Austin Poetry Review: Tell us about yourself and your work in progress.
Coco Seney: My name is Coco Seney and I’m a poet who recently returned to Houston, Texas. For the last year, I partnered with CharlotteLit to produce my first chapbook manuscript titled “Going Back for the Girls” about reclaiming the many selves a woman outlives dedicated to my ninety-year-old self. I write about friendships,bodily risk, inheritance, pop culture and Millennial lore.
I’ve enjoyed the process of creating a narrative arc with a mix of new and old poems, and tightening the work with the help of editors and poets in Texas and North Carolina-based writing circle communities I’ve been lucky to join this past year.
I moved back to Texas after living away for 10 years in Chicago, Atlanta and Charlottesville, mainly because I missed my best friends and family down here, like my sister in law Jean Buckner, who owns Vintage Bookstore & Wine Bar in East Austin.
For my day job, I work in innovation at Rice University. In my spare time, I explore the Montrose neighborhood, take writing classes at Inprint, and walk my rescue dog, Brad.
APR: Share a 3-10 line excerpt from one of your poems that you feel encapsulates your style.
CS: Excerpt from “To the Women in Tonight’s Bar Bathroom”
Here, we huddle, nameless, awed by strangers.
How hair can be clipped like that, how freckles can glitter.
How we can weave a string of delicate compliments
around a vintage purse like we are home
to each other, like our mothers
let us play outside together.
We rediscover how good we are.
Release a primal sharing,
tactics of survival: Honey,
he isn’t worth it.
APR: What themes or ideas do you find yourself returning to in your poetry?
CS: Identity, the understanding of which is a main motivation for my writing. I write about memories partially because I’ve always loved history and partially because I can write more image-rich detail when grounded in an existing memory (I blame aphantasia for that). I also write about how identity intersects with the past, friendship, fear, what we chose to keep and lose.
I love haibuns, long-form, and lyric poetry. I find myself returning to haibuns – it’s satisfying to close out a prose poem with a sharp haiku.
APR: Who are some poets or writers who have influenced you?
CS: Nickole Brown has been my poet mentor this past year and she’s been incredible. Her poem “One Hundred Reasons Not to Die” needs to be taught in high school English courses. She’s pushed me to understand the secret I’ll never tell in each of my poems. She also introduced me to other contemporary poets like Kim Addonizio. I have a poem in my latest collection inspired by her poem “To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall.”
APR: What are you hoping to explore in your writing next?
CS: I’d like to work on a genealogy series retelling generations of women’s stories in my family’s lineage after realizing that so much of our history has been passed on through patriarchal storytelling. I’ve been digging deep on Ancestry.com and have discovered more about great grandmothers than anyone ever told me. It’s time to revisit their narrative history.
If interested in reading more of my work, I post short poems on Instagram at @ReadCoco.
