Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 385

Miss Rose Goes To Washington

We spent the bulk of last week in Washington D.C., there for the sake of a conference Christine was attending for work. Miss Rose and I wandered the city as best we could, in-between naps and such. Neither of us had been to the city before, but apparently Christine had, at least once or twice.
Our airplane was small, which meant the washroom, where I changed the young lady, was also small.
The rainbow ring around the airplane as we neared the city. That means good luck, yes? Tuesday, March 31, 2015: We flew in, later afternoon. At least the flight was only an hour-plus, but the wee lass was a bit tricky to wrangle. We made hotel, showed Rose some episodes of some of her toddler-shows, and almost immediately crashed.

Wednesday, April 1, 2015:Woke early in Washington, apparently a day that Rose considered was best for eating blueberries while lying down (for some reason). After Christine left for her conference, Rose and I headed out to meet up with poet Reb Livingston and her son Gideon at Kramerbooks and Afterwords Café for lunch, and bookstore wandering. Before we met them, we wandered a bit around Dupont Circle, and Rose ran around where the empty fountain (seasonal, I presume) sits. 
Reb and I have been occasional correspondents for some time now, so good to finally be able to meet in person (especially since I haven’t yet attended an AWP, where, apparently, everyone meets everybody). Livingston was also the publisher of Lea Graham’s trade poetry collection, the last title for her series of titles under No Tell Books. Now she's part of Queen Mob’s Teahouse , and was also kind enough to pass along a copy of her novel, Bombyonder (2014), published by Bitter Cherry Books, an extension of Coconut. Much thanks!
Although I’m disappointed: after days of planning, I never did get to open with my “Doctor Livingston, I presume.” I mean, I bet she’s never heard anyone offer her that before. Ever.
We returned to the hotel for her nap, just in time. Post-nap, we headed off to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, which was absolutely incredible. Disappointing, a bit, that the museum had a small display for Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space (including his space suit and a couple of other things), but nothingfor Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space (from whom Rose was given one of her middle names). Still: we stood by Apollo 11 and marvelled, not just at how small the capsule really is, but how completely cool to be able to be standing by such a thing.
The rockets were completely, entirely cool. I really can't say that enough.
Given how often Christine attended space-camp as a teen, I suspected we had no option but to visit here. I picked up some postcards to send folk back home, and a small space shuttle toy for Rose.
Just behind the museum, the stretch of parks and other spaces between the Washington Monument and the Capital Building.
After spending most of the day in the ring sling (I didn't dare let her run around the bookstore or the museum, etcetera), we were both starting to wear.

Although I did wish we'd the time to visit the Capital Building, the Washington Monument and even Grant's Tomb, given that we were so close (and, as Groucho Marx knew, where no-one is buried).

Thursday, April 2, 2015:A morning off to the Washington Zoo, where Rose meandered very slowly, which means we didn’t see much at all, but at least she got some exercise.

Somehow, she absolutely fascinated by the cobblestone.
I think I’m finally getting the hang of the Washington Metro system. Although I don’t understand all the exhaust that lives in the tunnels; are the trains powered by coal? I don’t see or smell the same kind of exhaust from any of the subways in Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal. Explain? [Someone finally did: not coal, but a matter of accumulated exhaust that simply has nowhere else to go]
In the zoo (once we finally arrived; we got slightly turned around upon leaving the subway) we saw spotted leopards, giant pandas, elephants and a zebra. She made her elephant noises, she made her lion/dragon noises, she made her dog noises (we saw a dog on the way in). Given Rose’s schedule, we didn’t go much further into the zoo, but stopped briefly for food before heading back to the hotel for her nap. She was asleep before we left the train.
Sleeps, sleeps. She did sleep.
Post-nap we were off again, this time to visit poet Rod Smith at his bookstore gig, Bridge Street Books, where I picked up some titles from him directly, as well as some from store itself, including his newest poetry collection, TOUCHE (Wave Books, 2015). I brought along my copy of his previous poetry collection, Deed (University of Iowa Press, 2007), which he was kind enough to sign (and I remember enjoying). Also picked up a Susan Howe title I didn’t have, her Frame Structures: Early Poems 1974-1979 (New Directions, 1996), and a title (and poet) I wasn’t aware of previously, Elizabeth Arnold's Civilization (Flood Editions, 2006). I’d love to see more books from Flood Editions, but they just don’t make it up our way (there is so much I'm missing!). When in American bookstores, I always keep my eye open. Smith was also kind enough to pass along some review copies from his Edge Books, which I haven't had a chance to go through yet (hoping soon, once I'm back at my desk, properly).
It was good to meet Mr. Smith also, but my exhaustion from carrying baby for a couple of days prevented me from remembering to capture a photo of us in the store. I've only been kicking myself daily for that, since.
Slowly back towards the centre (ish), I fed Rose some dinner-ish on a small patch of grass just by the bridge. Yoghurt, cheese, crackers. Given that she’d been much of the day and the day prior in the ring sling, I figured I really needed to allow her some running space. I really didn’t want her running around in the museums, given the crowds (apparently kids are off school this week, which brings the incredible crowds to just about everything we’ve been attempting). She ate some yoghurt, and said hello to a dog.
Heading back, we met up with Christine and our pal Wendy (also here for the conference) for dinner, just by Dupont Circle. After carrying the wee lass around for two days of hotel and tourist, I was about ready to crash (which meant again: a lack of photos). Already looking forward to home, where I can just set her loose and not worry.
Friday, April 3, 2015: Our last day in Washington, we wandered our morning over to the National Museum of Natural History (where the above photo was taken). Given we were only at Ottawa’s Museum of Nature recently, it became easier to compare: I think I prefer our museum, at least for stuff for younger folk. We did see some exhibits that appealed, including an array of fish that caught her attention for more than a few minutes. The immobile (non-living) fish had to be super-large for her to be paying attention.

