Nicole Rollender's Blog, page 4

Carpe Noctem Interview With Meg Eden

NEON, 2015 ​THINGS WE’RE DYING TO KNOW…
Let’s start with the book’s title and your cover image. How did you choose each? And, if I asked you to describe or sum up your book, what three words immediately come to mind?
Title: Initially the poems were just narratives about my experience going to Beijing in late 2005. However, as I edited the poems, Beijing was no longer the landscape for my poems, but a character I was interacting with. So when that transformation happened, it made sense for the poems to be “a week with Beijing” as opposed to “a week in Beijing.”
 
Cover: My editor at NEON, Krishan, gave me a few image ideas for the cover. I really liked having a female in the image, and I really wanted some sort of censorship to happen in the cover, as the poems confront the silencing Beijing put upon its citizens before the Olympics (and beyond). So with the image of the girl, we decided we could censor out her eyes and mouth and put the title there. I’m very happy with the end product.
 
Three-word summary: personified political travelogue.
 
What were you trying to achieve with your book? Tell us about the world you were trying to create, and who lives in it.
I wanted to recreate the culture shock and exchange I experienced travelling to Beijing. Most of the trips I’d been on before were very tourist friendly. Everyone was welcoming and provided a “dressed-up” version of their culture to satisfy our consumerism. But when I went to Beijing, the city was “still putting on its makeup”: it was building the Olympic arenas, ripping down the historic Hutong regions, and it was the dead of winter so there were few tourists to cater to. In fact, when we first landed, our taxi driver first said, “What are you doing here? It’s not the Olympics yet.”

Can you describe your writing practice or process for this collection? Do you have a favorite revision strategy?
Once I had the idea of exchanges with an anthropomorphized Beijing, the poems came out easily. Revision strategy? I read through all of them in one sitting, make a couple changes at a time, and do that several times.
 
How did you order the poems in the collection? Do you have a specific method for arranging your poems or is it sort of haphazard, like you lay the pages out on the floor and see what order you pick them back up in?
I think because this was a narrative experience, I tried to create a narrative arch with this collection: set up the situation, heighten the tension to a climax, and (sort of a) resolution.
 
What do you love to find in a poem you read, or love to craft into a poem you’re writing?
For me, a poem needs to haunt the reader. So I look for an image, a moment, that surprises and possibly disturbs me, but it makes me think longer and deeper about a situation. This is both in how I read and write.
 
Can you share an excerpt from your book? And tell us why you chose this poem for us to read – did it galvanize the writing of the rest of the collection? Is it your book’s heart? Is it the first or last poem you wrote for the book?
This is one of my favorite poems to do at readings. I think it paints a complexity for Beijing “coming of age” for the Olympics. It’s one of the later poems I wrote for the collection.
 
Beijing Explains Her Twelve Year Old Gymnast
 
She isn’t twelve, she’s sixteen.
Her name is He Kexin. She was in
the Olympics before but now
is retired; too old.
 
No one believes me—you think
we want to look so young?
That we don’t want American
breasts, full Western hips? And lips?
 
I have no daughter, but if I did
she would fly like He. She would live
in the air, and only come down
to eat moon cakes and taunt us.
 
She would be afraid of no men,
and no men would enter her.
Her body would be tight
like a branch, unbending
 
but beautiful—no one would
educate her, she would sing
too loudly. She would not be known
by name, but by the way her legs
 
whip through the air like a bird.
The way she vanished so young
without demands, without fathers
to condemn and harness her wildness. 
 
If you had to convince someone walking by you in the park to read your book right then and there, what would you say?
Probably something to the effect of: I’d bet you can actually read these poems and understand them (and maybe even enjoy them!). I seem to encounter a lot of people, who in response to me saying that I’m a poet say, “Oh I don’t read poetry. I can’t understand it.” As a rather narrative poet, this aggravates me to no end—what are English teachers making their students read? Whatever it is, it needs to change, because it’s scaring everyone away from the world of poetry!

For you, what is it to be a poet? What scares you most about being a writer? Gives you the most pleasure?
I could say a lot on that—but in short, to me being a poet is being a witness to something intimate, personal—and in many ways spiritual. What scares me most about being a writer is being a poor or unfair witness. What gives me the most pleasure is to testify to something in a way that's pleasing in both craft and content, and that provides a turn of surprise.
 
Are there other types of writing (dictionaries, romance novels, comics, science textbooks, etc.) that help you to write poetry?
I find everything as fuel for my poetry. When I was working in scientific research, scientific articles provided inspiration for poems. Now, I’m reading quite a bit of academic articles for literature in translation. Writing-wise, I also write fiction, so everything I am reading and writing may return back into my poems.
 
What are you working on now?
I have a novel coming out in 2017, and am trying to figure out which novel to work on next. I’m also working on a full length manuscript of poems about the 2011 Tohoku earthquake.
 
What book are you reading that we should also be reading?
Just finished Jane Shore’s That Said, Susan Morrow’s The Dawning Moon of the Mind, and C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, which were all amazing. Also reading Pikachu’s Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokemon by Joseph Tobin which—for anyone of my generation—is a fascinating read, and Sarah Well’s Pruning Burning Bushes.
 
Without stopping to think, write a list of five poets whose work you would tattoo on your body, or at least write in permanent marker on your clothing, to take with you at all times.
Ocean Vuong, Naomi Shihab Nye, Patricia Smith, Danez Smith, April Naoko Heck. 

***
Purchase A Week With Beijing. Meg Eden's work has been published in various magazines, including Rattle, Drunken Boat, Poet Lore, and Gargoyle. She teaches at the University of Maryland. She has four poetry chapbooks, and her novel Post-High School Reality Quest is forthcoming from California Coldblood, an imprint of Rare Bird Lit. Check out her work at: www.megedenbooks.com



​

Carpe Noctem Chapbook Interview With Neil Elder

Cinnamon Press, 2015 THINGS WE’RE DYING TO KNOW…
Let’s start with the book’s title and your cover image. How did you choose each? And, if I asked you to describe or sum up your book, what three words immediately come to mind?
Primarily the collection explores the gap between what we think we know and what we actually know about other people. The title, Codes of Conduct emphasizes the idea that runs through the collection that we are all expected to behave in certain ways. Those patterns of behavior, the conventions that exist in society, come from all aspects of life – from family and loved ones, from ourselves and from the world of work or whatever roles we are fulfilling.  We expect certain actions and thoughts from others, because by and large we are conventional. The cover is part of the Cinnamon Press house-style for the pamphlets that win their pamphlet competition.
 
What were you trying to achieve with your collection? Tell us about the world you were trying to create, and who lives in it.
Wow, that wants a long and involved response that shifts whenever I consider such things. My main concern is to explore the difference between what we think we know about people and what we actually know about them. I say in readings that people may look at their colleagues differently tomorrow, but the poems could just as easily be asking what you think you know about your neighbour and what you actually know about them – or even what you really know about your husband/wife, or perhaps yourself!

The pamphlet divides into two parts; the first part is a sequence that concerns a figure called Henderson and his world of work, the second half are stand-alone poems, that develop notions about how we communicate.   Across the first half Henderson and some of his colleagues filter in and out of the poems. The poems cast a wry look at work and the ridiculous aspects of it, such as jargon and the notion that setting targets makes people more effective. At work there are perhaps certain assumptions made about people based on their role but these often miss what an individual is really like.  

Through the character of Henderson I challenge the idea that getting to the top is what we all want. In the second half of the book some of the big themes – relationships, death, parenthood get an airing – you can’t have a book of poems without love and death, can you?The poems combine sharply observed humour and pathos; which seems to me to be what life contains.
 
Can you describe your writing practice or process for this collection? Do you have a favorite revision strategy?
The catalyst for half the collection is a poem called "Restructuring," which effectively points out the weasel ways and words of management, when euphemisms are used to try and soften something that is actually pretty painful and brutal. In this poem, which is set in an office, I suggest the lives and characters of some of the employees. I think this was the first time I really discovered the freedom and flexibility offered by employing characters; there is a touch of the fiction writer involved in this.  I then managed "Open-Plan," which is the first poem in Codes of Conduct and which firmly establishes the disconnect between our assumptions about people and the reality. In this poem, Henderson, seemingly a straight-forward office worker, is revealed as having quite a daring and exciting side to his life away from work. I wanted to know more about Henderson and  he stuck in my head and I worked on him. At some point I had perhaps three or four Henderson poems and an editor, who saw these poems, asked if there was going to be a longer sequence. I didn’t know how many I’d write, but I ended up with fifteen. What I did find was that once I had the setting, then scenarios suggested themselves: someone retires, someone has a birthday, there is a fire alarm. Thus I had a firm scaffold upon which to build and I never felt like I was starting from scratch – there was enough of a  pre-existing landscape to feel I had some momentum.

Meanwhile I would be writing other pieces, away from Henderson. These pieces were slower to come because I didn’t have the framework. However, I did find that ideas about identity and how we communicate were clearly coming through, just as they do in the Henderson pieces.

The revision of the poems is fairly constant – that thing of a poem is never finished, merely abandoned. I start with handwritten drafts and when I feel a poem has some chance of working I move to typing it up. That can alter line endings and all sorts. I then print off the draft, and more tinkering will happen. Some of the poems have been part of workshops I regularly attend with a group – people stamp on the poems and I work with what’s left!
 
