The Poet Maggie Smith Makes This Place Beautiful

 

Thank you Maggie Smith for joining me on my podcast!

What now? I am out with lanterns, looking for myself. But here’s the thing about carrying light with you: No matter where you go, and no matter what you find—or don’t find—you change the darkness just by entering it. You clear a path through it....
My life is like the ocean that scientists just discovered—something that’s been on maps and atlases, hiding in plain view as part of another whole. This new ocean was always there, always itself, but we are only now recognizing it.
Maggie Smith, You Could Make This Place Beautiful

Maggie Smith joins me on my podcast to discuss: “the power of learning to come home to yourself.”

I loved reading her book and her prose is truly like poetry. Her chapter titles are guideposts and the way they repeat like a chorus of a song but add more information is nearly like having a narrator sitting at your side.

Order your copy TODAY:

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Lisa Niver:

Good morning. I’m so honored and excited to be here today with the most incredible poet and author Maggie Smith.

Maggie Smith:

Hi. Thanks for having me.

Lisa Niver:

Congratulations. I am so excited about your book and to share about your book. I read on Instagram, is it really true, it’s your seventh book, but your first book tour– where you’re actually going to be in person?

Maggie Smith:

Yes. My first few books I published were books of poems with small presses and they don’t send you on a book tour. So, I started out loading books into a canvas tote in my car and driving, and doing bookstore readings or house readings. But this is the first time that I actually get to go on an honest to goodness, fly from place to place book tour. The last few books all came out during peak pandemic.

Lisa Niver:

Peak pandemic is a good term. I generally say we’ve been riding on the COVID coaster.

Maggie Smith:

Yeah, I’m like reticent to talk about it in past tense, because it’s not past tense, but of course it’s not quite what it was three years ago either. We’re coming up with language for it, aren’t we?

Lisa Niver:

Yes, you’re right it’s absolutely not past tense. I feel like we’ve been riding the highs and the lows. And I love that you brought that up about creating language for it, because I feel like reading your memoir there’s so much in the way you designed it –that’s structured like a poem. Can you talk a little bit about, I felt like I got so much information, as I was reading, with the chapter titles and which things repeated, but still change. It was almost like the chorus of a song.

Maggie Smith:

Oh, I love that. I’m a big fan of sort of offering the reader a breadcrumb trail or two or three in a book. Because as a reader, whether its poetry or prose, I really love those moments of recognition where I see something I think I’ve seen before and it gives me a chance to make connections. And for me, at least as a writer writing a memoir, it was all about making connections both between past experiences and present time and parts of my life. How the writer part of my life relates to the mothering part of my life or the wife part of my life or daughter or friend or all of these different aspects of what it is to be a human being.

The desire to use repetition in that way was to speak to the truth of the experience, which is we tend to not think of life or remember things in a straight line. We tend to come back– ideas tend to echo or remind us of other things. We tend to reflect in a way or ruminate in a way that makes things return and return and return. And so, the form for me was probably just the most psychologically true way I could present the story.

Lisa Niver:

You shared a lot about what it’s like –not just the experience of the changes in life –of meeting someone and deciding to spend your life together or deciding not to spend your life together, but also so much about the career and how that worked.

And I loved that in your memoir, you talk about not being a tell-all, but a tell-mine, but also the way you really spoke directly to the reader. I felt like there was a lot of breaking a fourth wall of just — let me tell you where we are.

Maggie Smith:

Yes. I started doing that fairly early on and it’s not something I typically do when I’m writing. And maybe it’s just because this genre for me was new, so I was making up my own rules as I went.

Lisa Niver:

Yes.

Maggie Smith:

But I really felt like I was being vulnerable in the book. And speaking directly to readers was a way of acknowledging the vulnerability and also just a way of acknowledging the reader’s intelligence. –I know you’re here reading this book with me, and there are going to be things you want to know about that I’m not sharing and I respect you enough to acknowledge that. We’re in this together for the next 300 pages.

Lisa Niver:

It’s true. And I love that you felt very personable in it, and still set the boundary that I don’t have to tell every story. The story is still very cohesive, and I think that’s very lovely to see a memoir where it’s not about oversharing, but it’s about going on this journey together.

Maggie Smith:

Thank you for saying that. I write about this in the book and if there’s one thing that my therapist says constantly is boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. Not just in life, but in writing. What do we owe the reader and what do we get to keep to ourselves? And when we write about our lives it’s not a deposition it’s a memoir, we don’t actually owe every single detail to the reader. Some of the, maybe the most powerful things that we can do for a reader is to give them the space to actually reflect on things and think about things and make connections to their own lives. And sometimes pulling back is the way to allow that to happen.