There were some pretty cool exhibits, including some mummies from Ancient Egypt, which Rose ran by quickly and I wasn't able to see more than skim. It was good, at least, to allow her to run around a bit.

After seeing various animals, we discovered the Hope Diamond was at the museum, which seemed rather odd. I went to see, just to be able to say that I had.

Once leaving, we shared a pretzel and wandered into the Sculpture Gardens, among the cherry blossoms. Yes, they exist. Yes, around the same time there was a freezing rain warning in Ottawa. What the?

   And, also, a spider sculpture by the same artist who has the spider sculpture in front of the National Gallery of Canada, back home in that Ottawa.

She was asleep, again, before we landed back at the hotel. Given we had to check out by 3pm, her nearly three hour nap began in the ring sling, and ended in the ring sling. Dropped bags off at the front desk before meeting Christine at Air and Space (so she, too, could re-visit space-y things), and wandered around there a bit. A bit. A wee bit. And once done, we headed back for bags, and off to the airport [the worst part: getting to the airport and checking email to discover a good pal from high school lives in Washington D.C. and I COMPLETELY forgot; aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrgh]. The wee lass (eventually) crashed on the plane. Home.




 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Amish Trivedi

Amish Trivedi's first book, Sound/Chest , is out from Coven Press, LLC, and his chapbook, The Destructions , is out from above/ground press. Recent poems have been in Open Letters Monthly, The Kenyon Review Online , Entropy and soon in The Laurel Review. His reviews have been in Sink and Pleiades. He is the managing editor of N/A ( www.nalitjournal.com ) and his website is at amishtrivedi.com

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Well, first things first, the hair on my head started growing back! But seriously, I guess I don't know yet? I feel like one of the main things I have noticed (at least my ego urges me to say this) is that people seem to be more willing to ask things of me? Like to do things or whatever. It's pretty neat to be liked though I'm hoping people thought I was a swell guy before!

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Hard to say. Music? I'm not sure really, but I know I spent my teens years writing really shitty poems. And then Johannes showed me that people were still alive writing poetry and that I could be one of them.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
Tricky question. I think sometimes it will start with a line or just something someone says. I think the current manuscript I'm working on started with Jessica Smith saying something about milk thistle and then 30 minutes reading random wikipedia articles that branched off milk thistle. You never quite know, I guess. For me, it's usually something simple. That said, now I've come to understand the value of sitting on something. I'm more or less done with the main writing on a new manuscript and while I've sent out poems (thanks for taking some yourself) I feel like I can't start organizing etc. for a little bit.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
I guess this goes with the last question a bit: a poem usually starts with some clever line (or clever to me, at least) and then goes from there. I think I said in our other interview something about thinking in manuscripts now but I kind of don't want to do that at the same time. It's a push pull but I guess I always move towards the next big thing, however well that's worked out at this point.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I enjoy doing readings but I see them almost as a platform for being funny and not necessarily for people to listen to me read poems. I always wanted to be a comedian but it's ok when a joke at a poetry reading fails. I also like going to readings. My friend Rob McLoone once said about conferences that it's like reading months worth of journals very quickly. I think readings are great that way.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I can't come up with an answer here that doesn't make me sound like a college student in their first philosophy class so I think I'll just lean into it: I think my concern is being. Maybe I should type that with a capital "B!" I'm really interested in how we process things through language and I think for me, poetry is about processing everything going on around me. Digital brains turn processing into zeroes and ones and I think my analog brain turns them into poems. I think a current question is how we manage to go on living in a world with language as our artifice. It's used to lie to us but it's also how we display the truth. How do we understand both sides of our words and how do we use them? As someone who is really fucking good and fucking things up when I speak, I'm amazed by my own inability to master something that seems so simple and innate.

7 - What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
Again, I'll lean into college philosophy: I think it's the goal of the writer to really reflect back on society. I really earnestly believe that, however much of a jerk that makes me sound like. I think writers do it but I think stand up comedian do an even better job of that at this point in time, partially because we all enjoy laughing and partially because we we can stomach things from people who are making us laugh. I am, however, ridiculously fascinated by the role of poetry in modern society. I think that's why I like Robert Archambeau so much and hope he doesn't mind that I am in the trailer of the truck he's driving on this front.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
With reviews, I find it easy, especially as that person, of late, is Dan Magers, with whom I get along really nicely. No one has really much asked me about changing poems around lately and I think we've gotten away from THAT writer/editor relationship. If things aren't working, they move down the submission list.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Johannes, any time I turned in good writing in his class, would always tell me to write a thousand more. I've totally stolen this and tell my students that as well. If something is working, then keep doing it until it's dead. I don't know if he even believes that anymore but that's what I still do. I keep trying to work on the things that are still working and try to side-step anything that isn't. Determining that, however, is still really difficult for me.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
Well, I think in terms of review writing, I was doing that anyways. I mean, we all do, right? Maybe not all of us, but I guess for any writer worth their salt, they are constantly turning a critical eye to everything they read. The only hard part after that is articulating it in such a way that you make sense to people. I'm unsure if that's been the case with my prose things. Outside of that, I've always had a hard time with genres. Fiction and I seem to be miles apart. Playing music has always been critical for me but I've always had a hard time switching back and forth between song writing and poem writing.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
My gut response is to lie and say I have some routine but I really don't. I've tried, I really have, but mostly, I write when I want and I don't write when I don't want to. I don't stress not feeling the urge to write (other than when there's a review deadline or something like that). That said, when I am working on something and I am going, I'll blow off a lot of things I should be doing. I spend a lot of time in my office on campus since my wife and I have opposite teaching schedules. As a result, I have spent a lot of that time writing when I could be, you know, grading or something else.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
For me it's always movies. Bergman. Godard. The Big Lebowski . Sometimes just mindlessly binge-watching Netflix. Music has worked sometimes, but nothing I can think of specifically. I generally don't stress getting stalled. I think that writing shorter poems means I spend most of my time being stalled.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Ooooh- hard to say. I think probably the spices my Mom keeps in a drawer for my childhood home. Hard to say about my grown up life. My wife is home and we've bounced around enough that I'm not sure how that works for "smell." Her candles, her meals, her Cafe Du Monde.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Well certainly movies. I think that if I could manage to work with other people creatively, I'd have stuck with filmmaking so movies continue to be my main thing. Nature is to be protected again (I just read a study that minorities don't do things outdoors...I am certainly with my fellow minorities there).

