Divergent Ways of Being: A Conversation with Emily Stoddard
Emily Stoddard | Divination with a Human Heart Attached | Game Over Books | February 2023 | 72 Pages
I first met Emily Stoddard a few years ago when she emailed me regarding a poem she had written about the early Christian stories of Peter’s daughter, Petronilla. I had written about Petronilla in my academic research from historical and disability studies perspectives, and found Emily’s creative work enthralling. It’s not every day that a historian gets an email from a poet, especially one who is giving flesh to the major tensions in the lives of disabled women across time and space. Emily and I stayed in touch, I framed her earliest Petronilla poem on the wall of my office, and eagerly awaited more. Recently I had the opportunity to catch up with Emily to talk about her new book, Divination with a Human Heart Attached, a collection of poetry that connects ancient ideas of infertility and embodiment to modern questions of agency, tradition, and disability. From ADHD to apocryphal texts to Alice Wong’s Disability Visibility Project, we discussed how those with minds and bodies that diverge from the so-called “norm” are remembered, storied, and given space to speak for themselves.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Meghan Henning: The poem “More & More,” what you begin with, is where I wanted to begin. You end the poem with several lines using the phrase “too much:”
Do not wake up next to me,
whispering: Too much,
too much.
Never say it is too much.
Tell me it is only human—
to wish for someone to believe
in the myth of you.
I know ADHD is something we have in common. For me, as someone who was diagnosed within the last year, I know that phrase “too much” is something that people with ADHD are hearing throughout their whole lives—that they’re too much, that it’s too much, that something they’re doing is too much.
From that perspective, from a kind of disability activism perspective, I found that particular way to open the collection powerful. How did that piece emerge, and how did it come to take its place at the outset of this collection?
Emily Stoddard: The funny thing is the book was almost done by the time I found out I have ADHD, so it’s been very weird going back with that insight. That neurodivergent “too muchness” is everywhere. As much as I wish I would have known the truth of my wiring so much earlier—it would have saved me a lot of pain—I also know I wouldn’t have written many of these things the same way if I knew what I know now.
When I came back to this poem in the weeks after learning how I’m wired this way, I honestly had to laugh. Of course the first line in my book would be “The trouble is, everything calls to me.” It’s almost too on-the-nose at a certain point, you know? [laughs]
MH: [laughs] Yeah, I was like, amen! I didn’t expect to be consumed by it in that way, and it was really stunning. But when you were writing this poem and you didn’t know, was that the refrain that you had heard? Was this something that was personal to you? Was it something you were observing in others and realizing it’s been said a lot about you too?
ES: Definitely. It is something that’s been said about me a lot. So much of the imagery in the book is pulled out of dreamwork. And it’s hard, you know, you can’t walk into the world saying, “This is what my private life is, this is the body of my imagination.” When I show up at a party with this level of interest in deep conversation or I’m moving in a thousand directions, you know, thinking of things that maybe other people aren’t thinking about or aren’t asking questions about, it’s coming from this space of what some have told me is “too much.”
It intersects with my spirituality and upbringing in Catholicism. It’s hard to know chicken or egg, which came first—there’s my Catholic roots but then there’s my divergent way of being, which was a perfect match of intensity for Catholicism. Here is this tradition that’s full of bizarre images and intense saints who often didn’t fit in, that thinks you can put people’s fingers on display and call it sacred—what a perfect place for divergent thinking, you know? I could be too much in so many places, but when I was at mass or practicing sacraments, there was never enough intensity. You could be as intense as you wanted. I think that informs all the images and informs the dreams I have, which inform the poems, but they’re always meeting up against the reality of the world. They’re always meeting up with having to navigate the humanness with the mythic-ness, and there’s so often someone waiting to say “too much.”
MH: I knew that faith or religious practice was central to your work in some way, and when I read the poems “Inheritance Rosarium” and “Passion Play,” I was particularly struck by lines like “I was a Lent-hearted girl” and “I want more passion, less resurrection.”
The final line of “Inheritance Rosarium” is so stirring, which talks specifically about encountering the divine. “Where did I leave my god” touches on this as well, in terms of how to find and encounter the divine. So broadly speaking, what is the role of faith and doubt in your work? What is the role of the divine? And how is that the same or different from the way that you see your engagement with Catholicism?
ES: There are so many ways I could explore that. I truly did not want to write a book about these things. I resisted this book and then tried to negotiate with it, because I kept thinking there was no way I was coming out of the gate with what I’ve been lovingly calling my “Catholic freak book.” [both laugh]
And that’s an anticipation of the “too muchness,” you know? That’s a caution around it. It was a combination of, “No, I don’t want to revisit some of those things.” and also “I’m not sure I can.”
All of that is a bit emblematic of my relationship to tradition on the whole. I think people are surprised when they find out how cynical and skeptical I actually am. I have a lot of questions, and my idea is that if there is going to be a god, then it had better be a god I’m co-creating with. I’m not interested in one where it’s this transactional, one-way relationship. If it’s a god who doesn’t let me ask questions and push a little bit, then that’s not a big enough god for me.
