Worku Retrospectives – Debbie Wilson

Over time, Worku becomes more than a collection of daily poems. Each writer leaves behind a body of work: recurring images, humor, tenderness, surprises, and distinctive ways of handling constraint.

This series looks back at those bodies of work, one poet at a time.

A Year of Debbie Wilson

One pleasure of revisiting Worku’s first year is seeing the shape of a poet’s work emerge across hundreds of small poems.

I really enjoy Debbie Wilson’s poetry.

She can be funny in a way I can only describe as sideways. Debbie has a gift for the cut — the kireji-like turn that shifts the poem unexpectedly — and those turns often evoke character. A bird is not simply a bird; an oyster is not simply an oyster. Somebody, or something, seems to be in there.

Early in Year One:

I will CHARM the bird
Yes, it STOLE seeds from my hand
I am a LEFTY

Months later, LEFTY appeared again:

CORNY jokes, BEADY
Eyes. LEFTY in right man’s world
TESTY all the time

There is something very Debbie about both poems. The constraint words are all there, but they have been recruited into little scenes with attitude and character.

That happens often in her work.

On October 8, the words somehow became an oyster:

For a PEARL to grow
A HANDY grain of sand to
ANNOY the oyster

The oyster has a problem. It is being annoyed. And somehow, from that irritation, a pearl emerges. The poem gives the oyster just enough character to make the observation funny while leaving the larger idea intact.

Debbie can also let an image do nearly all the work.

On December 20:

Broken CLASP, pearls fall
In a wide BERTH they scatter
WHITE beads escaping

The image carries the poem: the clasp breaking, the sudden scattering, those white beads escaping. Nothing needs to be added.

At other times she seems to turn and look directly at the strange little machinery of Worku itself:

GRIPE about my STAPH
A NYMPH I no longer am
HUMPH – my OOMPH has gone

There is something almost fourth-wall about it. The procession of STAPH, NYMPH, HUMPH and OOMPH becomes part of the joke. The constraint words are not hidden; they are practically walking across the stage.

But some of Debbie’s poems that stay with me most are much quieter.

On July 23:

Hands that TRIED for years
The FRUIT that never ripened
Memories ORBIT

That one stops me.

There is no explanation of what was tried for, what failed to ripen, or whose memories remain in orbit. The poem leaves that space open. Three constraint words carry longing, time and something unresolved.

And late in Year One:

Some GROUT for my heart
CLOSE to a huge FLOOD of tears
My BLOOD remains still

Again, an unlikely set of words somehow finds its way into something tender. GROUT could easily have sent the poem toward a bathroom renovation. Instead it becomes something meant to hold a heart together.

That range is what I keep noticing in Debbie’s Worku. Birds and oysters. Pearls and plumbing. Bodies, food, mishaps, jokes, memory, sadness. Sometimes the turn is comic; sometimes an image is simply allowed to sit there; sometimes three peculiar Wordle words open unexpectedly into something deeply felt.

Across a year of Worku, those individual moments begin to gather into something larger.

A body of work.

And I really enjoy reading it.