Shanan Ballam is a poet who teaches at Utah State University and is currently poet laureate of the city of Logan. Shanan was born in Ogden, Utah and currently resides in Logan, Utah with her husband, the poet Brock Dethier. She has lived all her life in northern Utah, and while her work grapples with themes of identity, loss, and reimagining the narratives of our lives, it is grounded in Utah experiences, with penstemon and kingfishers popping up in her poems like spring beauties after snow.
Shanan received a BS in Professional/Technical Writing and a MS in The Theory and Practice of Writing from Utah State University before earning an MFA in Poetry Writing from the University of Nebraska, Omaha’s low-residency program where she studied under her mentor, William Trowbridge, former Poet Laureate of Missouri.
Shanan spends her time hiking, skiing, and photographing wildflowers. She is the author of three collections of poetry, including a chapbook The Red Riding Hood Papers (Finishing Line, 2010) and two full-length collections, Pretty Marrow (Negative Capability, 2013) and Inside the Animal: The Collected Red Riding Hood Poems (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2019). Both Red Riding Hood books use the characters and plot of the fairy tale to explore her themes: desire and its sometimes complicitous relationship with fear, as Red Riding Hood and the Wolf are sometimes enemies, sometimes lovers; breaking the limitations of the roles others have set for us, as Grandmother, inside Wolf, twirls and whirls, living out her dream of being a dancer; finding lyrical beauty in spring flowers but also in Wolf’s passions. By using not just the characters but the door to Grandmother’s house and Little Red’s basket as personae, Shanan digs into some of her own life’s traumas, like the physical and mental abuse of her sister and the fear it instilled in the whole family. As she provides new and different plots for the familiar characters to play, she performs the same service for her beloved grandmother whose gardens and needlework appear throughout the book.
Shanan’s previous book of poems, Pretty Marrow (Negative Capability 2013) is more directly personal than Inside the Animal. It established her distinctive voice as a poet—sound and image are always foremost, working together to provide the reader with more than words alone. She pulls no punches in her descriptions of suicidal alcoholism (which claimed her youngest brother’s life two months after the book was published) and of painful family dynamics that are both intensely specific and unfortunately all too common.
A Senior Lecturer with 21 years’ experience at Utah State University, Shanan teaches poetry writing, fiction writing, and composition. She helped found and continues to advise USU’s undergraduate literary magazine, Sink Hollow. From 2013-2017, she served on the Utah Arts Council’s Board of Directors. As poet laureate, Shanan holds free poetry writing workshops for beginners and more advanced poets.
Works
My Paper Boat
My Paper Boat
You were an albino trout waving
its tail in the river’s cold current,
but when I crept closer I saw
you were a white swath of plastic,
perhaps fabric torn from a dress,
or paper. You were a suicide
note, or a love poem snagged
on a ragged branch. I wanted
to peel off my socks, wade into
the shock of winter run off, wanted
to take you with me, your words,
your little body. I imagine
someone folded you into a warm
pocket, dropped you by accident,
or pinned you to a tree til spring wind
ripped you down. Why did I not save
you, lay you in the sun. Why did I
not lift you, moss-limp and lovely, press
your river-blurred words to my face.
You are my love note to the world,
my paper boat. I wish you
could let go and swirl away
to a place unblemished, where light
could pour its honey onto your face.
I wish you could let go and forget
I stood here on the bank, body filled
with river stones, hand clutching
a heavy set of keys. I should have
opened my mouth to taste you,
chewed and swallowed you, rescued
you from unsnagging into new
violence, tumble-lick of rocks,
river gnashing you, ragdoll.
Why did I not kneel, crawl
into the river to you,
my bright pinwheel.
Once More to the Lake
Once More to the Lake
--for my sister
Didn’t you just tell me you loved me?
Didn’t you just say you were sad about god?
And just now, was that the sound
of early morning, lake softly breathing?
Now, at this hour, I can’t
bear to let go.
Didn’t we just dance on the beach with bare feet?
Weren’t we lovely?
And wasn’t my hair curled,
weren’t my lips painted pink,
lily of the valley pinned,
sweet perfume soaking
my hair? Wasn’t that yesterday?
And weren’t we happy, and weren’t we strong,
muscles flexing under tanned skin
as we dove in, trout spinning
their shimmering funnels around us?
Weren’t we a family?
Weren’t we?
And wasn’t our father charming
that day on the lake,
his blue hat flying off in the wind?
And wasn’t he marvelous,
his enormous authority as he leaned
from the truck window, Marlboro dangling
from his mouth, his silent concentration
as he snugged, inch by inch,
our trailer into its narrow slot?
And wasn’t he wonderful
in the mornings before he’d been
drinking, how he hauled
the jetskis into the lake,
rainbows of gasoline glistening?
We watched strapped
in bright pink life-jackets
as he choked the engines,
then throttled them
until they screamed.
I loved him, you know, this is our story.
We wore green bikinis,
cut-offs and thongs, white-rimmed
sunglasses even,
we all drank rum in a cabin,
and even then you knew
you shouldn’t marry
that man, but you married him,
even then he slammed you down
on the concrete and our parents never said a thing,
even then he forgot your birthday,
and you were only sixteen, and that was before
you were pregnant, before I whispered abortion,
before we dove into
the lake and witnessed our own
distortion under water,
before we knew our father would not
survive his life, the life we helped
construct and destroy, and everyone keeps
saying it was not,
it is not your fault,
and it’s not,
but go back, go deeper: had we not
been so clever, had we
not been so evil,
had we not fought over
the one blue cup, had we not
bawled in the Mexican restaurant—
if we went back maybe we’d try
to be better, learn to build
engines because
he had to do this
alone.
Didn’t we all love one another
once on the lake before
we could look back and grieve,
before cancer in the femur,
before alcohol poisoning,
before liver failure,
before all these sad children,
before everything collapsed,
weren’t we blessed,
weren’t we lovely?
Once I wore perfumed flowers
and a white cotton dress,
once we smiled
for the camera
near the lake, its cold
turquoise drowsy and deep
while we stood, clinging.
I’m asking you to take me,
take me back, once more,
to the lake.
Red Riding Hood’s Grandmother: The Dress
Red Riding Hood’s Grandmother: The Dress
If I dress myself in darkness,
if across my face I draw
a black lace veil,
if for my granddaughter I sew
a dress, a white dress,
with hyacinth and crocus
embroidered across
the bodice, if I fasten
a strong satin ribbon
to tie around her waist,
if down the back I fix
glistening pearl buttons—
god, oh my god,
allow her to become
another girl, one who will glide
like an angel past
evil, past danger, arriving
always at my gate.
Wolf Wears Red Riding Hood’s Cape
Wolf Wears Red Riding Hood’s Cape
When the story is silent behind
its hard covers, Wolf slips
into the cape, becomes
a mind of clean wind.
His clumsy paws arrange
delicate shawls around
grandmother’s shoulders.
Gently, he combs her thin hair.
A wonderful sadness washes
through him when he wanders
in fields glistening bluebells,
their heads bowed in reverence.
He hears their soft prayers.
For hours he labors with a paintbrush,
watercolors, paints sunsets for grandmother,
orange, purple, gold.
She fastens his pictures high on her walls.
He floats in a cold river,
opens his eyes under water, feels
the pure ecstasy of distortion.
He sleeps next to grandmother.
In the dark she tells him of baby Moses adrift
in his tiny ark.
Bibliography
- Inside the Animal: The Collected Red Riding Hood Poems, Main Street Rag Publishing, 2019
- Pretty Marrow, Negative Capability, 2013
- The Red Riding Hood Papers, Finishing Line, 2010
