By Heather Hartley

The fog hits hard.
It makes a hole in my heart.
I didn’t ask for Cognac, mon amour,
I asked for you.
Why is this always, always about me?
Thanksgiving or some saint’s day,
there I am: look at me! boom boom boom!
I don’t mean to get in the way of us.
I could chalk it up to oversized feet,
hands too large for their veined palms.
But these would be lies.
And you know a lie like a fly on the wall.
I just want us to be in the same room.
The light is grey outside.
Ours is not.

The Importance of Arts, Culture & The Creative Process. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the importance of the arts and humanities and how this project resonates with you.
It started when I was a child—a love of and deep fascination with books. My connection to them was—and is—electric, visceral, intoxicating. Some might say I have an obsession with books, and these someones may not be wrong.

“A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party . . . a counselor, a multitude of counselors,” wrote Charles Baudelaire and I had a lot of counselors growing up and into my early twenties—from the books of Emily Dickinson to Dr. Seuss to Gustave Flaubert to Sylvia Plath to Jane Austen to Elsa Morante. For me, books open the door to the arts and humanities—these disciplines that are a vital, vibrant and integral part of what makes the world a brilliant place, one of inspiration and transformation. The Creative Process aligns so thoroughly and keenly with the arts and humanities, encouraging and cultivating artistic expression in a myriad of different forms, allowing for deep connections that can be inspired and unexpected. Original, innovative and refreshing, The Creative Process is a locus and celebration of the arts and humanities. I so enjoy spending time with the writing, visual arts and interviews presented through The Creative Process.

What was the inspiration for your creative work?
Paris! Having lived in the city for nearly twenty-five years, its beauty and mystery, by turns its frenetic energy or deep serenity—can still stun me. One of the most mutable, moody elements of Paris for me is the light—or lack of it. My poem “What the Eiffel Tower Said” takes as its departure point the light of Paris—ethereal, tenebrous, with gradations of grey that play out on the limestone Haussmann buildings on a winter morning, ashen-violet light sculpts the hollowed cheeks of a passerby at midday, slips of silver reflect on the wet pavement at night. And always, always the slate grey or pearly or smoky Seine, the Seine that divides as it connects, Paris with its motto, Fluctuat nec mergitur (“[She] is rocked [by the waves], but does not sink.” Paris can be a beacon—from the banks of the Seine to tiny side streets to a top floor balcony—the city can beckon to you. Open your notebook, uncap your pen, turn to a new page and begin.

Tell us something about the natural world that you love and don’t wish to lose. What are your thoughts on the kind of world we are leaving for the next generation? For me, gardens—sometimes tiny parcels of land, other times as vast as Versailles—are vital reminders of what makes the natural world so beautiful and inspiring—and so vulnerable. The fragility of a bloom, a delicate stem—there is so much to care for and to protect in a garden. Both wild and tame at once, a garden literally brings you to your knees before nature, to a place from which there is no looking away—where a patch of tulips or a thick carpet of thyme can be taken over by weeds, where deadly nightshade might feed off the same soil as a peony in bloom. Attention is key. I think about the ending of Voltaire’s Candide, how it can be read in so many ways—Il faut cultiver notre jardin. We have to cultivate our garden.

Heather Hartley is the author of Adult Swim and Knock Knock and was the long-time Paris editor at Tin House magazine. She moderated author events at Shakespeare and Company Bookshop and teaches creative writing in the Masters program with the University of Kent (UK) on their Paris campus.

Main photo credit: Unsplash @louispellissier