections of her Cherita verse, they are so beautiful.
When I began writing these, I was mindful to really show me as not only a writer but as the person beneath and how the Cherita form bends to the art of storytelling. It took me some time to write these and I am delighted with the narrative that Ai Li made with her choices for my book. When another person chooses, they can distance themselves from your work and look critically at what you have sent. It was a real honour for me to entrust the creator of the Cherita with my work.
RS: Your book is a collection of Cherita verse. Cherita is a genre of recent origin (1997). Tell us what attracted you to this genre of poetry. Were there any creative influences in your life that encouraged you to adopt this genre as your own.
JA: I am attracted to this genre of poetry as I hold a deep reverence for Ai Li’s poetry and the short form poetry forms as a collective. I was excited to see that Ai Li had developed this new genre. She published my short form verse in the 1990s in her journal Still and I was sad when this was no longer in print. I enjoyed the challenge of learning how to write this new form and find it really resonates with me as a writer.
I discovered her new form of Cherita and was hooked by these story gems. I really admire the way that the Cherita journals are produced and enjoy reading the work within these. As a writer it is important to keep on working at your craft and I love it when I get to enjoy the work of a fellow poet in the same genre.
RS: River Lanterns has been edited and published by ai li, the creator of Cherita as a genre. How was the experience of connecting with the doyen of Cherita and having her select your Cherita?
JA: As I mentioned earlier Ai Li had published my work in the 90s, then through offering Cherita to her for publication, the connection was reborn. I have always enjoyed reading Ai Li’s poetry and I have found her to be a gracious supporter of my Cherita. Sending my work to the creator of the genre I think really made me conscious that I had to elevate my writing to meet the standards to have enough quality Cherita for my own individual collection. The experience is something that I will treasure as I now have a collection published other people can enjoy and will hopefully encourage them to do the same.
RS: Cherita is said to be a unique form of storytelling…storytelling in 6 lines. M Kei says that Cherita verse ‘combine the evocative power of tanka with the narrative of a personal story, like the vignettes we glimpse as we sit in a café and watch the world go by.’ Do you agree ? For the benefit of the readers would you please elaborate on this.
JA: Yes, I think M Kei’s insight is correct. Cherita to me contain the voice/song/whispers around the campfire as the stories unfold. They can be written about such a wide range of experiences, focused through the lens of the individual. I love the power of tanka, and I see Cherita as a close cousin, both forms use beautiful language to sing a fragment of the world that we live in.
RS: I feel what differentiates Cherita from narrative storytelling, is that it tells a story about life & our spiritual journey. This is very true of your Cherita:
have you
found it yet
the fun arcade
where wishes
are the alchemy
of breath
What are your thoughts on this?
JA: Yes, I feel a real connection with Cherita and my spiritual side. This is an element that attracts me to using this form. It allows me to explore and highlight aspects that may not be accepted in other types of verse. The Cherita can be used as a blank canvas for me to embed my perspective of my inner and outer world through stories.
RS: What are the themes or stories you have touched upon in your various Cherita verse?
JA: Where to begin… The Cherita in this collection provides a map of my highs and lows. They reveal how I see the world and feel about it. I enjoy adding elements of fairytales, myths, rich imagery, and aspects of the natural world. The importance of love, loss, friendship, connections, truth etc. all are within. The Cherita captures a moment of beauty, in time, often of universal things that happen to all of us but told from the narrator’s perspective. Often there is a vein of spirituality running through the verse.
RS: There are some cherita terbalik also in your collection. For the benefit of our readers please tell us how this form is different from Cherita and why we need a different syllable arrangement for this form of poetic storytelling
JA: The Cherita terbalik also tells a story but ‘terbalik’ is the Malay word for upside down or reversal (https://www.thecherita.com/) It is a different arrangement of the original Cherita stanza format. By using another variation of the Cherita format it enables the writer to alter the flow of the story that they are telling, such as the example from my collection below:
the ruby shoes
the glass slipper
the fairy dust
as a child
I imagined all
in my cupboard
To me this verse is stronger with the terbalik arrangement. Writing Cherita I make a judgement as to which stanza suits the flow of the story.
RS: Do you also write in other genres like haiku, senryu, tanka, haibun on a regular basis? Which is your favorite genre among all these genres (we know your fondness for Cherita of course)
JA: Yes, I also write in other genres such as haiku, senryu, tanka, Haibun and other short form verse. I began writing contemporary poetry first and then I discovered haiku when I was looking for poetry journals to read and subscribe to. I fell in love with haiku and feel that they are the guardians of nature and our world. I find short form poetry very special; these dewdrops of tiny forms really capture a sense of the world around us.
I see the bonds between these genres as strings from the same bow –
the heart harp
wind and rainfall
skeins from sky
this humming
of a melody
our soul bonds
Selecting a favourite is like asking a parent to choose a child. They all hold a place in my heart. I began with haiku and then progressed to tanka – aspects of the heart. These are the two that led me into this world of short form poetry and were my entry point for exploring and discovering other genres. I wouldn’t like to be without any one of them as they each offer a different way to express aspects of the world and my own life journey.
RS: What advice would you give budding poets of Cherita verse?
JA: The advice I would give to writers of any verse is to READ, READ, READ. Study the form, work on your craft, support the journals that publish them – if you want to write them, then surely you will enjoy reading them. Write, keep on writing and honing, learning the form, find your own style/voice, make connections in the writing world – even if online and listen and appreciate editorial advice – they have a vast range of experience, and this is how you grow as a writer. The short form poetry world is a beautiful, supportive place. When you buy a journal that publishes Cherita verse or another genre, be open to learning and see how well other writers use the form. Try and buy the collections of writers that you admire, this keeps our writers’ world vibrant and alive.
Thank you, Joanna, for taking time out to talk to The Wise owl about your beautiful book. We wish you the best and hope you make this unique storytelling genre rich with your verse.
Thank you so much for asking me to talk to you.