The Hillbilly Poet: Rita Quillen

“Poetry is about talking about one thing in terms of another. Poetry has historically been about a display of wit. It’s about making you see the world in a different way,” said Rita Quillen, an Appalachian poet brought in by the Concord University Library for National Library Week and Poetry Month.  

National Library week was April 12-18, and April is National Poetry month. Quillen was on campus for a discussion about her fiction writing on Monday April 12, and spoke about her poetry on Tuesday April 13.  

Quillen taught for 33 years in the community college systems of Tennessee and Virginia. She was one of the six finalists for the 2012-2014 Poet Laureate of Virgina. Out of three collections of poetry, her collection Her Secret Dream was named the outstanding poetry book of the year by the Appalachian Writers Association in 2008. 

In addition to poetry, Quillen has a book of essays called Looking for Native Ground: Contemporary Appalachian Poetry, and a novel titled Hiding Ezra. Quillen also writes and records music, and owns a farm in Scott County, Virginia. 

Quillen is busy this month due to National Poetry Month. “This is national poetry month as well as national library week, so I tell people that the busiest people in the world in April are tax accountants and poets. I’ve been on the road for two weeks now and I still have about four more things to do,” Quillen said. 

Poetry Month is about showing what poets really do. “Poets get a chance to get out in the month of April and talk to the public about what we do and that’s really fun,” said Quillen.  

“A lot of time people have questions about how you got started and so forth. I’ve told people since I was a little girl that I wanted to be a writer, but as I got older I thought ‘well you really can’t make a living as a writer so I’ll be a teacher,’” Quillen said. 

Quillen did not start as a poet at first, though, and instead began with fiction writing. “To me a poet was some great mighty thing, and to me I just couldn’t be a poet because that was some special group of people. Poetry is still my first love. There’s a kind of challenge to poetry that’s just like nothing else, and it never gets old,” said Quillen. 

“I always tell people that it’s always puzzled me why I became a writer. Why me? There’s no one else in my family who’s a writer, although there are very creative people. Mostly my family was just really serious, hardworking, no-nonsense people,” Quillen said. 

“I wrote when I was a kid, but I didn’t start doing it seriously until I got in college. I wrote some things but to be honest it’s really weird how I honestly got started. I had gave up on the idea that I was going to be a writer as a career. I knew already by that point that you couldn’t make a living as a writer so I was going to be a teacher,” said Quillen. 

In college, Quillen’s view of writing was changed. “I had this American lit teacher who on our final exam gave us the opportunity for some extra credit. We had read Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar and he said for extra credit write a passage that sounds like it could be in that book. So I thought I could do that because I wanted every point I could get,” Quillen said. 

“So I sat down and wrote a passage, and he came and found me in the library the next day and said I’d like to talk to you. I thought ‘oh my God I’m in trouble’ and I go to his office and he goes, ‘this is amazing what else have you written?’ So he started encouraging me to get back into writing,” said Quillen. 

Quillen has learned a lot about writing. “Sometimes poetry means that you’ve got to step out there and be brave,” Quillen said. 

She also had advice for any hopeful writers or artists out there. “I hope all of you that are writers or artists will hang in there and keep doing it. There is joy in it and it’s something whether you are interested in publishing or not I think writing makes a better person,” said Quillen.  

“Writers are some of my favorite people. They’re thinkers and they’re feelers and they lead purposeful lives and that’s a good thing. Even if you’re not interested in going into writing in a big way I think there’s always value in it,” Quillen said. 

To learn more about Quillen, check out her website www.ritasimsquillen.com, her Youtube channel RitaQuillan, or her twitter @hillbillypoet.