Lisa Niver:

Yes. As your title says, I do think you made this place beautiful. There was space to follow along. And I like what you said about the breadcrumbs. To me, it felt like the chorus of a song like, now I know where we are. And I thought that was beautiful.

One of the things that I really related to, that I think many humans will relate to, is being in a relationship where as good things happen you’re withholding them from your partner because it’s not going so well. And I loved what you said that: I stopped sharing good news, I made myself small, folded myself up origami tight.

Maggie Smith:

I think probably a lot of people will relate to that, and maybe women in particular. The phrase don’t get too big for your britches is not usually applied to men. I see it as being gendered, although I realize that that’s not always the case. That sometimes a partner might have good news for them that they want to be family good news, but because of the way that perhaps it inconveniences the other person, or perhaps because of whatever is going on in that person’s professional life, it’s hard to hear. And I think we all hope that we will be able to accept good news on behalf of our partner or best friend or sister.

When someone tells you I met someone wonderful–and you’re single or just went through a breakup. You want to feel good for that person. If someone gets promoted and you just lost your job or feel like you’re languishing in a job you don’t love you really, I think we’re all hoping that we’ll be “the bigger person,” but it doesn’t always happen. Llife is complicated. And it doesn’t necessarily make us bad people when we can’t just be wholeheartedly gung-ho happy for someone else, but it sure makes it hard to live together when you don’t feel like someone is cheering for you.

Lisa Niver:

Absolutely. And you had such good examples when you were signing books and someone offered to take a photo and you’ said–no– I don’t need that help. That won’t make things better for me. It is very relatable and to your point –not oversharing.

Maggie Smith:

That is something relatable whether you’re a writer or not, whatever your sort of like success or shine moment is you can tell a lot about any given relationship, parent, child, friend, neighbor, spouse, by the way they handle both your failures and your successes. Using that as a barometer that can be really telling.

Lisa Niver:

It can be and I think it’s a really great moment that other people can hold onto to think about what happened the last time I shared good news or challenges and how did the person respond?

Maggie Smith:

Yes. And how am I responding? That’s always the most interesting thing is how can I not ever blame myself? But on the other side of self-blame is personal accountability, there is a difference. And one thing I really worked hard to do in this book is take personal accountability for my own choices. And so, I’m thinking about if X really hurt me I don’t want to do that to someone else, right? So, how do I check myself and my own ego or my own disappointment and make sure that I’m showing up for my people in a way that is wholehearted and generous even if there are parts of it that are difficult for me?

Lisa Niver:

Yes. Yes, I think that’s really true– How do we show up as wholehearted? The other thing that struck me so much was when you talked about lonely versus alone. And you said — feeling lonely when you’re with your partner is worse than being alone, being with someone who doesn’t want the best for you is worse than being alone.

Maggie Smith:

Yeah. I’ve talk to a lot of divorced people who will say the worst part wasn’t the after– the worst part was when things weren’t going well. Because it is really lonely to feel a lack of connection in a relationship, especially if it’s a long relationship and it seems like it should be different, right? And so, if you are alone and you don’t have any expectation of having a conversation with someone in the room, because there’s no one there, that feels different than being in a room with someone who’s not engaging with you.

Lisa Niver:

Absolutely. And if you’re alone you can make an active choice– I’m going to go skating.

Maggie Smith:

Amen. I’m going to watch a movie. I’m going to bake. I’m going to put headphones on and listen to music and dust and pretend that’s fun, because anything with loud music is suddenly a party. Or I’ll leave the house because there’s no one here, so I’m going to go find a friend and have a happy hour or yes roller skate, if necessary and weather permits.

Lisa Niver:

Right. But I think that’s also about that origami unfolding. That are you folded in –someone is holding it all tamped down and now you know–I can change the shape.

Maggie Smith:

I think it’s one of the gifts of middle age. I mean, there are enough downsides. One of the gifts of middle age is learning how to be your whole self. You couldn’t pay me to be a teenager again, you couldn’t pay me to be in my 20s again. Yeah, my 30s were a little better, but I feel, and my mother has always told me this, the older you get the more yourself you can be and the less you care about what other people think. And I do think that is a gift of aging is just not only knowing your own worth and being able to sort of stand in your own power, but just not being so wrapped up in other people’s opinions of you.

Lisa Niver:

That is a huge advantage. And that reminds me of the review about reverse midlife crisis. I thought that was really interesting.

Maggie Smith:

I love that.

Lisa Niver:

I do too. I’m trying to think if it feels the tiniest bit pejorative. If there’s another reframing of those words. Because I feel like midlife crisis is not something necessarily to strive for.

Maggie Smith:

No.

