To paraphrase William Shakespeare, some people are born to create poetry, some achieve status as a poet, and others have poetry thrust upon them. Lauren Martin, author of Night of the Hawk, her first book of poems, was not inspired to become a poet. “I was singled out,” she says.

When she was in sixth grade, Martin wrote an essay that was noted for its poetic use of language. “That was before I even knew what that meant,” she says with a laugh. “It’s always been a voice I just hear, that is there, and sees the world that way and needs to get out.”

Night of the Hawk introduces a voice at once singular and universal, with poems at once intimate, autobiographical, activist, and political.

In the poem “My Experience as a Postmenopausal Woman,” she asserts that women of a certain age are “ignored everywhere—even in poetry”:

To be told that you have no idea when

We paved the way

When I am standing on the shoulders

Of my own mother

 

You don’t see me

 

And maybe that’s because you’re

Not looking down

To the foundation of my shoulders

To the years of my sleeves rolled up

And boots tied high

Night of the Hawk, praises Kirkus Reviews, comprises “a whole life in one volume…in a voice both contemplative and strong.”

Martin’s poems are born of an almost lifelong shamanic journey, but also from the time she spent—nearly a decade—recovering from a disabling injury. But primarily, she says, they come to her almost fully formed in dreams.

Martin was born in Boston, where she lived until she was 11. “I would say I grew up in the woods of New England, which I return to frequently in my poetry,” she says. One, for example, is directed at the former administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In “Yemoja Speaks to Scott Pruitt,” she writes: Why young brother / Would you poison your mother?

“I’m very passionate about the natural world and the impact we are having on it,” she says. “Ifá is a religious tradition in which we honor God and the representations of such in the natural world. Ifá and the Òrìsà are foundations of my life, so they are ever present in my work. Other themes are illness, misogyny, aging as a woman, love, loss, death, [and] the arc of parental perspective that you have as you grow up.”

She singled out “Untitled Tilda Swinton Poem,” in which she encounters the Oscar-winning actress (“She was grace and androgyny and a female juxtaposition of my great love, Bowie”) as [the poem] that most indelibly captures her humor and love of New York. “It represents my personality of seeking joy and magic in suffering,” she says.

Martin’s parents read to their children before bedtime and integrated reading into their daily expectations. “They were restrictive around television and encouraged discourse,” she says. “They were both children of uneducated immigrants—one of them illiterate—and saw the capacity to read as essential to understanding themselves and the world around them.

“My father and I read and discussed spy novels and historical fiction, but we also read philosophical books, poetry, and lots of Judy Blume. Some of it was conceptually beyond my capacity, but I learned to stretch my thinking and understanding by reading more and having a structure around connecting through discussion. Both of my parents love poetry and supported the arts. My sister is a theater director, and they always encouraged us, believing that great art impacts others and can inspire endurance.”

Martin’s sixth-grade essay led to her placement in a special class that encouraged her creative writing. She continued to write poetry through high school and then headed to New York to study it at Sarah Lawrence College, where she also studied psychology, photography, and French. She stayed in New York for the next two decades and credits the city with “supporting my mind’s tendency toward analytic thought and art.”

Martin continued to write; however, plans to publish a collection were put on hold by her shamanic journey. “Since I was a child, I could see the dead,” she says (and yes, she saw The Sixth Sense and liked it). “As such, my life became one that was greatly impacted by the negative influences caused by living in two realms.”

In the poem “Montera,” she reflects:

friends from junior high

found me

yesterday,

I was pleased

they’re all so kind

Susannah asked,

“did you tell them anything

about yourself?”

—reminding me I live outside the box—

“what?”…

“that you’ve had this intensely shamanic path?”

“yeah,” I said, “I lead with

‘I see dead people’—

that always goes over well”

Her poems, she says, come to her in a dream or another’s voice. “I often think they are spirit connections asking me to advocate for them or for loved ones. What was occurring around me was visible to everyone—parents and friends. My parents are exceptionally unique and supported my seeking answers through various religions. They understood that there was a need to manage the strange events that occurred around me.”

Isolation is another recurring theme in her poetry, a reflection of a chronic illness that left her bedridden for eight years. In the pointed “CSF,” she lashed out:

I can’t turn left

I can’t turn right

I lay here

like a mummy

in a Tempur-Pedic sarcophagus

it has been months

a year

years

my life has passed

in a bed spin

a purgatory

A psychotherapist, Martin saw patients virtually during this period. It was also during this time that she decided to compile Night of the Hawk for publication.

Martin, who currently lives in Oakland, believes that being a psychotherapist has helped shape her poetry, and vice versa. “I think that being a shamanic person who experiences the dark and light of everything, and who then communicates that in the words and imagery of poetry, [holds] the same dark and light essential to being a good therapist,” she says. “These three mediums dovetail in the darkness and the ability to hold that—for yourself and others.”

As intensely personal as her poems are, Martin believes in the maxim that in the specific, there is the universal. “My poetry is very personal, but what I love about [it] is [that] it is subjective to the reader,” she explains. “It allows so much room for personal interpretation and understanding. The things that resonate with me may not at all be what others perceive in the work.”

“A Sea of Kisses” is an illustrative example:

One kiss to

Make me stay

Two to

Start the day

Three and

I’m on my way

In this polarized world, Martin hopes her poetry serves as a connection people can share regardless of our differences. “Mostly, I’m focused on kindness.”

Donald Liebenson is a Chicago-based writer whose articles have appeared in theWashington Post, Town & Country Magazine, and on vanityfair.com.