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Oh gosh- tricky to answer as ever. Ceravolo (who is very nature oriented, hilariously enough); Armantrout and most of the language folks. I guess I always love writers who use philosophy in their creative work, specifically Kundera and, of course, Camus.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Hard one- at 32 I feel like I've done so little. I want to see more of the world before I am unable to physically do it. Right now, I either have the time or (barely) the money but never both at the same time. I guess I'd like some kind of financial situation that occasionally affords me both together but that seems a long way off, sadly. But yes, seeing more of the world. Just wandering small towns in places. I keep a list of ghost towns I want to see in the Americas. Less stress there in terms of finances but I need the time to go do it, you know?

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I was really set on going to law school for a long time. I still think I'd make a great lawyer but, as my friend David pointed out, I'd probably be working to make the world a better place and STILL be broke. Go figure. Further, I think if I had kept my hair, I would have gone towards politics. That was my dream (and my Dad's dream for me) since I was a kid. Sometimes I still think I'd make a fine politician but of the Paul Wellstone variety. Outside of those boring options, I think, if I could really have done anything, it would be to write for TV. Either working on series of some kind or more happily writing for a late night show. That's one that keeps creeping up for me and I think if I ever get an "in" there, I'll give it a go. I never WRITE funny things, but I think in terms of humor at all times. I think that would work in a writing room of some kind. That said, seems like everyone wants to do that these days so I'm sure I'll never manage to make my way that direction. Besides,
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I don't know, honestly. I think I was, to an extent, a writer from the time I physically learned to write, so hard to say. Besides being a Biden-esque gaffe machine in most conversations, writing has that luxury of time. I like the ability to mull on something rather than having to just have an answer.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I've been getting so many poetry books in the mail of late. Michelle Detorie's After-Cave is under serious consideration for this answer. I'm about to teach Didion's Year of Magical Thinking so that has to be mentioned. A film that I must mention, despite initially being torn on it is Frank . I watched it once, thought it ok, but then I watched it again. And then a third time. And then I started talking about it and telling everyone to watch it and couldn't stop. I don't know what it is about that movie: it's infectious. And, of course, you should watch it. Twice at least. I may have to watch it again just writing this.

20 - What are you currently working on?
A few reviews plus the latest manuscript, called FuturePanic. Plus teaching, of course. Just trying to keep my head above water at the moment.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Profile on The Sawdust Reading Series, with a few questions, Open Book: Ontario

My profile of The Sawdust Reading Series, with a few questions, is now up at Open Book: Ontario.

new from above/ground press: Trivedi, lopes, Bradley, Kronovet, Forty-five + The Peter F Yacht Club!

The Destructions
Amish Trivedi
$4
See link here for more information

yasser arafat is dead
damian lopes
$4
See link here for more information

Happens Is The Sun
Jamie Bradley
$4
See link here for more information

CASE STUDY: WITH
Jennifer Kronovet
$4
See link here for more information

Forty Five
Poems by derek beaulieu, Jason Christie, Amanda Earl, Helen Hajnoczky, Chris Johnson, Gil McElroy, rob mclennan, Christine McNair, Pearl Pirie and Stan Rogal.
$4
See link here for more information

The Peter F. Yacht Club #22
VERSeFest 2015 special!
With new writing by a host of Peter F Yacht Club regulars, irregulars and VERSeFest 2014 participants, including Cameron Anstee, Dennis Cooley, dalton derksen, Anita Dolman, Stan Dragland, Amanda Earl, Laurie Fuhr, Daphne Marlatt, rob mclennan, Pearl Pirie, Roland Prevost, Monty Reid, Armand Garnet Ruffo, Janice Tokar, Tom Walmsley and Gillian Wigmore.
$6
See link here for more information

keep an eye on the above/ground press blog for author interviews, new writing, reviews, upcoming readings and tons of other material;

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
January-March 2015
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy of each

and don’t forget about the 2014 above/ground press subscriptions; still available!

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9 or paypal (above)

Review copies of any title (while supplies last) also available, upon request.

With forthcoming chapbooks by Katie L. Price, Nicole Markotić and ryan fitzpatrick!

A short interview with Liz Howard, Jacket2

My 29th 'commentary,' "A short interview with Liz Howard," is now online at Jacket2.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Emily Abendroth

Emily Abendroth is a poet, teacher, and anti-prison activist. Much of her creative work investigates state regimes of power and force, as well as strategies of resistance to the same. Her poetry book, ]Exclosures[ , was just released from Ahsahta Press this past May. Her works are often published in limited edition, handcrafted chapbooks by small and micropresses such as Belladonna (New York), Little Red Leaves (Texas), Albion Press (Philadelphia), TapRoot (San Francisco) and Zumbar Press (San Francisco). She is an active organizer with Decarcerate PA (a grassroots campaign working to end mass incarceration in Pennsylvania) and is co-founder of Address This!, an education and empowerment project that provides innovative, social justice correspondence courses to individuals incarcerated in Pennsylvania. She was a 2013 Pew Fellow in Poetry and has been awarded residencies at the Millay Colony, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and the MacDowell Colony.