Lisa Niver:

And I get the reverse midlife crisis, as in I’ve gotten to this place and I’m beginning again and it’s beautiful and I’m opening up, but I’m just questioning the words. I do love the sentiment.

Maggie Smith:

I love it too. And actually as soon as I read that review I went to, I do what I do, which is go to the dictionary and look up synonyms and antonyms. So, I looked up what is crisis, right? And it’s an emergency, it’s a problem. And what is the opposite, what is an antonym for crisis? — words like recovery and return. And so, if the memoir is chronicling a reverse or the opposite of a midlife crisis to me it’s like a return to self, a midlife return to self, and that I love. It makes a lot of sense. And the epigraph for the book actually plays perfectly into that, which is Emily Dickinson, “I am out with lanterns looking for myself.

That’s again another opportunity that we have, as we get older, is to really think, but who am I? What do I want? Not what do these other people want for me, not what are the expectations for what I should be doing now or what my career should look like, what my house should look like, what my kids should like. What do I actually want and can I make that for myself? Can I carve that out for myself? And so, that’s kind of how I read that and it resonated with me.

Lisa Niver:

I love what you did with that. And I also love in the book when you talk about the lanterns and about bringing the light. That you change the darkness just by entering it. And I think that’s one of the challenges of memoir is you often are going into a dark place in your life otherwise– I don’t know that people would be that interested in reading it. Your book is the top Goodreads most anticipated spring book!! Congratulations!!

Maggie Smith:

That means a lot to me because that’s readers adding it in their read pile. That means a lot if people are excited to read the book and are looking forward to it.

Lisa Niver:

I loved it. I think it was fantastic and it was really helpful to me, as I said, in thinking about what I’m writing. And you are an accomplished poet and so supported by the country and Meryl Streep and all these poet organizations. Your prose sounds like poetry to me.

Maggie Smith:

Oh, thank you. I write everything as a poet. It’s not a hat I can put on and take off, so that’s just who I am no matter what I’m writing. I’m glad that was your experience of the book.

Lisa Niver:

I am honored that you have a National Endowment for that Arts creative writing fellowship and you are here speaking to me. It’s very exciting for me. I love things about language, so one of my favorite things being in Indonesia is the word Timor means east. So, when you’re in East Timor you’re in East east.

Maggie Smith:

I see where this is going.

Lisa Niver:

Tell people what was your thing about the words.

Maggie Smith:

It’s the great river, river, isn’t it?

Lisa Niver:

Yes.

Maggie Smith:

The Ohio River. Ohio itself means great river. So, when you say Ohio River you’re saying great river river.

Lisa Niver:

I love things like that.

Maggie Smith:

So, do I. I’m a complete word nerd, as my kids will tell you. Any chance I have, even as you heard with midlife crisis, any chance I have to look at the etymology of a word and the origins and take it apart, I geek out about that stuff.

Lisa Niver:

The other thing, speaking about words is the geography. Talk about the new ocean.

Maggie Smith:

I remember reading a news story and it said: we’ve added another ocean. And I thought it’s not like they just discovered it. It’s not like some insect that has been located in the rain forest that we never knew existed, although that happens too. But this is something that is an ocean, it’s giant, it exists on maps, it’s just been combined with something else. It didn’t have its own name, so it was lumped in, right?

There’s probably a marriage metaphor in there. It was lumped in with something else and then at a certain point they decided there was enough criteria to give it its own name and so this ocean got to be its own thing. And I thought that feels like life. You think it’s one thing, it’s hiding in plain sight, and then over time you realize in fact it was maybe something else. And you have different language for it and a different sense of recognition of what it is and yet here we’ve all been looking at this thing all along.

Lisa Niver:

I do think it’s a marriage metaphor because we’re in a relationship, like you said it could be a family relationship with a parent or a spouse and we think we know how things are going. And then at some point we think, no, that’s not how it’s going to keep going.

Maggie Smith:

With any kind of change, we look and maybe it’s been like this for a while. We think how far do I have to trace my steps back before it was like this? And there’s often no easy answer for that kind of retracing to happen.

Lisa Niver:

Not easy and mostly not pleasant.

Maggie Smith:

And probably not productive.

Lisa Niver:

It makes me think about when you talk about the nesting dolls and how what’s inside, and what’s outside and what do we see. It’s somewhat like the ocean. You know maybe a species in the rain forest that hasn’t been recorded, but we weren’t looking for it. Whereas with the oceans you think about many times we look at those weather maps when they’re saying, this front is coming in. And all of a sudden –no that’s not the name.

Maggie Smith:

Much of life is hiding in plain sight. And until we have the opportunity or are forced to reevaluate and recalibrate things –sometimes we don’t actually see as clearly as we think we do. And in some ways it’s a perk, it’s a bonus. I think seeing clearly is a wonderful thing. Even if the thing that comes into focus is painful, it’s still a gift to see it clearly. Understanding a gift, even if it’s hard, it’s still a gift.