How did you order the poems in the collection? Do you have a specific method for arranging your poems or is it sort of haphazard, like you lay the pages out on the floor and see what order you pick them back up in?
It is possible for the Henderson poems to be read as individual pieces and in any order, but there are some elements that suggest a narrative arc; those elements were the ones that dictated the order in the first half. Part two of ‘Codes of Conduct’ has the pace, length and tone of the poems in mind. I have seen photographs of poems laid across the floor as a means of finding a structure to a collection. I suppose that can work, but the irony is that most people read collections of poetry in their own order, dipping in and out – that’s one of the joys of reading poetry. However, I suppose that listening to Sgt. Pepper on shuffle must be detrimental to the whole work, and so we should perhaps be more willing to start at page one of a poetry collection and read on until the end.
 
What do you love to find in a poem you read, or love to craft into a poem you’re writing?
The things in  poetry I like to read, and in the poems I hope to write, are a surprising turn of phrase, an original image or way of seeing things. I am not a huge fan of deliberately obscure clever-clever poetry, and so I suppose a certain immediacy is what I want.  In Codes of Conduct I think I have the familiarity that makes people smile and nod as they read, but also I pin ideas with a particular phrase or present something from a side-long view that offers the element of surprise or keeps things feeling new.
 
6. Can you share an excerpt from your book? And tell us why you chose this poem for us to read – did it galvanize the writing of the rest of the collection? Is it your book’s heart? Is it the first or last poem you wrote for the book?
The poem I am providing here, "On The Floor," comes from the second half of the collection, and perhaps captures the humour of the pamphlet, but also clearly has communication and our understanding of each other at its heart. I wondered about using the first Henderson poem, but I have had a good reaction to ‘On the Floor’ and at readings I tend to open with it.  There certainly seems to be something in the poem that people identify with – that mix of desperation and frustration – feeling misunderstood and not quite knowing how to communicate ideas to others. This poem first appeared in the lovely magazine ‘The Interpreter’s House’.
 
On the Floor
 
I would like to lie down on the kitchen floor
and howl like a dog.
What stops me is the thought 
that if you walk in just as I let out a yell,
all sorts of awkward questions may be asked.
 
But then again, perhaps I am mistaken
in judging your reaction
to this scene -
maybe you will join me,
primal, foetal, brittle
and take your place upon the Lino
so that we can tell each other
exactly how we feel.

If you had to convince someone walking by you in the park to read your book right then and there, what would you say?
That Codes of Conduct will have thoughts and ideas that they have had, possibly without even realising. That there will be a response and recognition on an emotional level to the poems. That the work is very accessible and not hearts and flowers or obtuse.  And that they will find themselves laughing – that’s got to be good.
 
For you, what is it to be a poet? What scares you most about being a writer? Gives you the most pleasure?
In many ways I think writing poetry is my equivalent to crosswords or Sudoko and such things that other people do to keep the mind active. There is also a level of challenge – “Okay, I’ve got half an idea, or I’ve got an opening line – now can I make it a decent poem?”  There is also the more elusive aspect whereby I perhaps find it cathartic to write about something, but I don’t tend to set about the task in such an obvious fashion.    I suppose the fear is that nothing else will come to me, or if it does it will be no good. I think perhaps the ‘correct’ answer concerning pleasure is that the act of writing itself is rewarding, and that is true, but knowing people have read and enjoyed my work is pleasing. Of course the pleasure comes in people saying nice things, but more than that I find the notion that I have made them see something in a new light or from a different angle particularly rewarding – that is often in the quiet nod of a reader, though of course I’m rarely around when they actually read my stuff (that would be weird!).
 
Are there other types of writing (dictionaries, romance novels, comics, science textbooks, etc.) that help you to write poetry?
Nothing consciously triggers my poetic reflex but I do read a lot of poetry and that percolates somewhere in the mind.
 
What are you working on now?
A large part of me hopes I don’t know what’s coming next – I want the line to strike me in a lightbulb moment, but things don’t work like that usually. I have a sequence up and running that involves a couple of young women, Ellie and Tara, and through them I suppose I am making observations on life, in particular the way we look at each other – ‘look’ in all dimensions, I mean.
 
What book are you reading that we should also be reading? 
They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell. He writes such beautiful prose and captures the sense of things, the mood and feelings in the air, without pushing so hard that the spell gets broken. The inner-thoughts and private lives of characters are so wonderfully explored. Pretty much any William Maxwell should be in your house, but this is so delicate it needs to be treasured.
 
Without stopping to think, write a list of five poets whose work you would tattoo on your body, or at least write in permanent marker on your clothing, to take with you at all times.
Edward Thomas, Paul Farley, Lorraine Mariner, Andrew Motion, Philp Larkin
 
13. What’s a question you wish I asked? (And how would you answer it?)
Any tips for budding poets? – Join a writing group/workshop – the constructive advice of trusted others is invaluable.
 
***

Purchase Codes of Conduct from Cinnamon Press. Neil Elder has had poems published in various magazines and journals, among them are The Rialto, Prole, Acumen, The Interpreter’s House.  In 2015 Neil won the Cinnamon Press Pamphlet completion with ‘Codes of Conduct’. Neil lives and works in N.W London. He is a member of Herga Poets and enjoys giving readings. Read Neil’s blog and some of his poems here https://neilelderpoetry.wordpress.com.

Carpe Noctem Book Interview With Marilyn McCabe

The Word Works, 2016 THINGS WE’RE DYING TO KNOW…
Let’s start with the book’s title and your cover image. How did you choose each? And, if I asked you to describe or sum up your book, what three words immediately come to mind?
Two poems in the collection address my recollections of poking around in the history and actual remains of glass factories -- I had an archaeology minor in college, so some of this came about as part of a project in that pursuit. There's something magical about glass -- that it's both solid and liquid, can reflect, refract, and disappear. And the idea of picking through ruins is such a metaphor for the creative process.
 
I had a number of different ideas for the cover, ranging from trying to find what one photo site called "factory porn" to something abstract involving glass shards, but when I found an image of a sculpture of a glass-like staircase by Victoria Palermo, an acquaintance of mine, I knew I'd found the exact right thing.
 
Three words: absence, ephemerality, change.
 
What were you trying to achieve with your collection? Tell us about the world you were trying to create, and who lives in it.
I've lost several contemporaries in the past couple of years, as well as a very young friend, and a very old friend; and my 95-year-old mother broke her leg, requiring us to find her new lodging and a new life situation, which required that I pack up and/or throw away much of the accumulations of her life. Out of this spring-tide of loss, grief, and managing change came these poems.

Can you describe your writing practice or process for this collection? Do you have a favorite revision strategy?
Poems begin in any number of different ways for me. Often with an image. Sometimes a line. Sometimes I squeeze something out of myself through writing prompts -- e.g., I tell myself to write for ten minutes on "blue" without stopping. If nothing else, it gets my hand moving (my first drafts are always in long hand).
 
I love the revision/editing process, from beginning to end -- from scrutinizing my own choices to arguing commas and hyphenation with my editor. If a poem doesn't seemed to be realized, I'll say to myself, "Okay, write for ten minutes without stopping in answer to this: 'What I'm really trying to say is...'." I like to turn poems upside down to see if I can learn something new from that perspective. Sometimes I try to rhyme, then unrhyme. It's all play at this stage.
 
How did you order the poems in the collection? Do you have a specific method for arranging your poems or is it sort of haphazard, like you lay the pages out on the floor and see what order you pick them back up in?
I tend to try to impose some kind of logical order. I have a logical mind, sometimes overly so. Or I try to capture some kind of suggestive narrative arc. With this collection, though, the editor suggested a reordering that moved apart some poems that address similar things or draw from similar kinds of images. By moving them apart a kind of weaving effect was created, with resonances sounding through the collection rather than gathered in single areas. I loved this idea and will keep it in mind in future projects of ordering poems in a collection.
 
What do you love to find in a poem you read, or love to craft into a poem you’re writing?
I love big ideas. I love poems that start with a small detail and then kapow you with a big idea. I don't know if I do that in my work, but I wish I would.
 
Can you share an excerpt from your book? And tell us why you chose this poem for us to read – did it galvanize the writing of the rest of the collection? Is it your book’s heart? Is it the first or last poem you wrote for the book?
The collection starts with this poem. It speaks to the emotional core of the collection, the fierceness of loss, but the beauty of life that has such pain in it. I'm also an insomniac, so ... there's that.
 
I await the night with dread; await the night with longing
 
With its black strokes, singing,
it smears me, lavish.
 
I’m the night’s white canvas
                                                turbulent and stiff.
 
I can grab the burning
stars in my hand.
 
But I can’t let them loose. 
 
If you had to convince someone walking by you in the park to read your book right then and there, what would you say?
Have you or are you in the process of experiencing loss? Come along with me and look at it lovingly. We can travel together.
 
For you, what is it to be a poet? What scares you most about being a writer? Gives you the most pleasure?
I think on the page, often. Poetry meets my natural taciturn tendency and pleases my mind's leap-making desires. I tried to become a fiction writer, but I'm not a natural storyteller. I tried to write essays, but my anxiety about meaning-making led to plodding and uninteresting work. With poetry I can suggest, wonder, be silent, joke, sigh. What scares me most about being a writer is what scares me most about being a human being -- that I'll be too content for too long to stay on the surface of my encounter with the world, that I won't dig deep enough to really think/feel/observe all the wonder. It's fun to be in the midst of inspiration, but, as I said before, I love rolling up my sleeves and editing. Would that I were as fierce with my own work as I am with my long-suffering poet friends. I'm constantly chucking entire stanzas of their work; I may be a little too easy on myself.
 
