Scudder Parker has lived in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont for more than 70 years. He was a Protestant minister for two decades, a state senator for eight years, and a candidate for governor. He was a utility regulator and renewable energy consultant. He is an activist and poet. His first book of poetry, Safe As Lightning, was released in 2020 and his most recent collection, The Poem of the World: Poems and Prose, was released this spring. Both are available on Amazon.
You’ve written everything from Sunday sermons and senate bills to books of poetry. Have they all scratched a similar itch of self-expression, exploration, or advocacy? Which have you enjoyed writing the most? The least?
I’ve had many opportunities to speak and write about the land and people I love here in Vermont. Each has come with its own rules and challenges and has offered an opening for exploration and advocacy. Creating poetry is the one that feels most like home because it’s both the most demanding and potentially expansive.
I started out writing sermons and ended up speaking them almost extemporaneously from a few notes – a move from performance to more engaged conversation. During funerals, I shared stories of people’s lives. I spent lots of time listening to family and friends of the person who had died, urging them – as part of my preparation – to share stories and feelings. Often, I felt like a naturalist, documenting their lives.
As a politician – particularly when running for governor – I resisted the instruction of my staff and advisors to “stay on message” and tended to go off script. I was not a fun candidate to manage. But as a state senator, I loved helping craft policy and the legislative language that would enact it – something that demanded a formal precision amazingly different from anything I had ever done. My preaching skills did come in handy in addressing issues in floor debate and discussion.
I spent later years as a utility regulator, policy leader and consultant. I wrote testimony about policy innovations such as Least Cost Utility Planning (now there’s a mouthful!). It was challenging to write expert witness testimony on why efficient lightbulbs and renewable energy could help avoid building a new coal plant.
As I write poetry, I keep unlearning the habit of offering “resounding summary conclusions” – something I was encouraged to do as a preacher (but never enjoyed as a preacher’s kid), was told to do as a politician, had to do as a witness – and am excited not to do as a poet. “Show, don’t tell” is the discipline of trying to be honest about myself, what I see, don’t see, and what I long to learn and keep discovering – telling stories along the way.
You’ve led an interesting life! Have you been tempted to capture your experiences in a biography or to parlay them into a novel?
Both my first volume of poetry Safe as Lightning, and my new volume The Poem of the World, are autobiographical. The second volume includes brief essays, snippets of biography, that started as long poems. I don’t feel the need to tell “my story” but I want what I write to be informed by my searching, struggle, and experience of wonder. My Substack postings allow me to combine poetry, pictures, and commentary and feel the most like a biography.
If your adolescent self could comment on the fact that you’ve been a protestant preacher, a state senator, and are now an award-winning poet, what would he say?
“Cool! You are way more fortunate and have done more interesting things than I ever expected you to! Keep changing.”
What is your writing process?
I don’t have a formal process or ritual. (Winter is often more productive because there’s less competition then from my gardening obsession.) Throughout my life I’ve written in episodes…and then not much for years. But when a poem nudges and I get started, I’m dogged and pretty much obsessed. I don’t share “ideas” for poems. That seems to be the kiss of death. But once underway, I need to share drafts with people I trust, then go back to the poem with new perspective. More and more I realize re-writing is real writing…it is a joy to have a poem “open up” and start talking to me again when I either thought it was done or dead. Smart readers and tough critics are the best.
Your love of and concern for nature are evident in your writing and policy work. What do you consider the root or spark of this love and concern?
We lived in Katonah, New York, in the late 1940s and early ’50s. I loved exploring the fields and woods of that rapidly suburbanizing area.
But moving to a lovely marginal dairy farm in North Danville, Vermont, in 1952 was truly the spark. Actually, it was a conflagration. Dad and Mom had hopes and visions and very little competence as farmers. I was 11 and the oldest of four (soon to be five) children. I was a sort-of-suburban kid, and then suddenly a farm boy, milking cows by hand, shoveling manure, haying, and logging with rustic equipment. I was learning basic stuff along with my father…sometimes faster. My classmates at North Danville School worked harder than I ever imagined one could…and we were doing everything “the hard way.”
But I loved it, and I thrived (even if our farming operation didn’t). The fields, the woods, the streams overwhelmed me with companionship. They welcomed my admiration and my effort. It felt like owning and being owned at the same time. I knew I was needed. At a deep level I discovered that the land we work and think we own has its own mysterious web of life and death, and is mostly indifferent to whatever mood, privilege, belief system, or class background we bring to the day’s effort.
What advice do you have for new writers?
Write what you think you know…and what you don’t, if you must. Be clear and direct about what really needs your voice, and be patient and thankful to learn from what nudges and seems to call on you. Learn to seek and cherish good feedback and critique, and be impolite enough to ignore the nonsense. Claim, celebrate, and be inspired by great writing wherever you find it.
What’s the best little-known nature or poetry book you’ve read?
The Maybe-Bird by Jennifer Elise Foerster. And Orion Magazine.
Who inspires you?
Bill McKibben, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and my two local naturalists/authors, Bryan Pfeiffer and Nona Estrin.
Are you reading or listening (podcasts or music) to anything great right now?
I read it a couple of years ago, but I think The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson is truly a remarkable work in its scope, complexity and insight into the kind of undertaking(s) needed to address the crisis we are facing. I have been reading with a mix of fascination and bewilderment, Death of the Author, by Nnedi Okorafor, and Playground by Richard Powers. Wendell Berry is essential.