So the doubt in my work comes from that space. This book inadvertently came out of a lot of seeking and learning and figuring out, because I had essentially left the Catholic Church based on everything that’s been happening in it. I was trying to figure out what it looked like to be an insider outsider—someone who is deeply rooted in a tradition and knows enough to be outside of it consciously, but is still very much pulled to it in a lot of ways.
That’s the language I’ve gotten to around it, because I find labels like “spiritual but not religious” fall short for me. It’s a label that misses the tension behind this relationship to faith, doubt, and questioning the institution. It’s a label that sounds like, “Oh, you’re done with it now, you wash your hands of it.” And it has never been that clean or simple for me.
MH: “Spiritual but not religious” also sidelines people who derive spiritual benefit from physical religious practices. It’s like, you keep your Cartesian dualisms to yourself—I’m not going to be a floating head with you, right?
ES: Exactly—it sounds wonderful in a headline or as a demographic, but the reality of living in that space is something different. Especially if you’re someone who is trying to reconcile with the harm that’s been done by this tradition that you’ve been a part of. How do you parse out the parts that are true and safe and inclusive and fair from the impact of the institution?
So I was doing all of that work very personally, going down a common path of reading folks like Elaine Pagels and the Gnostic Gospels. It was that feeling of, “Here’s someone showing a different way of thinking about these things.” I spent time with Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ work as someone who’s working at the intersection of myth and practice. That was all just part of my personal spiritual practice, and it just started to bleed into the writing.
Probably about two or so years after starting to work with Petronilla, I stumbled into your work. I felt like I’d been intuiting and doubting so much as a poet, so to find your research and thinking on her was incredibly affirming.
MH: I love that your way of being spiritual and religious is also the thing that kept turning you toward the work. I think a rich part of the Catholic intellectual tradition is the idea of finding God as God reveals Godself to us in history, at the edges of human wisdom and understanding. In that way, it’s very clear throughout this collection that Petronilla kept bringing you back to these questions.
You also answered another question I had, which was how you ended up so deeply engaged with the Christian apocrypha. You engage with different texts throughout the collection: the gospel of Judas, the Acts of Peter, the Acts of Philip, and so on. Every time I turned the page, there it was again. I was thinking, “Okay, I’m a weird Bible scholar. I know how I got here.” [laughs] but how did you get here? What kept bringing you back to these texts? Why stick with these texts that people don’t really know?
ES: Honestly, religious sociology is probably one of my hyperfixations. At one point I was buying so many books my local bookstore asked what class I was taking. But it was just obsession—just a lot of rabbit holes I kept falling down.
I’m someone who gets obsessed with things like etymology. I think, “This word has a certain tone to me that feels true or essential to it. But where does that come from? It must be something cultural. It must be something more.” When you do that with these texts, you can just go forever. There’s so much.
I’m someone who has to know what’s at the root of a thing so that I can understand the pattern now. That’s probably why I thought this work was just to help me understand and reconcile with the tradition as I’m currently experiencing it. But just by the nature of being in conversation with those texts, it infiltrated the poetry too.
MH: Petronilla is of course Peter’s daughter. Some of your poems about her are historically grounded in the apocryphal text themselves and a poetic retelling. And then later you take some more imaginative approaches to her story. She tries to imagine her father’s prayer and then has a narrative at the end in “Wait for It.” You’re giving her a voice, and yet I’m also aware that in the ancient texts Petronilla has no voice. It struck me that when you’re doing this storytelling, you’re giving her this highly individualized, personalized voice, whereas the texts we have from the historical period are all about her sacrifice as a woman, for the collective—or what she can teach other people or what this tells us about Peter. So I’m wondering, what is gained and lost when we give these women twenty-first century voices?
ES: Shades of that question are part of the reason I was resistant to writing the book. I wasn’t sure how to work with Petronilla, and I was worried about doing it ethically.
I’m sensitive and skeptical about the way this work sometimes gets framed as “giving voice to the voiceless,” because I believe even in silence or absence, a person still has agency that should be honored. The question is why they weren’t given true, honest space to begin with. If I veer too hard into “giving a voice” instead of listening and making space, then I run the risk of being just like Peter and using Petronilla as a teachable moment.
I tried to notice when I was writing versus when I was simply listening and receiving what was coming through via Petronilla. There’s a particular phrasing and sparseness that felt different in her poems and in how she shows up. I also went back to people like Lucille Clifton, who wrote poems in Eve’s voice. If not for writers like her, who had already explored some of that space, it would have been harder for me to feel like I could do this.
The process showed me that the point isn’t to become an expert on Petronilla or to try and decide what it all means. This kind of writing—of reclaiming or imagining or opening to a voice that’s been marginalized—is ultimately about making space and asking more questions.
MH: Yes, even as a historian, that’s the task, right? I think that’s just honest and real, and I think that speaks through the poems. One that I wanted to touch on is where Petronilla tries to imagine Peter’s prayer and says, “He could have asked for the men’s eyes to fall out when they looked at me. Even Salome had the imagination to ask for John’s head on a platter.”