Are there other types of writing (dictionaries, romance novels, comics, science textbooks, etc.) that help you to write poetry?
I read widely in nonfiction -- science, theology, political history. But whenever I'm stuck for inspiration, I go to art museums. I'm going to be a writer in residence for a week at MassMOCA (the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) and I'm very excited by that lengthy access to big ideas and the kinds of wacky installations featured there.
 
What are you working on now?
Taking a hint from Rilke's dingedichte, "thing poems," I'm considering objects and letting poem leap out of them.
 
What book are you reading that we should also be reading?
I'm loving Lisa Sewell's Impossible Object. And I'm rereading for the umpteenth time Ellen Bryant Voight's Flexible Lyric. I also just got Rebecca Solnit's latest book of essays out of the library. She leaves me breathless.
 
Without stopping to think, write a list of five poets whose work you would tattoo on your body, or at least write in permanent marker on your clothing, to take with you at all times.
Yeats's "Second Coming," something from Gluck's Wild Iris, Bob Hicok's "Bars Poetica," Bruce Beasley's "Aphasic Echolalia," and Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese."
 
What’s a question you wish I asked? (And how would you answer it?)
What's my greatest struggle as a writer? Continuing to make work regardless of the outcome, regardless of rejections, regardless of self-doubt, regardless of the self-limitations I run into or impose, and to make work gladly and with a sense of play. To maintain the sense of play seems vital to me and I often lose it to worry or earnestness or some other terrible intention. To maintain lightness is, ironically, my struggle.
 
***

Purchase Glass Factory  from The Word Works. Marilyn McCabe’s second full length collection of poems, Glass Factory, was released in spring 2016 from The Word Works. Her poem “On Hearing the Call to Prayer Over the Marcellus Shale on Easter Morning” was awarded A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Orlando Prize, fall 2012, and appeared in the Los Angeles Review. Her book of poetry Perpetual Motion was published by The Word Works in 2012 as the winner of the Hilary Tham Capitol Collection contest. Her work has appeared in literary magazines such as Nimrod, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Painted Bride Quarterly, French translations and songs on Numero Cinq, and a video-poem on The Continental Review.  She blogs about writing and reading at marilynonaroll.wordpress.com.



​

Carpe Noctem Chapbook Interview With Lauren Brazeal

dancing girl press & studio, 2016 THINGS WE’RE DYING TO KNOW…
If I asked you to describe or sum up your book, what three words immediately come to mind?
Fatty, succulent, and nipple
 
What were you trying to achieve with your chapbook? Tell us about the world you were trying to create, and who lives in it?
Food is a big thing in my life. I was homeless when I was a teenager, and then lived in group homes where food was closely monitored and I had no say over what I ate. I suppose because of this, themes of “eating” run rampant in my poems, my day-to-day conversations, and even my metaphors. “Consumption”—and its various uses as a verb  in our language—is the great unifier of every poem in the book. I'm not sure if it was my goal when I started, but that seems to be the final product.
 
Zoo for Well-Groomed Eaters exists as a current of savagery running beneath a veneer of civility. Its citizens are mostly outsiders, living in the back alleys of human consciousness; and include scholarly mongrel dogs lecturing on how to handle cats—with interruptions, cockroaches who write thank-you notes to their hosts, animals bred solely for human consumption,  and mother rats singing ballads to their starving children. But there's also a great humor to the collection—even if it may be  from the gallows.  Most of these poems are armed with a wicked smirk.
 
Can you describe your writing practice or process for this collection? Do you have a favorite revision strategy?
Most poems in this collection were written while I was earning my MFA at Bennington College.  So my writing practice was that of most MFA students: I had monthly deadlines, was required to offer my work for review and workshop, and—as with any workshopping environment—was given either a thumbs up or down regarding my progress. My revision strategy is my own, and involves a more “crockpot” approach—again with the food metaphors. I combine various ingredients, let them sit, and see if the flavor is right after a certain amount of time. This makes me a slow writer for the most part, but I'm usually happy with the result of my efforts.
 
How did you order the poems in the collection? Do you have a specific method for arranging your poems or is it sort of haphazard, like you lay the pages out on the floor and see what order you pick them back up in?
My favorite collections are those which  invite a multitude of reading approaches—either read front to back, or different pieces at random—with each reading offering its own unique perspective on the text as a whole. I was careful to arrange the pieces in Zoo for Well-Groomed Eaters to function more like movements in a symphony; I feel there's a beginning, middle, and end. But I hope the reader can just as easily pick the book up, select a poem at random, and not feel lost.
 
What do you love to find in a poem you read, or love to craft into a poem you’re writing?
There's a quote from an anonymous child that says. “A poem is an egg with a horse in it." I look for poems that surprise me with their magic. After all, poetry is the grandchild of the magic spell. I look for this as I read, and keep this in mind whenever I write.
 
Can you share an excerpt from your book? And tell us why you chose this poem for us to read—did it galvanize the writing of the rest of the collection? Is it your book’s heart? Is it the first or last poem you wrote for the book?
This poem may be my favorite in the collection, so it was easy to choose. I'm a great fan of form, and meter and this epistle began as a petrarchan sonnet that mutated—though it retains plenty of iambic rhythm, and there's a discernable volta. I wrote it for a student reading at Bennington, which are famous for their raucousness. When I return to it now, I still see the Bennington Commons surrounded by snowdrifts; the Commons lounge, with its grand fireplace, filled from corner to corner with maybe  60 less-than-sober MFA candidates. I can hear the hoots and hollers of my friends with each line break. I think the poem embodies that sense of gleeful abandon. I'm not sure if it's the book's heart—I think the book has many hearts, but it's a good example of what a reader will find in Zoo for Well-Groomed Eaters.
 
Dear Spring,
 
You're just too spooky
            with your ovuleescent
            pistils, and your stamens
thrusting powdery
 
yellow gunk that drives
            the bees insane.
            You're loud, parading
greenly in the streets
 
past 2:00am, bottle-
            brushing branch tips
            labia pink. You stink
of sex and insects,
 
and you encourage other birds
            to bedroom-eye
            the trees. Spring, sweetie,
your drag show's bad.
 
Fuchsia's just
            so 1985.
            Just look at you in June,
your leggy legs
 
no longer steady.
            Your song was pretty once,
            but yaws off-key. Now,
get clean, and clear your craw
 
for another gobbling 
            of tits in tassels and
            conveniently revealing
boudoir screens.
 
If you had to convince someone walking by you in the park to read your book right then and there, what would you say?
“These poems will get you laid.”
 
What are you working on now?
I've got a full-length manuscript I'm polishing and beginning to submit, which is a series of odd poems, flash-fiction pieces, board games, palimpsests, instruction manuals, and stolen police evidence all telling the story of my time on the streets when I was a teenager. I'm also working on what I thought was a finished third chapbook manuscript, but recently realized—to my excitement—is a portion of a second full-length.
 
What book are you reading that we should also be reading?
Right now I'm reading the amazingly talented Detroit poet, Francine J. Harris. I love her work so much! I'm also re-reading Megan Martin's beautifully genre-bending debut, Nevers. Chapbooks I've enjoyed recently are Lisa Marie Basile's War/Lock, Thera Webb's Reality Asylum, and Sarah B Boyle's What's Pink & Shiny / What's Dark & Hard.

​*** 
Purchase Zoo for Well-Groomed Eaters from dancing girl press & studio.

Lauren Brazeal teaches writing in the Dallas / Forth Worth metroplex but in her past she's been a homeless gutter punk, a resident of the Amazon jungle, a maid, and a custom aquarium designer. Her second chapbook, Exuviae, is forthcoming from Horse Less Press in 2016 and her individual poems have appeared or are forthcoming in DIAGRAM, Smartish Pace, Verse Daily, Barrelhouse Online, and Painted Bride Quarterly among other journals. Find her online at http://www.laurenbrazeal.com.


​

Carpe Noctem Book Interview With ire’ne lara silva

 THINGS WE’RE DYING TO KNOW…
Let’s start with the book’s title and your cover image. How did you choose each? And, if I asked you to describe or sum up your book, what three words immediately come to mind?
I usually have a terrible time choosing titles—for anything, poems, stories, books—but in this case, I knew from the very start. For the first time, the concept for a whole book just jumped into my mind. I’ve always written poems about whatever was most affecting me at that moment. With my first book, furia, I was dealing with grief for my mother’s loss, the confusions of being in my mid-thirties, and attempting to reconcile all the conflicting emotional landscapes. So two months after furia was published, I was wondering what I was going to write about next. And the big light bulb went off and said, this is what you need to do next. Write all the poems you can think of about diabetes and your family and healing—for every vantage point you can think of…as a woman, a daughter, sister, as an indigenous Mexican-American, as a Texan, as a writer and thinker, as a lover, as a patient and consumer, as an active part of my own healing. And Blood Sugar Canto was perfect, with Canto being overwhelmingly important because I believe it is through song that healing happens.
 
The cover art is a segment of a painting, “When Wind Blows Through Them,” by my brother, Moisés. S. L. Lara. He was inspired by the bead artwork of the Huichol to visualize a spiderweb enduring the wind and reflecting the sun’s light in its coloration. It’s not meant to be a mandala. I’ve been fortunate to have my brother’s artwork on the cover of my first three books as well as on my digital chapbook. In my mind, his art is not only beautiful and unique, it also really speaks to the energy I hope each book conveys.
 
The three words that come to me: Struggle, Hope, Survival.
 
What were you trying to achieve with your book/book? Tell us about the world you were trying to create, and who lives in it.
What I most wanted to do with this book was to initiate dialogue, between family members, between patients and doctors, between people and their various communities. Also, I wanted to invite the reader to look into some difficult areas internally, in their own psyches and belief systems. Not only how do we share what the physical, emotional, psychological experience of diabetes is like with our loved ones, but how do we talk to ourselves about fear and healing and self-love?
 