1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
]Exclosures[ , which just came out on Ahsahta Press in May of 2014, is my first full-length collection. I’m not sure if I would attest that it changed my life – or better to say – I’m not sure if it changed it any more than the way each thing we do or each set of choices we make informs and shifts the shape of what comes next. However, I would say that because that book consists of a single serial work that keeps revisiting certain questions and concerns across its duration, with the newly accumulated weight and resonance of the preceding pieces, it taught me a lot about the possibilities for an extended form of its kind to build layers of complication and density in unique ways. This is something that I’m carrying over and hoping to continue exploring and exploiting, albeit with a very different structural approach and set of contents, in the piece that I’m currently working on now.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I think I came to poetry specifically out of a desire for a certain kind of close attention to the individual word in all of its tactile, in addition to connotative, qualities. I appreciated the weight of the choices and possibilities as they were situated at the smallest phrasal and sonic levels. Later, in other periods since then, I have likewise found myself wanting to shift that some, to allow for different, more extended arcs of thinking and accretion and growth – but that initial and ongoing work around local phrasal concerns was (and still is) very important for me.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
It’s a slow process and on the formal level my pieces tend to change shape a great deal along the way, even if the driving questions that motivated it initially all still hover there. I tend to work on longer or serial pieces, and they often involve simultaneous research work, whose discoveries enliven, redirect, and transform the material content of the pieces. I’ve always really loved the following observation that Michel Foucault made in an interview with the Italian Marxist Duccio Trombadori in 1978: If I had to write a book to communicate what I have already thought, I'd never have the courage to begin it. I write precisely because I don't know yet what to think about a subject that attracts my interest. In so doing, the book transforms me, changes what I think. As a consequence, each new work profoundly changes the terms of thinking which I had reached with the previous work.”

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
I definitely don’t work on a “book” from the very beginning, but it has also been many years since I’ve written a one-page stand alone poem. I tend to think of poetry as a place where I try to puzzle, muss up, divinate, muscle, and/or bungle my way through a set of doubts, concerns, interests, and perplexities whose layers seem to me to require precisely that and more. To pull apart an intellectual or political knot as it were. And I’ve never been one who can manage to do that to a satisfying degree (I’m not speaking aesthetically here, so much as conceptually), in a single nugget of condensation. There are many poets I admire who can, who find their strength of force in exactly that act, but I’m just not one of them.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I think because there’s so much sound work that happens in my pieces – and because there’s so much labor that goes into making sure they are a chewy mouthful with an aural complexity that is doing related, but distinct, work to the conceptual orientations – I do enjoy reading the results out loud. And so much of my secondary editing processes specifically involve reading them aloud over and over (whether alone in my bedroom or on a bench outdoors somewhere) as a kind of test drive of their construction, that it does feel appropriate to at some point be doing that same process of oral sharing before a living public of some kind. At that point, I also usually and happily feel just free or unselfconscious enough (although that wasn’t always the case) to simply be “the vessel” of those pieces, but with a kind of intimacy with them that can handle their many intentional tongue-twisters and consonant gluts.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
The collection of serial poems that make up ]Exclosures[ was driven by a set of concerns and explorations that have dominated my poetic imagination (as well as my community/political activism) over the last half dozen years or more. Through this writing, I was attempting to push myself to sound out the catastrophic and debilitating reverberations of living in a society that has effectively criminalized our most basic characteristics of livelihood and requirements for existence (our youth, our old age, our poverty, our needs for housing or a doctor’s appointment, our hunger) and fed them back to us as “dangerous” behavior and/or “unsustainable/unassuageable” demands. This is a set of conditions that has thus created what philosopher Judith Butler refers to as “those ‘unlivable’ or ‘uninhabitable’ zones of social life which are nevertheless densely populated.”

Although the focal points and curiosities/mysteries that are driving the piece I’m currently working on now are different, there are still these shared territories of inquiry and high stakes investment: revolving around questions about power, representation, self-determination, mutual aid, survivability, etc.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I’m not sure that question is a vital one for me as posed. I’m committed to our obligations to one another as people, guided by the principles of shared dignity and basic human rights (in keeping with and not erasing or trumping the rights of the larger natural environments we inhabit) – a commitment which I recognize that very few of us, human or otherwise, actually have the luxury to live under. Given that enormous discrepancy which is so deeply lodged in the current U.S. landscape of racialized capitalism, this commitment therefore obliges me to a variety of acts in my life as a human being, more so than as a poet. That my poetry reflects what I am wrestling with elsewhere (and what I maybe also have less luxury to probe as deeply or unhesitatingly elsewhere, given the constant need to quickly respond to conditions of acute emergency), makes sense to me. But I’m more concerned about the ways in which I and others “show up” and “can be counted on” as individuals in all our collaborations and relationships with others, rather than strictly in the artistic or poetic ones. Personally, I’m drawn to poetry because of my love of language and its capacities and malleability and evocational power, but I don’t place the writer or poet in any more critical or heroicized a role than other artists of any kind. Rather, given the relatively tiny cultural niche in which poetry tends to operate in the U.S., if anything I tend to understand its role as occurring within a pretty localized sphere – although I’m careful not to equate that localness with diminutiveness or lack of importance. Further, I don’t place artists in any more elevated a position in their grappling with the world than others who have found alternate mechanisms and means to do so. I think art is important and can offer a great deal by way of perspective and experience, but I don’t think it’s a pinnacle or exclusive terrain in that regard.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
My impression is that the editing process for poetry is, in the main, far less intensive on the line-by-line or page-to-page level than it is for fiction or criticism. There tends to be an effort to honor the writer’s intentions and choices – while at the same time offering suggestions – that I really appreciate. I’m a big fan of directed feedback, where the artist has some agency in framing what aesthetic decisions are up for negotiation or change, and where they’re seeking input, etc. And I’ve had the privilege to work with extremely generous, insightful, dedicated editors at every stage to date.

Perhaps because there’s little to no money involved in the publication of poetry, at least in my experience, all parties tend to be engaged because of their genuine investments in the experiment or investigation at hand, and thus to offer suggestions that they think will push that specific investigation forward, as opposed to being driven by questions of marketability or the like. This can be rough for poets in terms of their day-to-day financial solvency as humans, but I think it’s a gift in many other ways.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Avery Gordon: “Abolition recognizes that transformative time doesn’t always stop the world, as if in an absolute break between now and then, but is a daily part of it, a way of being in the ongoing work of emancipation, a work which inevitably must take place while you’re still enslaved, imprisoned, indebted, occupied, walled in, commodified, etc.”