There’s this tension between the Jesus material in the Sermon on the Mount that puts the burden for sexual continence on the eye of the beholder, the male gaze.
In contrast, the Petronilla story looks like an embrace of a second century sexual ethic that places all the responsibility on the body of the female. What I loved about that poem is you have Petronilla herself naming that and saying, “What’s this? What are you doing there?”
ES: Yes, there was something in her voice that whenever it would show up, it was like she’s smarter than Peter and she knows it.
It’s similar to the magpie in the book saying essentially, “I know what’s going on here, so I don’t need to dress in mourning. I don’t need to do this. I’m going to liberate myself because I see the pattern. I see how you’re using me or how you’re expecting me to show up to be used.”
For me, Petronilla started merging with these other symbols, which happens at the end of that poem. What if Petronilla is behind the rooster crowing, because she already knows the truth about her dad? That’s where it gets into the father-daughter tension. There is something happening in their story that tells me something about the tension that’s happening in this tradition through that dynamic. Whether it’s a spiritual father-daughter, symbolic or otherwise, I think Petronilla is doing or observing something that no one else is.
MH: One of the things happening there is that yes, it’s likely Peter did have a daughter and she did have a disability. The Jesus movement has this reputation for having healing abilities, so it doesn’t make sense to people that Peter’s daughter has a disability. So this tradition emerged where Peter was asked, “Why is your daughter disabled?” And it gets written that he says basically, “it’s better for her and it’s better for me.”
The ancient Acts of Peter ends up reflecting second century Christians trying to craft a story about Peter more than it does the actual relationship between Peter and his daughter. It would have been a story that made sense of second century Christian understandings of the miraculous, the body, sexuality and marriage.
I do think Petronilla has the ability to be this really interesting point of reflection, because we don’t have that many women in this tradition, and the story that ends up getting told about her quite literally silences her, puts her in her place.
ES: It’s interesting that not only does Petronilla not speak in the texts, they also don’t just use her as a passing object—they make a point of saying she’s helpless.
MH: Yeah, I spend a lot of time thinking about what it is I can’t know about Petronilla. And in many ways, your creative project is coming from a different set of questions, which is to say, okay, we can’t know, but if we could, what could she say? Who would she be?
You talked about how you wanted to respect Petronilla and let this speak to you. That reminded me of Alice Wong’s Disability Visibility Project and the role of storytelling. Through story we get an intimate encounter with disability that doesn’t flatten disability experience. It doesn’t assume it’s a monolith but instead tries to add dimension. I wonder if that was one of your goals with this collection.
And as you started to realize that you had to tell this story, that you couldn’t avoid it, how did you come to terms with narrating a disabled woman’s experience that’s so removed from your own in time and space? What’s the relationship between lived experience and the transcendent or other kinds of messages that you’re trying to communicate with these poems?
ES: I really appreciate this question. It reminds me of a point in the process that I’ve moved so far from, it’s easy to forget it was a thing I struggled with. It was a threshold that had to be crossed. There was a moment where I was working on the order of the poems, to see if there was something cohesive happening. And I found myself wondering, have I taken enough chances? Have I asked myself to show up enough?
There were certain poems I started to get more sensitive to and had to ask: are these just “idea” poems? Which is another way of asking where and how the lived experience is showing up or not. I ended up writing poems like “Where did I leave my god” and “Magpie Says” after asking those questions.
This came through with Petronilla a lot, especially in the third version of the poems where Petronilla tries to imagine her father’s prayer. And this is credit to your work and the association of coldness with infertility.
I very much pulled from my experience of how people engage me in my infertility—people have literally laid hands on me when I have not asked for it. There’s a kind of violation and otherworldliness I’ve often felt via my infertility, via my body. It also comes from different experiences I’ve had of feeling objectified by the scientific process, like I’m just this body to be tampered with. Or a body to be pitied by the faith community. I have loved ones who have said things like, “Look at those beautiful children they have over there. That’s God rewarding them.” And I’m left thinking, “So I am not being rewarded? That’s what this is?”
When I found your work around infertility and Petronilla, I was stunned to know what Petronilla’s paralysis could have symbolized at the time. I originally didn’t know why she had shown up for me, but I needed that kind of person to resonate with and recognize myself in.
MH: Thank you for sharing that. I think so many people resonate with that experience and have been told similar things or heard similar things. I’m grateful in my own work to Candida Moss and all of her work around infertility in early Christian texts. Conversations with her inspired me to go further into the Petronilla story, specifically with respect to bloodflow and infertility. I think that your giving voice to that through poetry is a gift to others as well, because the experience does come through in the way that you express it in those poems, and elsewhere in this rich collection.
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Emily Stoddard (she/her) is a poet and creative nonfiction writer in Michigan. Her work can be found in Tupelo Quarterly, Baltimore Review, Ruminate, Radar, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Whitefish Review, and elsewhere. In 2021, she received the Developmental Editing Fellowship in creative nonfiction from the Kenyon Review.