That isn’t to say that this book is only meant for people with diabetes or those who love them. I’ve had some interesting responses from readers who are managing other chronic illnesses or who are grieving the loss of a loved one. The health of our bodies, the strength of our spirits, mortality, and the importance of love in our lives—all of those are themes everyone can identify with.

Can you describe your writing practice or process for this collection? Do you have a favorite revision strategy?
Writing this collection was very different from any other experience I’d had writing poetry. In some ways, this was more like writing a long story with many, many parts. I wrote the first draft of the collection in a little more than a year. Revising took much longer—another three years of cutting and expanding and refining. I don’t know that I really have a revision strategy. Usually, I’ll just sit with a poem and listen to it, over and over again. Ask myself, are you saying everything you want to say here? Is what it looks like on the page the closest you can get it to how you hear it? Are you pushing as much as you can—are you telling the truest truth?
 
How did you order the poems in the collection? Do you have a specific method for arranging your poems or is it sort of haphazard, like you lay the pages out on the floor and see what order you pick them back up in?
This collection got laid on the floor at least three times. Though I wouldn’t say it was a haphazard arrangement. I arranged and re-arranged them on the floor, trying to decide which section each poem belonged to. Several times, I changed my mind about how many sections the book needed. Close to the end of those three years of revision, I handed my mss to my brother who rearranged the poems in a way that I felt really had a story arc, rhythm and variation, and most of all, really made the whole mss new to me in a way that felt exciting and natural. He said he’d tried to use the spiderweb on the cover to inform the order, weaving the poems into a shape that emphasized their individual strengths and beauty.
 
What do you love to find in a poem you read, or love to craft into a poem you’re writing?
I read for what I like to call the heat—for intensity of emotion and language. I don’t care for poetry as an intellectual exercise or as a disembodied eye looking at the world or as a linguistic puzzle with or without a solution. I want poetry that makes me feel, that reminds me I’m alive, that breaks my heart, that fills me with melancholy, that makes me rail at the world. I want language that takes my breath away.
 
What I love to find in the poems I’m writing is that point at which I lose conscious control of what I am saying or what I think I’m feeling, where I am so taken that I say something that surprises me.  I felt that way about the poem, “en trozos/in pieces.” I hadn’t expected a poem about fear to turn into a poem about self-acceptance. That was a huge part of the experience of this collection for me, how often a deeper look at one emotion revealed something entirely different.
 
Can you share an excerpt from your book? And tell us why you chose this poem for us to read – did it galvanize the writing of the rest of the collection? Is it your book’s heart? Is it the first or last poem you wrote for the book?
 
love song for my organs
 
 
this is a song i didn’t know
needed singing needed singing
 
a song for each morning
a song for each night
 
offered with awareness
offered with gratitude
 
decades have passed i did not
know your colors your shapes
 
the work you do have done
or what you needed from me
 
now i know this song needs singing
i will sing it everywhere i go
 
i name you now breathe softly
upon you hold you tenderly within
 
 
kidneys
 
you are not forgotten never
you are cherished and i am grateful
 
i bring you rainwater and riverwater
i bring you flowers tiny blue flowers
 
i bring you these my two hands filled
with sun light with starlight
 
i sing you strong sing you whole
 
This is the first poem I wrote for the healing/”Canto” section of the book. It struck me at a certain point that most people take their health, and the function of their organs for granted. But when you have to learn what they do and how they interact, there is a certain awe for how they work and what they tolerate. It seemed as if a love song filled with gratitude was necessary, and a huge first step in coming to love one’s own body.
 
For you, what is it to be a poet? What scares you most about being a writer? Gives you the most pleasure?
To be a poet means to be willing to be still. To really examine something—a scene, a memory, an emotion, conflicts, complications, history, real or fantastical life. And then to attempt to distill that into language. What scares me and delights me is the same thing—that feeling of having bared too much, told too much, of writing myself into a place where there is no way to hide. Initially, I feel too naked but then I think, perhaps someone somewhere needs to read this. Needs to know they weren’t the only one to feel this way or live through this.
 
Are there other types of writing (dictionaries, romance novels, comics, science textbooks, etc.) that help you to write poetry?
Everything helps. Sometimes I just think it’s about the need to pour language into myself—wherever that language might come from: articles, blogs, poetry, novels, Facebook, books on history or culture—to interact with all of those things.
 
What are you working on now?
A second collection of short stories, tentatively titled, “Songs from the Burning Woman.” All about grief and sexuality, art and the body, history as we ‘know’ it and history as a living malleable thing. I don’t quite have the language for it yet—re-making, re-visioning, re-creating are not quite the words I want. I’m a many-generation'd Mexican American who identifies primarily with my Native American roots. While Indigenous people have survived the last five hundred years, the wounds of historical and current violence, disease and poverty, decimation and assimilation, are ongoing. I think these stories have to do with art and healing and love as a counter to all of those wounds.
 
What book are you reading that we should also be reading?
I’ve been reading a lot of manuscripts in progress. Two that I’d recommend that will be released soon are poet Joe Jimenez’ first YA novel, titled Bloodline (Piñata Books), a new versioning of "Hamlet" where the main character is a 17 year old Chicano in current-day San Antonio….and With the River on Our Faces, the second collection of poetry from Emmy Perez due out this fall from University of Arizona Press.
 
Without stopping to think, write a list of five poets whose work you would tattoo on your body, or at least write in permanent marker on your clothing, to take with you at all times.
I can tell you not just which poets/writers, but which exact quotes:
 
First, not a poet, but a philosopher, and this one is actually on my list to be one of my first tattoos: “Fire rests by changing.”—Heraclitus
 
Second,

“amanecete mundo
entre mis brazos
que el peso de tu ternura
me despierte” –Francisco X. Alarcon
 
Roughly translated, “greet the dawn, world/ in my arms/ may the weight of your tenderness/ awaken me”
 
Third,
 
“I am afraid to won a Body--
I am afraid to own a Soul--
Profound-precarious Property—“
—Emily Dickinson
 
Fourth,
 
“My old furniture is rotting in the barn where I left it, and I myself, yes, my God, I have no roof over me, and it is raining into my eyes.”
–Rainer Maria Rilke
 
Fifth,
 
“Mientras yo estoy dormido/Sueño que vamos los dos muy juntos/A un cielo azul./Pero cuando despierto/El cielo es rojo, me faltas tú.”
—Jose Alfredo Jimenez
 
Roughly translated, “While I’m sleeping, I dream the two of us on our way to a blue sky. But when I awaken, the sky is red, and I don’t have you.”

***

Purchase Blood Sugar Canto.

 
ire’ne lara silva is the author of furia (poetry, Mouthfeel Press, 2010) which received an Honorable Mention for the 2011 International Latino Book Award and flesh to bone (short stories, Aunt Lute Books, 2013) which won the 2013 Premio Aztlan.  Her most recent collection of poetry, blood sugar canto, was published by Saddle Road Press in January 2016. ire’ne is the recipient of the 2014 Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, the Fiction Finalist for AROHO’s 2013 Gift of Freedom Award, and the 2008 recipient of the Gloria Anzaldua Milagro Award. Visit www. irenelarasilva.wordpress.com.
Saddle Road Press: http://saddleroadpress.com/blood-sugar-canto.html

Carpe Noctem Chapbook Interview With Bernard Grant

Let’s start with the book’s title and your cover image. How did you choose each? And, if I asked you to describe or sum up your book, what three words immediately come to mind?
The book is titled for the last essay. “Puzzle Pieces” is composed of small scenes which are, for the most part, arranged in reverse chronicological order, and is tied together by the recurring image of a woman who pieces a puzzle in front of a window.
 
Titles are difficult for me, but as I wrote this piece—as I refined the scenes, printed them out, cut them up, and arranged them on the floor until the essay felt right—“Puzzle Pieces” became an obvious choice.
 
After I completed the manuscript, I felt I’d created a larger version of that essay. Where in that piece short scenes create a bigger picture, the chapbook is composed of short essays that, like puzzle pieces, fit together to create an image, as an experience, in the reader’s mind.
 
Choosing the right cover image wasn’t as easy as choosing a title. It wasn’t easy at all. But it was just as fun. I contacted a friend, a writer and visual artist, whose work I admire. Clare Johnson read the manuscript a couple of times and met me in a Seattle café with her laptop. We spent two hours looking through images and discussing the essays. She’s a terrific artist and many of her illustrations made great possibilities. There were so many prospects. But I lost interest in all of them once I saw the image I finally chose. I looked at a few more after I saw it, but I’d already made the decision. I liked, among many other things, the way the houses fit together to create a community.
 
Three words to sum up the chapbook: small, spare, subversive.   
 
What were you trying to achieve with your chapbook? Tell us about the world you were trying to create, and who lives in it.
Creating this chapbook was an act of curiosity: I wanted to see if I could create a longer narrative out of some short essays I’d written. I wondered what story they would tell once I placed them together, given the proper structure.

Can you describe your writing practice or process for this collection? Do you have a favorite revision strategy?
Puzzle Pieces, unlike the full-length fiction manuscript I’m working on now, was assembled from previously-written essays. So my “writing” process for this collection was mostly an act of arrangement. Once I had everything in place, I began to revise, tightening the language and, in some cases, rewriting scenes and changing titles.
 