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to essay to multi-media to visual collaboration)? What do you see as the appeal?
It hasn’t been especially easy for me, but it has been important. The piece I’m working on now, and that is very much still in-progress, is currently entitled “MICROFICHE / MICROFILCH / MICROMANAGE / MICROFEIGN: A Series of Reflections on the Experiences of Surveillance & Resistance.” This piece has been particularly exciting to work on given that presentationally it can be introduced to individual spaces and before distinct audiences in a range of different formats. To date, I have presented working portions of its contents (in their still-emerging form) as: a slide lecture, a performative talk, a geography lesson, a single component of a public skills-share workshop on practicing online security, and a poetic essay. This new (to me) experimentation with greater multi-media possibilities happily expands - beyond traditional poetry audiences - the range of locations and events in which this work can be seen, thus enlarging the scope of who it is in conversation with and how.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I’ve been doing project-based, freelance style work for at least a dozen years now – wherein my life on any given week consists of a diverse patchwork of paid teaching, multiple meetings in relation to community organizing work, unpaid (but gratifying and empowering) labor on a radical education project for PA prisoners, and creative work. How many hours are devoted to any one of those arenas each week varies tremendously dependent on diverse factors of urgency, finances, inspiration, and outside demands. Therefore, I rarely have a “typical” week. And I do go through streaks where I simply don’t and/or can’t prioritize my writing practice at all. And I make use of intensive spats like residencies (official or self-made) to try to achieve greater focus in the arena of the imaginative for a period.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
My physical body, if possible. As much as I value and wish to make space for writing, I often spend way too much time at desks or in front of screens. It can be wild how often physically moving somewhere (anywhere!) can help to literally move my thinking forward when it’s clogged up at an impasse on the page. I also turn all the time to other writing – although frequently, and especially when I’m really stuck, not to writing in my own genre. Sometimes a notably different kind of use and approach to language can help me find a new and unexpected way in. I also like to go on occasional obsessive learning forays into arenas I know nothing about and that resemble my daily life as little as possible – in order to try to deeply jostle my own thinking and approach. Like what can bacterial growth or moth migrations or so-called hysterical paralysis or the warning systems of prairie dog colonies reveal to us, by way of a wholly different model, regarding how we might multiply or travel or overcome mental hurdles or act in solidarity with one another.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Until my brother and I moved out of the house, my family heated our home entirely via the emanations of a single downstairs wood stove. It’s pretty easy for me to this day to conjure the dry heat, crackle, smell, and smoke of that bulky piece of cast iron machinery in the living room, and how one would try to cut against and moisten the parch it produced by placing a big pot of water atop with spruce branches inside to be evaporated into the air. That wet humidifying scent of spruce or cedar coupled with woodsmoke would, I guess, be my vote.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Without question. I would say there’s plenty!! I look at or listen to or touch other art (that is not writing) whenever I can; it’s actually incredibly helpful to view work that in some way shares themes or questions or orientations with your own, but that has taken up a completely different set of means and materials and tools to approach them. And as I mentioned briefly above, moving outside my own species has on occasion been not only compelling, but critical. Looking to animal behaviors/culture or complex symbiotic ecosystems or other natural processes at moments when humans seem like such a disheartening model, can assist in bringing to the foreground choices that seemed completely illegible or immobile previously.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
James Baldwin, Herman Melville, Gertrude Stein. Queer theorists like Judith Butler and Eve Sedgwick. The kinds of brave, muddy and mutually generous conversations on race, gender and justice that Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich were able to have together across decades. The new feminist journal LIES out of Oakland – very helpful. Prison abolitionists like Angela Davis and Beth Ritchie and Andrea Smith, who also profoundly reframe our thinking about power and resistance. The list could get very long and should be so! And, of course, I’ve learned a tremendous amount and had my own narrow curiosities hugely extended by a million other folks working in shared terrains of either documentary poetics or hybrid genres of one form or another – Rodrigo Toscano, Amina Cain, Tisa Bryant, Juliana Spahr, Jen Hofer, Jena Osman, Claudia Rankine, Miranda Mellis, Dawn Lundy Martin, Christian Nagler, Amar Ravva, Catherine Taylor, Amanda Davidson, Fred Moten, Rob Halpern, Jacqueline Frost….and this is just a small fraction from what first comes to the head. 

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
More collaborations. I’ve produced so many collective documents with others in the realm of political organizing and strategy, etc and that’s been such a rich arena of my existence and such a profound and useful pressure to my own thinking. I’d like to find a way for more of that to happen in my poetic/creative work as well.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I’m trying to think of that occupation every day these days! And certainly being a writer has never successfully “supported” me in any significant way in the financial sense (except via the related, but by no means identical, gesture of “teaching” writing). I’d like to learn an answer to this question in the next two years that is other than “adjunct professor.” I’m open to suggestions in that territory – really, I mean it; no leap is too large, no option is too ridiculous! In general, I don’t’ have the tiniest bit of trouble discovering valuable, meaningful ways and projects on which to spend my time. I do have terrible trouble finding the realm in which that neatly coincides with “an occupation (paid)” of some form.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I don’t think of myself as someone who is only or solely a writer and I don’t think I would be good at (or well fulfilled by) that kind of pure mono-focus. I write because I need a space to interrogate, think through, poke holes in, expand, and revitalize my relations to all of those other “somethings and someone elses” that make up a substantial portion of the fabric of my daily existence.