Lisa Niver:

And often it’s hard. The beginning of your book starts with the quote about the lanterns and bringing the light. And in this season where we have Passover, we have Easter, we have spring, there’s more light, so it’s such a beautiful time for your book to come out.

Maggie Smith:

I agree. I think spring is such a time of renewal, a time where everything looks so dormant and gray, especially here in Ohio. Everything is gray and wet and sad and overcast and cold for months and months and months, and then spring happens and it seems like overnight all the trees are in bloom and it’s warm. And the sun, you can feel it on your face. And that that’s the spring in us, when you feel like you’ve been a little dormant for a while. And then you can feel that change happening, you feel like you’re turning into kind of a new season in your life. I mean, thank goodness. Thank goodness for the personal springs.

Lisa Niver:

If people are ready to read your memoir and get involved in this incredible book, tell them where can they find the book and how can they find you.

Maggie Smith:

I always encourage people to shop at independent bookstores. Anywhere books are sold, any independent bookstore should be able to get it in for you. If you like to order books online bookshop.org gives money to independent bookstores and will ship right to your house. I am at maggiesmithpoet.com. That’s my website so that people don’t confuse me with the dame. And I’m maggiesmithpoet on social media, again because I’m the poet, I’m not the incredible British actress, and so that’s a good way for people to find me.

Lisa Niver:

Everybody should right now go out and get You Could Make This Place Beautiful. I loved your book and it has really been so lovely and such an honor to hear more from you. And I can’t wait for everyone to respond and say how much they loved your book as much as I did.

Maggie Smith:

Thanks for having me Lisa.             

What now? I am out with lanterns, looking for myself. But here’s the thing about carrying light with you: No matter where you go, and no matter what you find—or don’t find—you change the darkness just by entering it. You clear a path through it....
My life is like the ocean that scientists just discovered—something that’s been on maps and atlases, hiding in plain view as part of another whole. This new ocean was always there, always itself, but we are only now recognizing it.
Maggie Smith, You Could Make This Place Beautiful

Maggie Smith joins me on my podcast to discuss: “the power of learning to come home to yourself.”

I loved reading her book and her prose is truly like poetry. Her chapter titles are guideposts and the way they repeat like a chorus of a song but add more information is nearly like having a narrator sitting at your side.

Order your copy TODAY:

Amazon Barnes & Noble Bookshop

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Spring at Simon and Schuster 2023

THANK YOU for watching my podcast! Discover more episodes of MAKE YOUR OWN MAP especially Christie Tate who recommended I interview Maggie Smith!

FROM LIBRARY JOURNAL

 In her memoir, award-winning poet Smith (Good Bones) uses poetic vignettes to dissect the ending of her marriage and her journey toward self-love. Smith starts with her husband’s infidelity, something she tackled in her 2020 book, Keep Moving. She moves effortlessly between first and third person, short sections, repeating titles, and recurring themes to examine a life she never imagined for herself. The author never refers to her ex-husband (the addresser) or his lover (the addressee) by name, keeping them both on the outskirts of the new life she is creating. But her children, Violet and Rhett, play a central role as she leans on them, her family, and friends as she makes sense of motherhood, gender roles, and power dynamics that exist in every relationship. Through self-interrogation, Smith crafts her experiences into ones that connect to the larger struggles of women’s lives and how people work to create something new out of places in their lives that have ghosts and hold secrets.

VERDICT This innovative memoir will attract readers who are drawn to poetry hidden in well-written prose and memoirs and will appeal to those who seek meaning in reinventing their lives.

Reviewed by Rebekah J. Buchanan , Mar 01, 2023

Lisa Ellen Niver

Lisa Niver is an award-winning travel expert who has explored 102 countries on six continents. This University of Pennsylvania graduate sailed across the seas for seven years with Princess Cruises, Royal Caribbean, and Renaissance Cruises and spent three years backpacking across Asia. Discover her articles in publications from AARP: The Magazine and AAA Explorer to WIRED and Wharton Magazine, as well as her site WeSaidGoTravel. On her award nominated global podcast, Make Your Own Map, Niver has interviewed Deepak Chopra, Olympic medalists, and numerous bestselling authors, and as a journalist has been invited to both the Oscars and the United Nations. For her print and digital stories as well as her television segments, she has been awarded three Southern California Journalism Awards and two National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards and been a finalist twenty-two times. Named a #3 travel influencer for 2023, Niver talks travel on broadcast television at KTLA TV Los Angeles, her YouTube channel with over 2 million views, and in her memoir, Brave-ish, One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless After Fifty.

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