Anya Creightney interviews Bessie Senette in Thibodaux, LA

Anya: I’m going to ask you a couple of questions now that we’re rolling. First of which, tell me your name, where you live, and a little bit about yourself.

Bessie: I am Bessie Senette, and I live in Lafayette, Louisiana. I’m a poet, a writer, a healer. In our culture, it’s called a traiteuse, or a traditional healer, treater. Traiteuse in French translates to “treater.” So most of my writing is poetry, some prose, little vignettes. I have two sons, a husband of 38 years, and just love Lafayette, love living there, but I grew up on Bayou Lafourche. I went to Nicholls here in Thibodaux—it’s not called Nicholls anymore though, they tell me. I grew up on lower Lafourche, so y’all are going to be heading in that direction tomorrow. 

Anya: That’s right, that’s exactly right. Well it’s nice to meet a native before we go that direction. So what’s your relationship to this venue? 

Bessie: This is the first time I’ve been here. I knew it existed, and I knew it was a spectacular thing, but the Jean Lafitte system—all over in Eunice and other places—have done a marvelous job in building recognition for our culture and so I’m very excited to be here and to see how well it is supported. 

Anya: It’s a beautiful space. It’s a joy to see—an ample. There’s a whole—a really good survey of the culture here. As a non-local, it was very informative. 

Bessie: So at the library you’re going to tomorrow, there will be a lot of replicas of shrimp boats and tug boats in the library, just models of them. My father was a boat builder, so some of those boats follow patterns that he would have used, and so you guys are going to get to see some real deep south Cajun people.

Anya: That’s exciting. 

Bessie: --and their traditions. And all along the bayou, you’ll see those boats in the water, and it’s just a beautiful drive. You’re going to enjoy that tomorrow. 

Anya: I’m excited. Well, a couple questions about poetry. Have you attended poetry events before? 

Bessie: Yes. The Louisiana Book Festival. I have a new book coming out, and I’m also good friends with Sandy and other poets in the Acadiana area, and we meet together, write together. We attend the book festivals. So yeah, it’s wonderful. And we travel all over the south. We’ve been to Austin and you know, a lot of places in Texas, to New Orleans a lot. New Orleans has the Maple Leaf Lounge, which has one of the longest-running venues for open mic poetry in the country, and so we tend to gravitate toward that when we’re in New Orleans because it’s every Sunday at 3:00 in the afternoon, so you know you can hear some poetry there. Lots of venues in Lafayette that do open mic and everything from slam to just narrative poets. We have events that just highlight the literary arts. And so it’s a rich, rich culture. 

Anya: I’m happy to hear there are multiple events—not just in New Orleans, for example. 

Bessie: All over Acadia. 

Anya: That’s great. Well before coming to hear Tracy read today, did you have any idea or what were you hoping to hear? What were your impressions before coming to the event?

Bessie: Well I did do a little research. My husband has the habit of reading poetry to me out loud, so I had him look her up, and he read some of her poems to me—the space ones. 

Anya: Life on Mars? 

Bessie: Life on Mars. And I was thrilled to hear that her father had worked on the Hubble, and that stuff, and it’s just wonderful to have the literary arts come from that kind of developing environment where even as a child, you have an understanding that the world is bigger than the town you live in, which I really didn’t have, so it’s pretty impressive.

Anya: We don’t all have fathers working on the Hubble telescope. 

Bessie: No. We don’t have astronomers or astrologers raising us, right? 

Anya: Well what did you think of the poems Tracy read today, especially from the collection? Are there any that resonated with you? 

Bessie: Well, yes. All three of them did, but that’s not what grabbed me. 

Anya: Well tell me. 

Bessie: What really grabbed me was the interaction of the audience, of people reading the poem again and hearing it in a different voice. And also, the one question was “What grabbed you? What caught you?”

Anya: “What did you notice?”

Bessie: And what people noticed I had noticed as well. So that was a commonality, I could relate to everything everybody said. 

Anya: Well thanks for participating in this interview.