19 - What was the last great book you read?
I was really struck by Catherine Taylor’s APART and her new poetic essay “Inanimate Subjects” (which evocatively pairs an investigation of the current deployment of drones by U.S. military forces with an exploration of the use, history, and hypnotic effects of puppets – asking difficult questions about our collective notions of autonomy, agency, substitution, accountability, security, and infatuation). If I had a different extension of time available to me right now than I currently do, I’d love to be writing an essay/review that placed Taylor’s APART and Amar Ravva’s American Canyon in conversation with one another, particularly in relation to the questions they variously raise around cultural memory, history, and identity. For a more conventionally formatted historical analysis and critique, I’m also really loving the incredibly rich research and commentary to be found in Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States – which I just started reading last week.

20 - What are you currently working on?
I mentioned it briefly above (in #10). There are a series of things I might have said about this work three weeks ago, if asked, that I’m not at all sure would be true today in terms of the form I imagine the piece will ultimately take. As noted above, it’s presently titled “MICROFICHE / MICROFILCH / MICROMANAGE / MICROFEIGN: A Series of Reflections on the Experiences of Surveillance & Resistance” – but that title too will likely change. It tries to use a bunch of examples, both contemporary and historical in nature, as a platform for thinking about: representation, opticality, security, structural racism, monitoring, and more. Each of these terms is of course sweeping and huge – so the job of the work itself must necessarily be to linger and ground and swarm and search and microscope in enough on these concerns for generative contact, acute tactility, and lively friction to emerge.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

On Writing : an occasional series

As hard as it might be to believe, we're now two years into the occasional series of "On Writing" essays I've been curating over at the ottawa poetry newsletter blog. I've included an updated list, below, of those pieces posted so far, and the list is becoming quite substantive. Way (way) back in April, 2012, I discovered (thanks to Sarah Mangold) the website for the NPM Daily, and absolutely loved the short essays presented on a variety of subjects surrounding the nebulous idea of “on writing.” I would highly recommend you wander through the NPM Daily site to see the pieces posted there.

Forthcoming: new essays by Catherine Owen, Peter Richardson, Sky Gilbert, Priscila Uppal, Carolyn Marie Souaid, Angie Abdou, Arjun Basu, Laisha Rosnau, Gail Scott and George Fetherling.

On Writing #56 : Sarah Burgoyne : a series of permissions-givings

On Writing #55 : Anne Fleming : Funny

On Writing #54 : Julie Joosten : On Haptic Pleasures:  an Avalanche, the Internet, and Handwriting

On Writing #53 : David Dowker : Micropoetics, or the Decoherence of Connectionism

On Writing #52 : Renée Sarojini Saklikar : No language exists on the outside. Finders must venture inside.

On Writing #51 : Ian Roy : On Writing, Slowly

On Writing #50 : Rob Budde : On Writing

On Writing #49 : Monica Kidd : On writing and saving lives


On Writing #48 : Robert Swereda : Why Bother?

On Writing #47 : Missy Marston : Children vs Writing: CAGE MATCH!

On Writing #46 : Carla Barkman : Tastes Like Chicken

On Writing #45 : Asher Ghaffar : The Pen:

On Writing #44 : Emily Ursuliak : Writing on Transit

On Writing #43 : Adam Sol : How I Became a Writer

On Writing #42 : Jason Christie : To Paraphrase

On Writing #41 : Gary Barwin : ON WRITING


On Writing #40 : j/j hastain : Infinite Chakras: a Trans-Temporal Mini-Memoir

On Writing #39 : Peter Norman : Red Pen of Fury!

On Writing #38 : Rupert Loydell : Intricately Entangled

On Writing #37 : M.A.C. Farrant : Eternity Delayed

On Writing #36 : Gil McElroy :  Building a Background

On Writing #35 : Charmaine Cadeau : Stupid funny.

On Writing #34 : Beth Follett : Born of That Nothing

On Writing #33 : Marthe Reed : Drawing Louisiana

On Writing #32 : Chris Turnbull : Half flings, stridence and visual timber

On Writing #31 : Kate Schapira : On Writing (Sentences)

On Writing #30 : Michael Bryson : On Writing

On Writing #29 : Sara Heinonen : On Writing

On Writing #28 : Stan Rogal : Writers' Anonymous

On Writing #27 : Lola Lemire Tostevin : What's in a name?

On Writing #26 : Kevin Spenst : On Writing

On Writing #25 : Kate Cayley : An Effort of Attention

On Writing #24 : Gregory Betts : On Writing

On Writing #23 : Hailey Higdon : Hiding Places

On Writing #22 : Matthew Firth : How I write

On Writing #21 : Nichole McGill : Daring to write again

On Writing #20 : Rob Thomas : Hey, Short Stuff!: On Writing Kids

On Writing #19 : Anik See : On Writing

On Writing #18 : Eric Folsom : On Writing

On Writing #17 : Edward Smallfield : poetics as space

On Writing #16 : Sonia Saikaley : Writing Before Dawn to Answer a Curious Calling 

On Writing #15 : Roland Prevost : Ink / Here

On Writing #14 : Aaron Tucker : On Writing

On Writing #13 : Sean Johnston : On Writing

On Writing #12 : Ken Sparling : From some notes for a writing workshop

On Writing #11 : Abby Paige : On the Invention of Language

On Writing #10 : Adam Thomlison : On writing less

On Writing #9 : Christian McPherson : On Writing

On Writing #8 : Colin Morton : On Writing

On Writing #7 : Pearl Pirie : Use of Writing

On Writing #6 : Faizel Deen : Summer, Ottawa. 2013.

On Writing #5 : Michael Dennis : Who knew?

On Writing #4 : Michael Blouin : On Process

On Writing #3 : rob mclennan : On writing (and not writing)

On Writing #2 : Amanda Earl : Community

On Writing #1 : Anita Dolman : A little less inspiration, please (Or, What ever happened to patrons, anyway?)

A short interview with Stephen Brockwell, Jacket2

My 28th 'commentary,' "A short interview with Stephen Brockwell," is now online at Jacket2.

