Before we get into your post-MFA life, what made you decide to get an MFA? What were you expecting before you got the degree, and how had those expectations changed by the time you finished?

I’d been thinking about getting an MFA since I was an undergrad. Once I learned what an MFA was, it was just always something I wanted to do. I applied in the fall of 2007/spring of 2008, and I began at New Mexico State University in the fall of 2008.

I had a terrific experience in the MFA program at New Mexico State University and I started to think about what I was going to do I guess about a year before I graduated in 2011.  To be honest, I’m not 100% sure I always expected to go into academia when I was finished. I vaguely thought, early in my MFA, of eventually getting a Ph.D. in comparative literature or cultural studies, but after a while, it didn’t seem like something I really wanted to pursue anymore.

I taught during my three years in grad school, which I enjoyed, but I was pretty sure I didn’t want to apply for Phds, not in creative writing, not in comp lit, and not in cultural studies. It just didn’t seem like the right path for me. All of my friends who were interested in pursuing Phds were a lot more passionate about the academic life than I was, so I think that was one of the clues that made me think hey, maybe I don’t want to become a professor. I feel like you should really want it and know it’s the right path for you, and I didn’t (and still don’t) feel that way.

In your essay on Rachel Zucker, you write “As I neared the end of graduate school in 2011, I knew I wasn’t going to be an academic poet. I love poems and I love teaching, but I realized I wasn’t cut out for a career in academia. What would I be, then, if not a teacher of poems?” You go on to talk about how reading Rachel Zucker (I love her too) helped solidify your decision to become a doula/ poet, rather than a professor/ poet. What made you feel/ realize that you “weren’t cut out” for an academic career?

This is going to sound weird, but in some ways I feel like I’m not enough of an intellectual. I like learning and thinking and learning about thinking, but I don’t think I would be good at being a full-time scholar. I don’t have a desire to talk literary theory, and write papers, and go to conferences, and peer review journal articles, and do all of those kinds of things. I mean, I still do some of that, sure….but, it’s work that I choose to do, when I choose to do it, and it’s not necessarily connected to my livelihood.

Also, to be blatantly honest, I have no interest in competing in the crazy academic job market! It seems like getting a tenure-track job in English or Creative Writing is tantamount to winning the lottery. There’s some healthy competition in my line as work as a freelance writer and as a doula, but nothing like what newly minted academics are dealing with today.

I do really enjoy teaching, and I still do it. I have deeply complicated feelings about adjuncting (who doesn’t?), but I do it because I like it, and because teaching helps supplement the rest of my cobbled-together freelance/doula income.

It sounds like in becoming a doula, you were very much aware that it was work that dovetailed with your work as a writer – the sensibilities of attending births and new mothers seem aligned with your sensibilities as a poet. Big question: assuming some version of this is true for many, but not all writers (that a “day job” is out there that supports and aligns with their writing better than a university teaching job could), why do you think there are such high expectations for creative writers to compete in academia?

For poets, at least, being an academic is the kind of the only way you can be a poet and really make money, right? I mean, be a poet as your sole “occupation,” as it were (although it’s worth pointing out that poets who work in academia do quite a lot of work that is not related to poetry). I think there is also a high degree of legitimacy attached to being a professor, like you’re finally seen as legit if someone hires you to teach other people how to write. It also seems to be the most respectable thing to do if you’re a writer, as least to people outside of the literary world. As I mentioned, I still teach and I weirdly feel that it gives me a little bit more “cred” among my peers (and even some of my grad school classmates) even though I’m doing the often lowly (yet, of course, necessary!) work of adjuncting comp classes, not the OMG dream of teaching upper-level poetry workshops. 

That sense of legitimacy that comes with being a professor applies to the thinking of people outside of academia, as well. You know, the whole, “Oh you majored in English, what are you going to do, teach?” type of thinking…as if teaching is the only logical way to make a living with words. I remember having dinner with my friends when I finished my masters and they were like, “Oh, so you’re going to be a professor now?” And I said “Um, even if I wanted to be a professor, it’s incredibly hard to get a tenure-track job teaching writing. It would probably take me years.” And they were like “Oh, we thought that’s what everyone did!!”

But yeah, everyone doesn’t do that. And everyone doesn’t WANT to do that, either. For me, having several somewhat flexible jobs gives me the ability to make space in my life for my poetry. Others achieve that in other ways, but the life and career I’ve carved out over the last few years is what’s working for me now. 

What tensions, if any, do you feel between writing as an expert, as you do in “Why I’m a Pro-Choice Doula,” where your expertise in a subject is what drives the writing, and writing as a poet, where your expertise in a subject is less important than how you say what you do? What purposes does each serve for you? Do you enjoy one more or less than the other?

