Vera West, our amazing poetry barista, has recently released her novel in verse, Plucked. A lot of hard work and dedication went into bringing it to life, and Vera was kind enough to share a brief excerpt of it with us. There’s also an interview at the end to give you some insight into what inspired Plucked‘s creation.
8
I hated the city bus;
the sticky floors,
the lurking men
staring from faded plastic
seats. It creeped me out,
but it couldn’t be avoided.
With my ride secured,
the next complication
to iron out was a
parental signature on
Everleigh’s admission forms.
I couldn’t transfer without it.
The bus stopped
at the Ninth Cat,
my granny’s barbershop
on the corner of a
rundown street
in my rundown town,
but its faded red paint
shone like a ruby to me;
its twisting red, blue, white
barber sign, a beacon
in the community.
The shop was her pride
and I was her joy.
—ding, ding, ding—
chimed the old door’s bell.
Granny was with a customer,
but she set down her clippers
to give me a side hug
—always careful to never
get hair on her grandbabies—
An oscillating fan blew,
swaying my prized
kindergarten finger painting
back and forth on its
Scotch-tape hooks.
She’d hung it up almost
thirteen years ago;
they just don’t make
tape like that anymore.
“Shouldn’t you be at school, baby?”
I shook my head, “Class ended
at three.”
Granny started the clippers again,
the hum not too loud
for me to talk
or for her to hear.
“I got accepted into a music school,”
I blurted out; sometimes,
the best way to say something
was to just say it.
Granny’s ears perked,
her eyes shimmered.
“College?”
I shook my head.
“It’s a school that preps you for college.”
She frowned, her glimmer
dimming to worry,
and told me it sounded expensive.
I explained the scholarships,
the opportunity to work,
and she beamed again.
Hardworking women
respect opportunities
and my granny, Mert Jones,
was the hardest working
of us all.
Granny paused cuttin’ hair
and watched me.
“Your momma won’t let you go,
and you need your daddy to sign?”
I nodded.
“Can you leave the form?”
I shook my head.
Granny leaned forward to her customer,
told him she’d be back in five;
loyal customers never minded.
She took off her apron
with an idle sweep,
shaking the soft black
puffs of hair onto the floor
and motioned for me to follow her.
In the back of the store,
was the other store,
Granny’s second job: selling Avon
and she was damn good.
When I was little, she watched me
on afternoons and weekends;
I’d count inventory for her,
tallying up roll-on deodorants and perfumes
as we ate fries and hamburgers,
chugging pop and crunching ice,
plucking lottery numbers
out of the sky (sure to win)
and jotting them down in a worn notebook.
Today she got a pen and held her hand out.
“Give me that form,” Granny said smirking,
“and this stays between us, you hear?”
She signed my father’s name
in a pretty penmanship that made
me wonder if cuttin’ hair had really
been her dream.
I thanked her and
then thanked her again as she
filled a grocery bag with toiletries, and
handed me a bundle of rolled twenties,
eyes gleaming with pride.
I didn’t often ask but when I did,
Granny always came through.
Interview with Vera West
FC: When did you first get the idea to write this book?
VW: I was reading another novel in verse, Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Avecedo and it
inspired me. I had my own ideas of how I would execute a novel in a verse format but wasn’t
exactly sold on a topic or theme. There are always ideas jiggling around in my head but often
it takes a while to figure out how those ideas translate into a story worth telling. For ideas
inspired by more personal experiences, I find that sometimes it’s hard for me to get enough
separation to be able to abstractly tell a story the way it needs to be told. During my time as
FC’s poet-in-residence I discovered poetry allowed me that separation and I began to be able
to tell stories inspired by strong emotions I’d felt or meaningful experiences I’d had.
Eventually, I worked up the courage to write Plucked and all the elements of a novel in verse,
writing what you know and giving the characters a voice of their own merged together in a
way that just worked.
FC: What’s the most surprising thing you learned while writing it?
VW: How hard it was to write in verse. Not just the format but the content. I’ve never written
anything that left me feeling so raw and vulnerable. Honestly, it made me uptight and a bit
of a tornado to deal with at home and at work. Even though Plucked is fiction the feelings
imbued into each stanza, even each line, are very real. I became Iza, I was Iza, and that
became a very emotional place for me to write from.
FC: In what way is the book you wrote different from the book you set out to write?
VW: I intended to write a book about a struggling artist who is ultimately willing to do whatever
necessary to see her dreams come true but Plucked ended up being a story about survival, healing, friendship and chosen families. In a lot of ways the undertones became the overtones and it made the piece more potent than I’d imagined it could be.
FC: Who is a creative person (not a writer) who has influenced you and your work?
VW: I’ve been listening a lot to Teddy Swims. He has a song called “Lose Control”. The lyrics
describe being on the cusp of either falling in love or losing himself to an unhealthy
infatuation and I think that venerability comes across through the rawness, the way his
singing sacrifices perfection for something real and visceral is inspiring. I struggle to let go. I
actively want to be perfect and the idea of not striving for that feels like giving up but
somewhere along the way, letting go and just creating allows you to tap into a sort of magic
you just can’t get when you’re worried about being perfect. Which ironically creates
something rather perfect in my opinion at least. In short, this translates to: just write the
damn book!
FC: Persuade someone to read Plucked in fifty words or less.
VW: Plucked is vivid, emotional, tenacious but most importantly it’s real and it will resonate with
you like it did with me.
Check out Plucked here!
After a messy divorce from music, West fell into a torrid love affair with writing. They’ve been somewhat happily married since 2013 when her first novel was published in partnership with Schuler’s Books & Music Chapbook Press. West graduated from Grand Valley State University with a Bachelor’s of Art in Writing in 2011 with an emphasis on fiction and poetry. Since then, West has self-published a handful of novels and three collections of poems that tackle themes of love, redemption, cultural identity, social issues, and the afterlife. West resides in Michigan with her family and can often be found reheating the tea she forgot she made or reading a good book.