I don’t have a specific revision strategy for anything. Maybe I haven’t been writing long enough, or, perhaps, it’s that everything I write—from flash to longer short prose pieces, stories and essays—feels so different, I don’t approach anything the same way. When writing a flash piece, I tend to write it in one sitting, tinker with it a bit, then put it away for a while, try to forget about it, while I draft or revise something else.  
 
Many of these essays took several months to write. I needed time between drafts to figure out what the hell I was writing but I also struggled to find the proper structure and point-of-view for each piece (most are in first person but a couple are in second). One piece was written very quickly, from a Moleskin notebook to MS Word with very few edits. Another piece of similar length took a nearly a year to write, with countless revisions.  
 
How did you order the pieces in the collection? Do you have a specific method for arranging your them or is it sort of haphazard, like you lay the pages out on the floor and see what order you pick them back up in?
Chronologically. Ordering them chronologically allowed the themes to emerge in a way I could understand. The chapbook shrank as a result. I cut a couple of pieces when I began to see the essays as a progression from a narrator who destroys his body to someone who is surrounded by broken bodies to someone who lives with a broken body. I was pleasantly surprised by the other connections that began to emerge once I settled on this structure.
 
Can you share an excerpt from your book? And tell us why you chose this particular piece for us to read – did it galvanize the writing of the rest of the collection? Is it your book’s heart? Is it the first or last piece you wrote for the book?
As much as it shows my once-obsession with the em dash:
 
“The man who walks like I did just two months ago—normal gait, normal speed—hurries into the elevator, a smile on his face. He says hello, points to number two, hesitates—as I do, too—presses it, and stands quietly, grinning, until a ding announces our destination.”
 
This passage comes from the essay “Puzzle Pieces”, which takes place in a physical therapy ward. I like how this paragraph sounds, but I also like what it said to me: we’re in this together. Whatever this is. When I put it into the chapbook, however, the essay, particularly the last line, seemed less about the struggles I shared with other physical therapy patients and more about the struggles I share with every human in existence. Life, like a physical ailment, is harder for some than others, but we all end up in the same place and we all struggle in the meantime. Why not smile? Why not say hello?
 
For you, what is it to be a writer? What scares you most about being a writer? Gives you the most pleasure?
To be a writer—for me—is to be an artist who is thrilled by the interplay of words, people, life, and sound.
 
What scares me most about writing is the uncertainty, those questions I ask myself as I write. Will anyone publish this? Do I want someone to publish this? Do I want someone to read this? Who would read this? Who would like it? Would I read this? Will I finish it? Will I like it?
 
What’s most gratifying about writing is that it helps me to better understand the books I like to read. It’s also energizing to live in the middle of a narrative, when a story or essay is taking shape—when I’m recognizing and exploring thematic connections, rearranging paragraphs, perfecting sentences, etcetera—even when I’m away from my writing desk.
 
Are there other types of writing (dictionaries, romance novels, comics, science textbooks, etc.) that help you to write?
The Synonym Finder by J.I. Rondale
 
What are you working on now?
I’m writing a collection of interlinked stories that examines the interactions between emerging and middle-aged adults and captures the interconnectedness of a small city, Olympia, Washington, which is where I lived when I started writing them. The stories are centered around a mixed-race family but the collection moves beyond them and into the community. The more I write, the more I revise, the more the stories begin to resemble chapters, with the book taking the shape of a novel.  
 
I’ve also completed a chapbook-length collection of interlinked flash fiction stories.
 
What book are you reading that we should also be reading?
Leah Stewart’s latest novel The New Neighbor indulges my fascination with the weaving of multiple perspectives and multiple stories in a single narrative. It isn’t a linked collection (Olive Kitteridge; In Our Time, Winesburg, Ohio) which is my preferred genre, but with its short chapters, and multiple points of view and storylines—there’s also a story within a story—it certainly has that story cycle feel. It’ll hook you.
***
Purchase Puzzle Pieces. Bernard Grant has been awarded a 2015 Jack Straw Fellowship and a June Dodge Fellowship. His nonfiction has been nominated for The Best of the Net Anthology and his fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Chicago Tribune and Crab Orchard Review. He is the author of the nonfiction chapbook Puzzle Pieces (Paper Nautilus Press, 2016) and he serves as the associate essays editor at The Nervous Breakdown. Find him online at www.bernardgrant.com.

​

Carpe Noctem Book Interview With Lynn Pedersen

Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2016 THINGS WE’RE DYING TO KNOW…
Let’s start with the book’s title and your cover image. How did you choose each? And, if I asked you to describe or sum up your book, what three words immediately come to mind?
 
The press designed the cover for me and I had input on the image. Carnegie Mellon was very accommodating because when I say I had input, I described the botanical print theme that I wanted down to the insects that could/couldn’t be included. I said yes to snakes, lizards, beetles and moths, but no ladybugs, dragonflies or butterflies. The book has a strong survival/extinction theme to it, and I did not want the cover image to be too cute—more “eat or be eaten.” The print is from the Getty Museum.
 
The title was inspired by Linnaeus and his work with taxonomy. I wrote the sci­ence-themed grief poems first, poems that contained astronomy metaphors, telescopes, the vastness of space, and later I wondered about small things—microscopes and Robert Hooke’s work and tiny organ­isms and cells and objects we can't see.
 
Three words to describe the book: science, grief, pattern. If I could add three more they would be: fossil, extinction, endure.
 
What were you trying to achieve with your collection? Tell us about the world you were trying to create, and who lives in it.
In the early stages, I didn't have a master plan for the book. I was interested in the patterns of grief I recognized during years of fertility issues, and I felt compelled to try to express those experiences—though there isn’t a good vocabulary for grief in today’s English language.
 
The controlling hypothesis or goal—if I can call it that—was to see if the language of science can be used as a filter for grief. Many people and voices inhabit this book—Charles Darwin, Alexander Wilson, Robert Hooke, naturalist George Shaw, J.M.W. Turner. Geologic time in the book moves from the Precambrian to the Anthropocene. I’d describe the world of the book as rich and historical, exploring individual narrative against a larger backdrop of science and society.

Can you describe your writing practice or process for this collection? Do you have a favorite revision strategy?
I function like a hunter-gatherer in my writing practice. I spend months reading and researching, absorbing and digesting, and eventually there is a cross-pollination of ideas and images that start to form. The collection has a variety of first, second, and third person poems, and three interwoven narrative threads—grief, Darwin/evolution, and nomenclature. The first person narrative poems were written first, with the science poems coming in along the way, primarily toward the end of the process.
 
For revision, I like to leave poems in a state of development for as long as possible. The point at which I start to finalize line breaks, images, logic and word choice is maybe a week before I am thinking of sending the poem out. At that point, it has “settled” enough that I feel comfortable with it.
 
How did you order the poems in the collection? Do you have a specific method for arranging your poems or is it sort of haphazard, like you lay the pages out on the floor and see what order you pick them back up in?
The arrangement of this collection was planned to the extreme. It had to be, though. Placement is essential in this book because the poems deal with grief, and the experience for the reader needs to be considered. It’s not helpful to hit a reader right off with eight intense grief poems in a row. The poems alternate between three narrative threads, and also move from very grounded and personal narrative poems to more abstract lyric reflections.
 
What do you love to find in a poem you read, or love to craft into a poem you’re writing?
I am always waiting with anticipation for the instant when the poem I’m reading (through its language or its imagery or some mechanism) creates “lift,” similar to an airplane travelling down a runway and then lifting off the ground. Something has to surprise me or change the way I view language when I read a poem. I’d like to think at least a few of my poems might have this effect on others, but it’s hard to consciously insert this quality into a poem. It grows out of craft and—mainly—my intense engagement with what I am writing. Somehow if I write well enough that “lift” will be there.
 
Can you share an excerpt from your book? And tell us why you chose this poem for us to read – did it galvanize the writing of the rest of the collection? Is it your book’s heart? Is it the first or last poem you wrote for the book?
 
The Infinite Density of Grief 
What no one tells you is grief
has properties: expands like a gas
to fill space and time—the four corners
of your room, the calendar
with its boxed days--
and when you think it can’t claim anything more,
collapses in on itself, a dying star,
compacting until not even a thimble
of light escapes.
 
Then grief sleeps, becomes
the pebble in your shoe you can almost
ignore, until a penny on a sidewalk,
dew on a leaf—
some equation detailing the relationship
between loss and minutiae
sets the whole in motion again—
 
your unborn child, folded and folded
into a question, or the notes
you passed in grade school
with their riddles—
What kind of room
has no windows or doors?
 
This poem is the first in the collection. It was written after a visit to the Rose Center for Earth and Space, part of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. As I learned about the concept of infinite density, I made a connection that the language in the museum wasn’t just talking about the universe, it also described the grief that I had been unable to express regarding pregnancy loss. The poem explores the properties of grief, its all-encompassing nature and its ability to return at the oddest times, triggered by the smallest things.
 
The poem is significant because it sets up the way science will weave throughout the book—science language giving voice to grief and loss, science fact balanced with narrative detail. I think of “The Infinite Density of Grief” as a cornerstone poem within the architecture of the book.
 
If you had to convince someone walking by you in the park to read your book right then and there, what would you say?
If you’ve ever lost anything or anyone and did not feel that you had a vocabulary to describe that loss, this book might be a starting point.
 
For you, what is it to be a poet? What scares you most about being a writer? Gives you the most pleasure?
Poetry for me is an experience of language (and time) and the practice of a very intense meditative focus, and writing is also pattern and problem solving. What scares/thrills me is what I will find out by writing the work, and where that voice will take me. The flip side of the unknown is each poem teaches me something new. Generally that’s a good thing. The best times are when I’ve worked out something that hasn’t worked, seen a new way to do things, and the times when I’m writing and everything is flowing.
 