Joshua Clover, Red Epic

There will be a revolution or there will not. If the latter these poems were nothing but entertainments. If the former it will succeed or fail. If the latter these poems were better than nothing. If the former it will feature riots fire and looting at these will spread or they will not. If the latter these poems were curiosities. If the former it will feature further riots manifestos barricades and slogans and these will leap into popular songs or they will not. If the latter that’s that. If the former these popular songs will be overcome or they will not. If the latter these poems were no different than the songs. If the former the popular itself will be abolished via riots barricades manifestos occupations and fire or it will not. If the latter we will spend several more decades talking about culture. If the former the revolution will at this point be destroyed from within or without. If the latter these poems went down fighting. If the former it will feature awful confrontations with former friends and there will be further manifestoes new slogans ongoing occupations and communes and lovers will be enemies. We do not know what will happen after this point but surely this is enough to draw some preliminary conclusions. The poem must be on the side of riots looting barricades occupations manifestos communes slogans fire and enemies. (“The Fire Sermon”)
The first title from Oakland, Californian publisher Commune Editions, an imprint of Edinburgh, Scotland publisher AK Press, is poet, film critic, translator and cultural theorist Joshua Clover’s Red Epic (2015). As their press release provides introduction:
Commune Editions began with friendships formed in struggle, with the antagonisms that define the last five years of the San Francisco Bay Area: the occupations formed in resistance to University of California tuition hikes in 2009-2011, the anti-police uprisings after the shooting of Oscar Grant that continued with the deaths of Mike Brown and Eric Garner, and the local version of Occupy, referred to by some as the Oakland Commune. All of these antagonisms have been poet-heavy in the Bay Area. And they are producing their own poetries, ones full of ruptures, strange beauties—and also strangenesses, defined by explicit politics, the ones shaped by anarchist and communist organizing, theorizing, and struggle. This work inspires. And poets Juliana Spahr, Joshua Clover, and Jasper Bernes formed Commune Editions to publish anticapitalist poetries and poetics. And to also put this work in dialogue with poetries from other countries and from other historical moments, times and places where the politicization of poetry and the participation of poets in uprisings large and small was the conversation.
We want to avoid self-important claims about poetry changing the world. Poetry is no replacement for forms of action: strikes, blockades, occupations, protests, as well as the meetings, houses, libraries, and sharing of resources that enable them. But poetry can be a companion to these activities. Like the “riot dogs” of Athens, it can accompany the movements of the streets, provide support and pleasure, loud barking too.
Through such a declaration, Clover’s Red Epic, even before one begins, connects to an intriguing collection of writers, publications and activities, whether Stephen Collis and Christine Leclerc as part of Enridge Pipeline activism, capitalist critiques by poets such as Jeff Derksen, donato mancini, Roy Miki and Clint Burnham, a variety of Aboriginal issues explored through works by Jordan Abel, Marie AnnHarte Baker, Shane Rhodes and Liz Howard, or even the explorations into Vancouver’s missing and murdered women by writers such as Sachiko Murakami, Shannon Stewart and Anne Stone (I know there are far more examples for all than what I have mentioned). Poetry-as-activism has a rich history, and it is good to see contemporary writers pushing to explore further what might be possible, especially in the place where poetry and activism might intersect. As he writes to open the poem “Apology”:





 
Oh capital let’s kiss and make upAnd I’ll take back all those terrible things I said about youTo my friends in poems.
Or elsewhere, as he ends the poem “Fab, Beta, Equity Vol”:
The world which extruded six story apartment blocksand warehouses of brick and filthy glass which mademaking and finally faded when we used the wordreal behind the back of consciousness we meant thatwe meant industry and the industrial age you wanta total philosophy well there is my metaphysics
Red Epic covers issues surrounding the global economic crises, political upheavals both current and historical, the Occupy movement and a series of barricades, by turns infused with both wreckage and hope as he spins a “Top 40 soundtrack full of Robyn and MIA.” The author of two previous poetry collections—The Totality for Kids (University of California Press, 2006), and Madonna anno domini (Louisiana State University Press, 1997), which was chosen by Jorie Graham to receive the 1996 Walt Whitman Award—there is a rush and a push to Clover’s lines, from breathless prose to poems constructed from a series of staggered phrases to the compact lyric. His cultural and critical theory background allows his poetry to articulate a series of critiques against capitalism, equity and equality, pop culture and labour, utilizing all as material in which he is able to craft poems constructed to question, argue and pry open conversation. As he writes in the opening poem, “My Life in the New Millennium,” “Once fire is the form of the spectacle the problem / becomes how to set fire to fire.”
(We lived in a cloud of recklessness)


We lived in a cloud of recklessness south of Market in a house with an accent when he said Taylorism it sounded like terrorism we lived in a cloud of restlessness and felt ourselves to be adrift east of China west of France south of Market north of Chance we lived in a fog of remorselessness in a long wave of a K-wave we sang I’m going back to Cali to Cali to Calligrammes we saw the world through world-colored glasses it was a situation known as snowglobalization down there south of the Market in a cloud of recklessness on a sea of credit and correlation in the winter of the long wave in the deep sea swell of the Market and the candidates threw roses and we ate the roses in the jaws of the present as we once ate Robespierre’s raspberries