I don’t know that I am an expert in being a doula—or that I am not a expert in being a poet. I’m am an expert in myself and in my own experience, so that’s what I try to bring to my writing, whether it is about birth-related topics or whether it’s my poetry. I am always learning, in both spheres, which makes things fun and interesting, whether it’s a new massage technique for a person in labor or a discovering an awesome new book of lyric essays.

I am HUGELY passionate about maternity care and birthing choices for people in the US, so it’s my certainly my passion and my convictions that drive that kind of writing for me. If I’m writing something about birth or about being a doula, I usually want readers to have their assumptions challenged or come away having learned something new, so it’s important to me to write in a way that’s extremely clear, organized, and evidence-based.

But for my poems, I can just be weird and flip and dramatic and funny and it doesn’t matter because it’s MY poem and I don’t have to “prove” it to anyone—except myself, maybe. Readers are welcome to take whatever they want from my poems.

How do you feel about “Call the Midwife”? (I had to ask).

I love it! It’s the best. I cry during every single episode. I love it especially because it shows women giving birth safely, in their homes, attended by caring, well-qualified, and professional medical staff. The midwives (and the doctor!) on the show are essentially offering holistic care that takes into consideration the mother’s personal life, emotional state, and more, just as much as the medical aspects of her pregnancy, labor and postpartum. That’s a model of care that is hopefully coming back into vogue, but one I think that has been largely lost in our age of ten minute obstetrician appointments and induction dates. I’m happy to see this model of care demonstrated, and hopeful that others can see that it works, even if the show does take place during the 50s. The midwifery model continues to work for families and communities all over the world.

Even though the people on the show are obviously acting, I’m sure that Call The Midwife shows some of the only unmedicated births some viewers have seen, so I think that’s a benefit. And that’s not to say that medicated birth isn’t also wonderful and life-changing….but I appreciate the work the show is doing to make it clear that birth can be a normal, joyous event that doesn’t necessarily have to happen while you’re lying in a bed, in a hospital gown, with monitors strapped to your belly.

I also love how honest the show is about the emotional and mental complications involved in doing birth work. As amazing and renewing as it can be, it’s also quite grueling and taxing on both your body and your emotional state. And I’m not even a midwife!

To what extent was your poetry attentive to or influenced by birth and motherhood before you became a doula? Is it more so influenced now, or do you consciously create a separate space for it?

My book, PRETTY TILT, has poems about wanting to have a child, and about the experience of being a babysitter–a “fake”mother, if you will–so it’s been there for a while. All of my poems in some way deal with the experience of womanhood. And I have like five billion references to cervixes and ovaries in my poems, so that anatomical element crops up a lot 🙂

I have a new book coming out later this year and it has a couple mentions of my doula work, and birth, and also deals with my relationship to “motherhood” as a construct. I don’t have any children of my own as of yet, so in some ways I feel like an impostor writing about motherhood, when it’s an experience I haven’t really entered on my own. I’m really interested, and scared, and excited, to see how my writing will change when I do become a mother.

What are some ways you stay connected to groups of other writers? How do these connections feel different than those you made as an MFA student? How often do you meet writers who are also in the birthing business?  

Wellllllllll I tweet a lot. Does that count? I think it does! I have an awesome, supportive community of writer friends on Twitter, and everywhere on the internet, really. There are so many writers today who I respect and enjoy as people (as well as respecting and enjoying their work) and I feel lucky to live in a time where I can connect with them even though we live all over the world. I also keep in touch with some of my MFA classmates, too. I send them work, they send me work: it’s nice to have a sounding board every once in a while.

I wish I knew other writers who were doulas or who were otherwise involved in the birth world! I’m sure they’re out there…I do know (only via Facebook) Sarah Fox, who is also a poet and a doula. And I know one another doula who is also a poet, but she doesn’t live in my local area. But there are a ton of books geared towards expectant parents, so there’s obviously overlap with people who like writing and people who like the world of pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum. Or maybe those people are just getting paid to write those books—how can I break into that?!

What advice would you give other writers who are finishing MFA programs who feel as you did about academia? 

You have options! It’s awesome to be an academic writer, but that’s not the only path to creativity, happiness and success.

Carrie Murphy is the author of the poetry collection PRETTY TILT (Keyhole Press, 2012) and the chapbook, MEET THE LAVENDERS (Birds of Lace, 2011). Her second full-length book, FAT DAISIES, is forthcoming in 2014 from Big Lucks Books. She received an MFA from New Mexico State University. Originally from Baltimore, MD, Carrie works as a teacher, freelance writer, and birth doula in Albuquerque, NM.