Are there other types of writing (dictionaries, romance novels, comics, science textbooks, etc.) that help you to write poetry?
I read a lot of things other than poetry, but the sources that come back and work their way into my poems are usually science, natural history, and biography—nonfiction books. Reference books and maps are a rich source of words and images, too, and I like the personal voice of diaries, journals, and letters. Many of my poems are a response to my reading.

What are you working on now?
I have drafts and manuscripts in progress, and I’m separating out what will become poems and what will become essays or plays or some other form. Science is still a huge obsession, and I expect future collections to reflect that. I’ve also started to do a lot of reading related to the environment. It will be interesting to see how that information comes into play.
 
What book are you reading that we should also be reading?
Lucia Perillo’s Inseminating the Elephant. Perillo has a wildlife management background and her love of science is reflected in her poetry. Selected poems of Francis Ponge. Rose Metal Press’s Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction. I am drawn to prose and more experimental forms of writing, even when I don’t write in that form myself.
 
Without stopping to think, write a list of five poets whose work you would tattoo on your body, or at least write in permanent marker on your clothing, to take with you at all times.
Darwin (not a poet but his writing has a lyric quality), Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, Dickinson, Katherine Philips (“What on Earth deserves our trust?”), Frank O’Hara, Wislawa Szymborska, Miroslav Holub. That’s more than five but I don’t know who I would cut out.
 
What’s a question you wish I asked? (And how would you answer it?)
Q: Do you have a particular place that inspires you to write?
 
A: I do really well in museums—science, natural history, or art—or also in theaters before a performance. Something about the stage and open space and darkness, and smell of paint and wood, opens up possibilities for me.  Unfortunately, it's not always convenient to travel to a specific building to write. Most of the time, I write at home.
 
***

​Purchase The Nomenclature of Small Things from the University Press of New England. Lynn Pedersen is the author of The Nomenclature of Small Things (Carnegie Mellon University Press Poetry Series), Theories of Rain (Main Street Rag’s Editor’s Choice Chapbook Series), and Tiktaalik, Adieu (Finishing Line Press New Women’s Voices Chapbook Series). Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in New England Review, Ecotone, Southern Poetry Review, Slipstream, Borderlands, Poet Lore, and Heron Tree. She is a Pushcart Prize and Georgia Author of the Year Award nominee. She is a playwright and member of the Dramatists Guild of America. A graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts, she lives in Atlanta, GA. Find her online at  www.lynnpedersen.com.

Carpe Noctem Chapbook Interview With Leigh Anne Hornfeldt

Winged City Chapbooks, 2016 THINGS WE’RE DYING TO KNOW…
Let’s start with the book’s title and your cover image. How did you choose each? And, if I asked you to describe or sum up your book, what three words immediately come to mind?
The title popped into my mind one day as I was trying to describe the latest project I was working on to someone. I kept using the word fleshed when talking about the poems: I wanted to flesh them out from something internalized to something almost tangible. While in the middle of talking it hit me that was the perfect title for a book that deals with themes of mental illness and how that manifests in our actions and our flesh. Some of the poems have a dark humor, some are weird. I felt like the image of the skeleton bride was fitting in that it plays with the idea of being naked, without flesh. It all just ties in nicely, at least in my mind! I’d say this book has a sense a vulnerability, a sense of humor, and a sense of urgency.
 
What were you trying to achieve with your chapbook? Tell us about the world you were trying to create, and who lives in it.
A lot of these poems were born out of a daily writing challenge I was part of. As I wrote I started to see themes manifest, especially the idea of mania versus depression that I experience. A lot of this book also deals with the ways in which we change over time, mentally and physically. I wanted this book to play upon the tensions of those differences.

Can you describe your writing practice or process for this collection? Do you have a favorite revision strategy?
I like to begin by handwriting a quick draft, kind of like a runner might stretch before going for a run. After I have the basic idea, I let it brew for the morning. I generally sit down at my laptop in the afternoon and write the real poem. I let that rest and then revise after a few days have passed. It’s pretty methodical but also I think I need that break time so that surprises can still happen. Sometimes a line will pop into my head or I will see something that has to go into one of my poems. They need room to breathe and become their own thing.
 
How did you order the poems in the collection? Do you have a specific method for arranging your poems or is it sort of haphazard, like you lay the pages out on the floor and see what order you pick them back up in?
I am a floor organizer! Usually I can pick the first and last poem pretty easily. Then I take to the floor and try to see which poems speak to one another. Sometimes it’s just an image or a single word, but once I see the relationships between the poems it feels natural.
 
What do you love to find in a poem you read, or love to craft into a poem you’re writing?
Like I said before, surprise. Sometimes I wish I could be more spontaneous when writing. I admire poets who are able to relax and let what happens happen.
 
Can you share an excerpt from your book? And tell us why you chose this poem for us to read – did it galvanize the writing of the rest of the collection? Is it your book’s heart? Is it the first or last poem you wrote for the book?
This is the last poem of the book. It’s dark but funny like some of the other poems. It was one that was a lot of fun to write so I hope it’s also fun to read.

This Is Not a Drill

According to a dot on a map
WE ARE HERE. Purple-faced and panting,
no doorknobs to twist or keyholes
to slip through. Nothing works, especially
not our mouths. Everything 
is black ice & sugar sapphires. A crow
watches the frenzy, enrapt. Please
don’t forget to panic. Stow
your baggage. Secure
your own mask before helping the person next
to you. Do you have insurance?
You should. This is not an extravagance.
There are rubber gloves
in all the drawers but none
your size. The following time zones
are on a two-hour delay. We’ll all stay
in these bodies until further notice.
 
If you had to convince someone walking by you in the park to read your book right then and there, what would you say?
Hey, wanna know what it’s like for me to be bipolar?!
 
For you, what is it to be a poet? What scares you most about being a writer? Gives you the most pleasure?
To be a poet is to be aware. I probably stole that from someone but I believe it. It requires constant attention. What scares me the most is probably the vulnerability in that. Sometimes I want to look away from things that are upsetting but they’re poem material. The newest collection I’m working on deals with disturbing headlines from newspapers and online articles. The working title is Rattled. It’s been tough. What gives me the most pleasure is finishing the poem. That last little revision and then you know you’ve got it. That’s the best feeling, the most satisfying to me.

Without stopping to think, write a list of five poets whose work you would tattoo on your body, or at least write in permanent marker on your clothing, to take with you at all times.
Not sure I could list five, but this is funny because I have a couple of lines from Sylvia Plath’s “Kindness” on my forearm: ‘The blood jet is poetry, / There is no stopping it.’ I got that as a reminder. My grandmother is a poet and she is where I got my love of writing and I wanted to always be able to look down and remember that what she loves is in me always.

***

Purchase Fleshed from Winged City Chapbooks. Leigh Anne Hornfeldt, the editor for Two of Cups Press, is the author of the chapbooks East Main Aviary, The Intimacy Archive, & Fleshed. She is the recipient of a grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Her poem “Laika” placed 2nd in the Argos Prize competition and in 2012 she received the Kudzu Prize in Poetry. Her work has appeared in journals such as Spry, Lunch Ticket, Foundling Review, and The Journal of Kentucky Studies. ​Find her online at leighannehornfeldt.com or
twoofcupspress.com.

Carpe Noctem Book Interview With Victoria Looseleaf

Isn't It Rich? A Novella in Verse, Gordon Grundy Publishers, 2015 THINGS WE’RE DYING TO KNOW…
Let’s start with the book’s title and your cover image. How did you choose each? And, if I asked you to describe or sum up your book, what three words immediately come to mind?
I must admit that I grappled with the title – and titles generally come easy to me. For instance, my second novel, Whorehouse of the Mind: A Novel of Sex, Drugs and the Space Program, seemed like a no-brainer, although writer Richard Meltzer thought that I “appropriated” it from Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind.  I use the royal ‘we’ in my blog writing and Facebooking, so I came up with Our Beautiful Life. My publisher, the wonderful Gordy Grundy, said I should translate it into French, as we both think there are too many poseurs in L.A., so it became Notre Belle Vie for a while. I also thought about JAG: Jewish American Goddess, Being Cate Blanchett, What’s In It For Me, Dear C**T, Brainwreck and Screwtopia. "Screwtopia" actually ended up being the name of one of the book’s poems. Then there were the organic titles derived from the book’s poems, such as Juliet On the Prowl and An American Reverie. Finally, I am a huge Stephen Sondheim fan, and was perusing one of his books, Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes, and there it was – Isn’t It Rich, from "Send In the Clowns." I also used to play that gorgeous and enigmatic song on the harp at funerals and brisses, so this title had it all for me.

At the same time – while writing the poems and thinking of a title for the book, I was asking artist friends of mine if they would send me some images I could consider for the cover. For that, I was also asked to send these people several poems. The artist, Lita Albuquerque, loved the poems I sent and read them to her daughter, the choreographer/dancer, Jasmine Albuquerque Croissant. She immediately recommended the terrifically talented well-known Belgian artist, Katrien De Blauwer, whom Jas knew through her husband, Rodrigo Amarante. When Katrien agreed to supply the cover image, my publisher and I were overjoyed.

Three words to describe my book would be:  Vivid, erotic and deeply disturbing. Seriously, I know we like to use the journalistic three, but I would also have to add, intoxicating and hilariously funny. Not to mention, profoundly human and occasionally surreal.

