By David-Elijah Nahmod
Oleb Books is pleased to be publishing Face Up: A Collection of Outlaw Poems, a new collection of poems by Suzanne Nielsen, who is also a writing professor at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minnesota. She’s right at home at Metro State, and no wonder: St. Paul is her hometown and she’s a former Metro State student.
Nielsen was born and raised on St. Paul’s East Side, a working class community. She is a product, she says, of the St. Paul public school system during the 1960s and 70s, which she recalls as a very different time.
“For instance, my school had a smoking lounge,” she said. “My parents left my graduation ceremony of over 700 students in 1974 when the hockey team released over a dozen baby pigs onto the main floor. We were rebellious, especially in numbers.”
Looking at Nielsen and listening to her, no one would ever think that she lives with disabilities, but she has in fact lived with depression most of her life.
“My depression is a major player for me,” she says. “I’m somewhat private about it. A dear friend of mine years ago reminded me that the past never leaves, but with time it becomes airbrushed and fades. Years of therapy, swallowing antidepressants, finding a speck of joy among a flea infested mattress isn’t impossible.”
Nielsen admits that she has taken medication for her depression every morning for over three decades.
“I literally have to scrub it off my skin some days,” she said. “And like any irritant it resurfaces like blisters. Or that’s how it maybe feels. Because people cannot generally see this disability, they assume I function without terror and fear.”
Depression is not the only disability Nielsen lives with. She is also hearing impaired. On top of all that, she is a breast cancer survivor.
During her childhood Nielsen had suffered on and off from ear infections. It was on her golden birthday in 1965 that her hearing had become muffled to the point that she thought she was going deaf. She became, as she recalls, a professional head-nodder.
“I didn’t get a formal diagnosis for my hearing loss until 2016,” she said. “After the audiologist explained to me my degree of hearing loss I felt bittersweet about the loss. I felt I received the confirmation I needed to know I wasn’t crazy, and at the same time I needed to adjust to a new instrument: the hearing aid.”
Nielsen does not wear her hearing aids when home alone or when she’s writing. She wears them whenever she’s with people to avoid head nodding.
“For a number of years I noticed a subtle decline in my ability to hear,” Nielsen said. “For teaching this became a serious concern as I was always asking students to repeat what they just said. I hate to say it but after the third ask head-nodding takes over.”
Nielsen urges people who think they’re experiencing hearing loss not to ignore it.
“Listen to your own voice and seek aid,” she advises.
Nielsen discovered that she had breast cancer in 2014 after she had a mammogram and was told that they needed to take a biopsy. The morning after her biopsy she was informed that her breast cancer test was positive.
“I felt a bit dazed, shocked, freaked, scared, but I didn’t buy an urn,” she recalls. “I didn’t update my will. I never liked my breasts anyway so that’s how I went into the news.”
She underwent a double mastectomy and an oral chemo.
“Also an oral medication for five years,” she said. “After my surgery I elected reconstruction surgery.”
She is not undergoing treatment now and admits that her daily life was affected while she was going through the ordeal.
“When something life threatening comes knocking on your door and opens it up without your invitation, life becomes changed, forever,” she said.
Nielsen offers some sage advice to women regarding their health.
“Be your own advocate,” she advises. “Trust your healthcare professionals, talk frankly with them and they will be a tremendous comfort, truly.”
Whatever challenges she may be living with has not stopped Nielsen from pursuing a successful career as a teacher. Metropolitan State University is only blocks from where she grew up, and she enjoys being back in the old neighborhood.
“Being a writing teacher is a huge time commitment,” she said. “Especially if you want to do it justice. Early writers need to take risks, but that’s where I think my mentorship works. My students take risks and as a result they learn resiliency.”
The students are what she likes best about teaching. She likens working with them to watching a flower bloom.
“As corny as that sounds,” she said, “it’s really quite miraculous. And the symbolism of what we feed our souls transforms each flaw into something simply stunning.”
Nielsen describes her poetry as raw, confronting, face to face, and face up angst. All kinds of things inspire her poetry, such as music, wind, sun, barking dogs and sirens.
“The smell of a barbecue,” she added. “Laughter, tears, love, despair, depression, joy, reflection, comedy and tragedy.”
She says that she has always loved reading poetry and started writing poetry while still in her teens. She also writes short stories and even an occasional piece of creative nonfiction.
“I am fascinated by the constraints and freedom of flash fiction,” she said. “To me flash fiction is a story in 500 words. That form is the best of both worlds, fiction and poetry.”
Nielsen urges potential readers to “take a risk” and check out her new collection of poems.
“I do think there is a theme that runs through the poems,” she said. “Sometimes it stands out as joy, sometimes despair. But overall, I think it resonates resilience. Sometimes my poems lean in a political direction, other times the mundane.”
Nielsen enjoys her work greatly, saying that writing saves her.
“It saves me from falling deep into the abyss of life,” she said. “It’s that fundamental.”
Learn more about Face Up: A Collection of Outlaw Poems on our book page, which also lists the booksellers offering the title.