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Alexandria Peary

Alexandria Peary maintains a dual career in Creative Writing and Composition-Rhetoric. Her third book of poems, Control Bird Alt Delete , won the 2013 Iowa Poetry Prize and was published by the University of Iowa Press in 2014. Her other books include Lid to the Shadow (2010 Slope Editions), Fall Foliage Called Bathers & Dancers (2008 Backwaters) and Creative Writing Pedagogies for the Twenty-First Century (forthcoming, co-edited with Tom C. Hunley). Her work has received the Joseph Langland Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Slope Editions Book Prize, the Mudfish Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the 2012 Theresa J. Enos Rhetoric Award. Her scholarship has appeared in College Composition and Communication, Rhetoric Review, Pedagogy, WAC Journal, Journal of Aesthetic Education, and New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing. Her poems and nonfiction have recently appeared in New England Review, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, New American Writing, Volt, Verse Daily, Map Literary, Guernica, Hippocampus, and The Chariton Review. She is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Salem State University and maintains a mindful writing blog at alexandriapeary.blogspot.com .
1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?Fall Foliage Called Bathers & Dancers was published by Backwaters Press in 2008. The publication seemed to correspond with other life changes (my first child, my decision to enroll in a doctoral program). Life was forcing me along to write. It’s something I describe at a guest post, “Water Breaks, Writer’s Block,” at Mother Writer Mentor: http://www.motherwritermentor.com/2012/05/07/water-breaks-writers-block/ . The first book allowed me to enclose in the amber of publication writing I might normally have hesitated over. So the book made poetry low-stakes and informal in my own perception (all that really ever counts for a writer). I’m currently writing my fourth book of poetry, and it feels like a joy because I’m at last able to take on certain themes that I’d looked longingly at since the late 1990s.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?Purely by accident. As a pre-teen, I was intent upon going to medical school. One day after school while dissecting a suicide goldfish using an ancient microscope a neighborhood physician had given me, I looked out at the April rain and the sheen of green on the leach field. I put down my tweezers and wrote my first poem.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?I don’t usually “do” drafts. I also don’t predetermine the length of any writing project or separate actions into “starting,” “continuing,” or “finishing.” My writing comes out of a mindful process; it engages the language that occupies the present moment.
4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?A poem begins for me with a fragment from my internal voice. This fragment is mindfully perceived and written by hand in an ordinary $1 composition notebook.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?It’s interesting to have one’s audience a few feet away (as opposed to the separation of space and time that occurs when doing the actual work of writing). The best readings and audiences make me feel like I can sing duende.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?I am interested in the presence of language—so meta language or references to writing frequently occur in my poems.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?Don’t we all play a role in a larger culture just by purchasing, expressing, and breathing? I’m not sure writers are all that different except that they have the potential to give other people inner experiences, ones maybe not easily found in the social world.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?It depends. I’ve been blessed with working with several extremely professional and insightful editors. Actually, I plan on posting shortly at my blog ( alexandriapeary.blogspot.com ) about the experience. Last summer in the Roman Colosseum, I learned the etymology of the word “editor,” and it’s one that will put a wry smile on any writer’s face. See my blog in a few weeks.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?I was working on my dissertation and had told my adviser that I was planning on quitting the program. This admission was not said lightly since I (and my family) had sacrificed tremendously for five years for me to obtain a doctorate. But I was finding it impossible to proceed with the writing of the dissertation—not because I wasn’t excited about the subject but because of what felt like the manhandling of my potential ideas by one of the faculty readers. This person inserted the most unkind, sarcastic comments in his/her pink “Comment” balloons—the kind of relentless critique I myself would never ever perform on a student at an early stage in their composition. I still recall one comment: “This is one birthday party to which I don’t want to be invited!” I told my dissertation adviser I was thinking of dropping out of the program but would finish the dissertation regardless as a book outside of academia. He understood that what was under attack in my perception was my integrity as a writer. He told me, “From now on, don’t write a single word you don’t believe in.” I copied his emailed advice on a Post-It and proceeded to write the dissertation at a running pace.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?That ability to move between genres is essential to the mindful writing I practice. Genres are ultimately preconceptions; they shortchange the offerings of the present moment. I do not limit myself by genre during any given writing session and now write poetry, creative nonfiction, and scholarship.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?An early rise (between 4 AM and 5 AM). A cup of espresso. A mindful observation of my breathing and physical-psychological state. A jump-start poem by another writer (currently John Ashbery, Caroline Knox, or Wallace Stevens). The opening of my notebook and retrieving of my fountain pen. Sitting in the reflective pool of writing until around 6:30 AM when one of my two daughters invades my study.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?I permit myself fallow periods and turn to another genre or project.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?The scent of lost time that is emitted from the question, “What fragrance reminds you of home?”
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?Most definitely visual arts. In addition to consulting poetry before I write each day, I look at paintings by 20th century artists—Roy Lichtensteinand Fernando Botero right now. Or a book on the Peggy Guggenheim collection in Venice.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?Caroline Knox, Wallace Stevens, John Ashbery, Italio Calvino, Francis Ponge, Jean Follain, W.S. Merwin, Paul Celan, Pablo Neruda, the Buddha, Emily Dickinson, oh most definitely, Emily Dickinson.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?I have a current prose project that means a great deal to me. It’s based on years of observing people struggle and succeed with writing. It’s about mindful writing and the sources of writing anxiety or blocks. I would like it very much if my theory of mindful writing could be of use to others, and this might entail a couple of sidekick projects branching off this main theoretical one.
17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?The other occupation is one I made up: a writing psychiatrist. I adore classroom teaching and would not want to give it up, but I have a dream of starting a private practice where I could meet one-on-one with individuals from all walks of life who struggle to write. I’d like to start a whole field—writing psychologists. My approach as a writing psychologist would mix mindfulness and various theories from the field of Composition-Rhetoric.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?As a child, writing allowed me to have an inner life. That inner life afforded me chances for insight and awareness that seemed greater than what could be found from other types of activities or professions. So now I use what I learn from my writing practice in other activities during the day—teaching, parenting, being a colleague, being a friend.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?Italio Calvino’s CosmicomicsFilm: The Great Beauty
20 - What are you currently working on?I like to balance multiple projects at multiple different stages; it’s part of mindful writing. I do a sort of call & response, asking my internal voice each writing session, “what am I honestly interested in working on right now?”  When I have a variety of interesting projects, that variety corresponds with the fluctuation and quantity that can be found in the internal voice. I just wrapped up an academic article and sent it out, and my co-editor Tom Hunley are on the cosmetic proofreading last stages of our forthcoming Creative Writing Pedagogies for the Twenty-First Century (Southern Illinois University Press in June 2015). So I’m working on a poetry book, various individual pieces of creative nonfiction, and a longer creative-scholarly project on mindful writing.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;