What were you trying to achieve with your book? Tell us about the world you were trying to create, and who lives in it.
I didn’t set out to “achieve” anything, except to write an authentic account of a life lived to its fullest, based on memories – sometimes incredibly detailed, sometimes foggy, often conjured. A free spirit lives in this book, someone, however, with whom I am quite familiar. In fact, I would have to say that we have a love/hate relationship. I also subtitled it, A Novella In Verse, because I feel that each of the poems is its own, self-contained story. There is a definite thread, a through-line, which some people have said is more along the lines of sex, drugs and travel.  All I know is that this person has had quite a life.  Perhaps I should have called it a memoir-in-verse, but that might have been too leading. In any case, by subtitling it a novella, I figured Hollywood might want to option it – and I would be more than happy to see a Cate Blanchett or Rooney Mara take a stab, with Julia Roberts in middle-aged and then the fabulous Meryl Streep looking back on it all with wisdom, wit and wonderment. 

Can you describe your writing practice or process for this collection? Do you have a favorite revision strategy?
Since I am a freelance arts journalist who has interviewed thousands of people and is on constant deadlines (I have written more than 500 stories/reviews for the L.A. Times, I’ve interviewed hundreds of artists of all stripes for KUSC radio, and have also written program notes for the L.A. Philharmonic as well as the L.A. Master Chorale, introducing audiences to world premiere by such luminaries as Steve Reich, Billy Childs and the Matrix composer, Don Davis…and the list goes on), to put it bluntly, I write quickly.  I have also re-invented myself – from professional harpist to print and broadcast journalist, finally, going digital and writing for online publications, as well as my own blog, The Looseleaf Report.  That said, this book came about almost as a fluke.  I was invited to a “Pasta and Poetry” party last June, so I figured I would bring a poem to read. I had been keeping notebooks (after all, I hail from the Looseleaf clan), for years, and, perusing several from a certain time period, saw the germ of something, which then became, Smile. There were all sorts of intellectuals, architects, artists, writers, et al at this party – many of whom were reading poetry aloud by famous poets. I was feeling a tad insecure and thought, perhaps, that I shouldn’t read. But I mustered my courage, read, and, in a word, killed. Then, a week or two later, my friend, Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Kate Johnson, asked me to play the harp at a big art event she was curating at Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station in July.  I reminded her that I didn’t play professionally anymore – I had actually abandoned my station wagon years ago – but that I could do spoken word. Kate quickly agreed.

I then wrote about nine or 10 poems (like choreographer, Agnes DeMille, when she was asked by the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo if she had an “American” piece of choreography the troupe could use for its U.S. debut, she said, “Of course,” then went home and made the work that became Rodeo. And, no, I am not comparing myself to DeMille, but, as I said – and to my point – I work quickly).

I am also very serious about editing, so after writing some 40-odd poems over the course of several months (I know, crazy, huh!), I tackled the editing and re-writing processes.  My favorite revision strategy is “less is more, more or less.”  I also had the astute eye and ear of my colleague, the Emmy Award-winning producer, Larry Gilbert, which was a great help, as was reading the poems out loud to hear how they were rolling off my Midwestern, twangy tongue.

How did you order the poems in the collection? Do you have a specific method for arranging your poems or is it sort of haphazard, like you lay the pages out on the floor and see what order you pick them back up in?
Ordering the poems was interesting and took a lot of wrangling. I wanted to begin with a bang – keep up the momentum, then get to some fairly serious works and end on a high note. I also took into account the people, places and subject matter, which was a lot of sex in a lot of different places with a lot of different characters.  I would like to say that, like John Cage and Merce Cunningham, I used chance and the I Ching, but – hey –  that’s just not true, although, of course I knew Merce, having interviewed him numerous times – and Cage, another genius and mushroom forager who was also an angel, and allowed me to record his 1948 work, In A Landscape for my albums, Harpnosis and Beyond Harpnosis.  

What do you love to find in a poem you read, or love to craft into a poem you’re writing?
I love to find both humor and heart in works that I read and works that I write, though not necessarily at the same time in the same poem.  Erudition isn’t totally out of the question, either, as well as life’s bigger issues – like what gown I should wear to the opening of the opera season. Not! Seriously, poetry has the reputation of being very personal, yet at the same time it should also strike a chord, i.e. be universal.  It is fun, though, to mix it all up! 

Can you share an excerpt from your book? And tell us why you chose this poem for us to read – did it galvanize the writing of the rest of the collection? Is it your book’s heart? Is it the first or last poem you wrote for the book?
This is a hard one. Each poem took a lot out of me. So, I would say to your readers, please go to the Amazon page and click on the book. The first poem, "Queen of the Surf," comes up and that is a particular favorite of mine. 

If you had to convince someone walking by you in the park to read your book right then and there, what would you say?
Again, I would have a stranger look at that opening ode, "Queen of the Surf," and dare him or her to not laugh, to not have a reaction. I would also tell that person that if he or she bought the book, I would be more than happy to sign it!

For you, what is it to be a poet? What scares you most about being a writer? Gives you the most pleasure?
For me, being a poet is being true to myself. Even in my dance reviews, which many have likened to poetry, as they are filled with metaphors as well as a lot of pop culture references, I tell it like I see it – or my word as a critic is worthless. Indeed, I recently panned a major ballet company’s new, $2 million Sleeping Beauty, likening the stage to an episode of “Hoarders” (not that I’ve ever seen the show), and then ended my coverage with the following: “It might best be experienced after downing a couple of NoDoz.” So, in essence, nothing scares me about being a writer – except the dearth of occasional income. Back to being a poet, though: It means to excavate one’s inner being, to observe life in all of its beauty, grandeur, absurdities and insanities.  When somebody tells me that my book sounds as if I could have been written it specifically for her, that is very cool. It’s also great to hear laughs and applause after I have read something, somewhere, especially in Los Angeles, where the crowds can be – and often are – very brutal.

Are there other types of writing (dictionaries, romance novels, comics, science textbooks, etc.) that help you to write poetry?
You are kidding, right? I mean, you can’t be serious here re: including dictionaries, romance novels, comics, and science textbooks helping me write poetry. Granted, I do love the dictionary and adore Roget’s Thesaurus (not for bedtime reading purposes, however), as well as the PDR (Physicians’ Desk Reference, circa 1977, when Quaaludes were legal), but I find romance novels ridiculous and I have never been keen on science – books, that is.  Comics is another story. The late Harvey Pekar (American Splendor…From Off the Streets of Cleveland Comes), was a good friend of mine. Wee were both from Cleveland, and he was on my erstwhile TV show, The Looseleaf Report, a number of times.  I listened to him carp, complain and continually bitch, even while he was becoming famous (I was in the audience in New York when he got kicked off the Letterman show on NBC), but in the process, he also made me laugh, cry, think and expand my universe.  I really loved Harvey’s mind and always wanted him to include me as a character in his comics. But his wife, Joyce Brabner, wouldn’t have it. I love to read, of course, and being a journalist, I need to keep up by reading a bunch of newspapers, including The New York Times – the paper version - because I jumpstart my brain every morning with their crossword puzzle, which takes me less than five minutes on a Monday and a bit more time each day as the week goes by. (The degree of difficulty amps up, so by Saturday, it’s a killer.)  I also love the New Yorker and the Hammacher Schlemmer Catalogue (curiously, I had a great aunt who married one of those guys – Hammacher or Schlemmer, I can’t remember which – or who – although the marriage didn’t stick).  I also cannot live without Men’s Health and Field and Stream. The truth is, I am so into Netflix (Narcos, wow!), it is frightening, so when I’m not bingeing on "Making A Murderer" (that’s my Berkeley criminology degree coming into play), I’m reading biographies, and whatever else may in the air at the moment.  I adore Malcolm Gladwell, Don DeLillo and Philip Roth. I once wrote a fan letter to Roth, wanting to know how he researched the harp in his book, I Married A Communist.  Needless to say, I got no response.  In spite of what I might say, write or do, I am probably old-school in my literary choices, and, as a white liberal-to-the-max Jewess, I made it my business to read Ta-Nehisi Coates, overexposed as he is.  But, I gotta say, Hilary Mantel is fucking brilliant.

What are you working on now?
I am going to be reading an original monologue at Sit ‘N Spin, an ongoing series in which professional writers/comics read their works. The essay is called, "How I Lost My Public Access Virginity To A Fabulous Flying Russian." And, to be perfectly frank, I had poeticized an essay I had read there not that long ago, "The Dance Critic," making it the penultimate piece in my poetry collection. I am also working on several stories about prima ballerinas/ballerinos – and, when not at my desk, I’m at the theater, whether I’m working or not – soaking up the high and lowbrow atmosphere, hoping, beyond hope, to have my emotions elevated – or at least aroused in some form or another. 

Of course, I’ll be doing a series of readings at galleries, bookstores and the like – and what I’m very excited about is that my publisher, Mr. Grundy and I, have plans for staged performances of Isn’t It Rich?  Three different actresses (one in her 20s, another in her 40s and one in her 60s, will each read from the book, something I alluded to earlier, albeit that is my wishful cinematic rendering. There will also be music and we might even add a choreographic element, considering my terpsichorean cred. It’s actually amazing, as all sorts of women are telling me they would love to take part in these performances. We will be auditioning actors, though, and Mr. Grundy and I, are also thinking about theaters – traditional and non-traditional.  Since I’m familiar with all of the major venues in town – and am finding new ones – pop-ups, for example – all the time, this is part of that process, as well. Then there’s the matter of how to break down the book for the actresses, but with Mr. Grundy directing, I have no doubt that this will be a hot ticket. I am also working on my next book, whose subject matter and title shall remain, at this time, unnamed. Oh – and if all this weren’t enough, producer/actor Kenneth Hughes (Einstein’s God Model), is working on a documentary about me and The Looseleaf Report. 

Without stopping to think, write a list of five poets whose work you would tattoo on your body, or at least write in permanent marker on your clothing, to take with you at all times.
I am Jewish, albeit Newish Jewish, but still believe that getting tattooed is against my religion.  I also hold most of my clothes as sacred items (seeing as friends designed them or they belonged to my grandmother – she had incredible taste and I am particularly fond of her monogrammed, white mink bomber jacket from the '70s, which I get to wear here in L.A. on Chanukah and New Year’s Eve), ergo to scribble all over these garments with any kind of permanent marker would not be something in which I would or could indulge.

What’s a question you wish I asked? (And how would you answer it?)
Are you still fucking surfers and if so, where do you find both the time – and them – and how do they stack up against your Laguna Beach dudes?  I don’t kiss and tell, but let’s just say that, yeah, the surf’s most decidedly up!

***

Purchase Isn't It Rich? A Novella in Verse. 
​ Author Photograph by Mark Hanauer Victoria Looseleaf lives and loves in Los Angeles. As an award-winning arts journalist for such publications as the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Dance Magazine, Fjord Review, KCET Artbound and other outlets, the redhead provocateur has been filing datelines from her many lives in Abu Dhabi, Vienna, Havana, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Amsterdam, Zürich, Buenos Aires and dozens more points on the compass. Once a professional harpist, her albums Harpnosis® and Beyond Harpnosis® can be found on turntables of discerning listeners everywhere. The Looseleaf Report, a staple of Los Angeles and New York television, offered celebrity interviews, humor and underground arts insights with over 400 broadcast shows. Isn’t It Rich? is Victoria Looseleaf’s first book of poetry. Find her online at http://victorialooseleaf.com.

Victoria recently did a radio interview with Mark Lynch of WICN. Listen here.  

The great drag legend, Tony-nominated playwright, Charles Busch, wrote a wonderful preface to Victoria's poem, "Sunday In The Pool With Fred" for the sight, Towleroad. Read it here.  

Victoria is honored to be the first reader at the grand opening of AG Geiger bookstore in LA's Chinatown.

The inimitable performance artist/actor, John Fleck, recently interviewed Victoria for Cultural Weekly. Read it here.

Carpe Noctem Chapbook Interview With Stacey Balkun

dancing girl press & studio, 2016 THINGS WE’RE DYING TO KNOW…
Let’s start with the book’s title and your cover image. How did you choose each? And, if I asked you to describe or sum up your book, what three words immediately come to mind?
The three words that come to mind are “mythical creature autobiography.” I titled the chapbook after the final poem, which I feel sums up Jackalope-Girl’s quest. The cover image is by the lovely Kristy Bowen who graciously shared it from her portfolio. I was secretly hoping she’d choose this art piece, and I was ecstatic when she showed me her idea for the cover! It’s gorgeous.
 
What were you trying to achieve with your chapbook/book? Tell us about the world you were trying to create, and who lives in it.
Every poem in this tightly-knit collection follows a little Jackalope-Girl, from birth to adoption to adolescence to heartbreak, and finally, learning to speak for herself. Jackalope-Girl became my way of writing about some tough family issues that I couldn’t find a way into otherwise. It’s a pretty domestic world—the suburbs, in fact—but populated by creature-people. Jackalope-Girl learns about her birthmother, Antler-Girl, she falls for a boy-stag, and eventually escapes to an Animal City where she feels more at home. Some of it is autobiographical and some of it is all imagination. I think the length of a chapbook allowed me to experiment with truth and story.

Can you describe your writing practice or process for this collection? Do you have a favorite revision strategy?
My first poem in the series began as an imitation of Anna Journey’s amazing poem, “Fox-girl Before Birth.” I never meant to write that poem, yet immediately knew it would become a series. I was adopted from birth, which has been a struggle to write about. I was born in Texas yet know nothing of it. I was scared to write about my actual birthmother since she’s really out there—a real person. Any attempt to make her a character in a poem always felt oddly inauthentic, but by making her a mythical creature, I found my way in. I just kept going with Jackalope-Girl, using her to tell some of the stories I had no idea how to tell otherwise. I’m indebted to the Hambidge Center for giving me time and space to haphazardly draft many of the poems that came after the initial two.
 
How did you order the poems in the collection? Do you have a specific method for arranging your poems or is it sort of haphazard, like you lay the pages out on the floor and see what order you pick them back up in?
The poems in Jackalope-Girl Learns to Speak are mostly chronological, beginning with her birth in the hospital. My process was to put all of my jackalope poems (along with some other animal poems, many of which didn’t make the cut) into a single document then print it all out and rearrange it on the floor.
 
 
What do you love to find in a poem you read, or love to craft into a poem you’re writing?
Surprise. I love magical real & fabulist elements, especially when they’re doing some heavy metaphorical lifting. I also love a sense of place and always, always musicality in the language.
 
Can you share an excerpt from your book? And tell us why you chose this poem for us to read – did it galvanize the writing of the rest of the collection? Is it your book’s heart? Is it the first or last poem you wrote for the book?
This was one of the first poems I wrote for the book, which came from an imitation of one of Anna Journey’s fox-girl poems. I’m so grateful White Stag picked it up (an earlier version) for their special bestiary issue because it gave me faith in my project and now shares a home with many other stunning animal poems. I’m sharing it because it’s one of the more narrative pieces around which the collection centers.
 
Inoculation 
I.
Once, there was a little jackalope-girl with a gap
between her teeth where the dentist yanked
an incisor. Rabbit teeth grow forever: two up,
two down—and unless the girl chewed on wood
 
or stones each tooth would reach past
her lips, become horns then curl into antlers
like an antelope’s head on a rabbit body,
a myth come alive. Her parents wanted it
 
stopped. They had the dentist inject muscle relaxers
into her gums until her speech slurred and lips
quivered: instinct of flight forgotten. She bared her teeth
and screeched, but his pliers had already grabbed hold.
 
II.
My parents never told me
about my birthmama,
my birthfather: one rabbit
 
and one antelope. I know
how to run. As a baby,
they flew me away
from big sky country,
 
filed down my antlers
for a life in the suburbs,
yanked my teeth. Evenings
 
my parents whisper
that an inoculation could stop
the growths, that my skull means
warrior or killer. That strange
 
voice you hear at night
is mine, mimicking your song.
Believe what you want.
 
I was born to an electric storm
in winter. I can’t be caught.
 
If you had to convince someone walking by you in the park to read your book right then and there, what would you say?
Oh lord. I’d probably say that it’s pretty weird yet straightforward, and that the poems vary so widely that I bet any reader would find one that speaks to her.
 
For you, what is it to be a poet? What scares you most about being a writer? Gives you the most pleasure?
It’s being a part of a community I value. I love the sense that we’re all in on this together. I am scared of depicting people wrongly in my work. I’m working on a series of poems about surrealist women artists and drawing from history, including their paintings, but many of these women were writers, too. I’m terrified to think that I may get something wrong, doing their history a disservice. I’m not sure what to do about that, but I think the risk is worth it for the pleasure of sharing history in a beautiful, accessible way. One of the greatest pleasures of poetry is accidently learning from it.
 
Are there other types of writing (dictionaries, romance novels, comics, science textbooks, etc.) that help you to write poetry?
Absolutely! As I mentioned, I read a lot of history, correspondence, and art criticism. I love reading articles online as they can spark a poem or ground an idea that was just floating around in my head. For Jackalope-Girl Learns to Speak, I had a lot of fun researching jackalope myths and incorporating them into these poems.
 
What are you working on now?
I’m working on a series that explores the lives and works of female surrealists from the modern era, many of whom we don’t know about because it was such a male-dominated field. Some of the surrealist leaders believed women to be merely muses and didn’t take their art-making seriously. I want to give these women a proper space in history.
 
What book are you reading that we should also be reading?
I just started Jamaal May’s The Big Book of Exit Strategies, and I’m re-reading Cecilia Woloch’s Earth and Kelly Russell Agodon’s Hourglass Museum, both of which are inspirational to me. Also, I find myself always flipping through Sundress Publications’ anthology Not Somewhere Else But Here: A Contemporary Anthology of Women and Place which yes, you should be reading.
 
 
12. Without stopping to think, write a list of five poets whose work you would tattoo on your body, or at least write in permanent marker on your clothing, to take with you at all times.
Adrienne Rich
Muriel Rukeyser
Rumi (whose lines I do have tattooed on my arm)
Sandra Cisneros
Gerald Stern
 
 
13. What’s a question you wish I asked? (And how would you answer it?)
How do I keep writing?
 
Honestly, online workshops are my heartbeat. I always write and read, yes, but workshops have given me a structure that has helped me find new ways to get into poems, and especially new ways to shake up my work when I find myself feeling stuck in a series. These courses have proven invaluable and I always encourage writers to try them out.

***

Purchase Jackalope-Girl Learns to Speak from dancing girl press & studio. Stacey Balkun is the author of two chapbooks, Jackalope-Girl Learns to Speak (dancing girl 2016) & Lost City Museum (ELJ Publications 2016). She received her MFA from Fresno State and her work has appeared or will appear in Gargoyle, Muzzle, THRUSH, Bodega, and others. She is a writing tutor at Delgado Community College and an online teaching artist at The Poetry Barn. Find her online at www.staceybalkun.com.




​