12 or 20 (second series) questions with Kimberly Ann Southwick
Kimberly Ann Southwick is an AssistantProfessor of Creative Writing and English at Jacksonville State University. Herdebut full-length poetry collection, ORCHID ALPHA, is out via TremblingPillow Press as of April 2023. Kimberly is the founder and Editor in Chief ofthe literary-arts journal GIGANTIC SEQUINS. Find her on twitter@kimannjosouth or visit kimberlyannsouthwick.com for more.
1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does yourmost recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first chapbookwith multiple poems all in one book changed my life in the same way that beingalive and writing and sharing my work in the early 2010s did—I felt like I wasa part of something larger than just myself as a writer. I suppose I didn’t knowmuch about the “world” I was entering by sharing my work with people I didn’tnecessarily know and by starting my own literary journal, all which happenedaround the same time. Orchid Alpha is my first full-length poetry book—it feels more thought out, in a way, than any other shorter collections of mywork, and I think I feel farther from my speaker than I did when my previouschaps debuted.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction ornon-fiction?
When I was atEmerson, I wrote “everything—” a lot of us said this. It was when I wasrejected from the invite-only fiction class that I really dove into poetry,honestly. I stepped back and analyzed my fiction and found that my plots weresimple, but the language and emotion were where my writing really throbbed. Andpoetry is often more about those things than plot, so.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Doesyour writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first draftsappear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out ofcopious notes?
For the past fewyears, I have been running and participating in a NaPoWriMo prompt-a-daywriting group, and through that, I feel like I have more of a process than Ihad in previous years. I write probably 20-30 poems that month, and then Iwrite sporadically throughout the year, be it sitting in front of my laptop orscribbling on the backs of envelopes or taking notes in my phone. And then mostof my time is spent editing and organizing from there. My works almost nevercome out fully formed the first time—especially since I am sometimes startingwith prompts that my editing allows me to let go of.
4 - Where does a poem or work of fiction usually begin for you? Are youan author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or areyou working on a "book" from the very beginning?
I feel likewriting Orchid Alpha helped me understand what putting a book togethertakes, and now my editing and organizing can benefit from those lessons. Idon’t think of my poems when I am writing them as something that can be a partof a book, but then once they are written, I go through and consider how theymight fit together into a collection.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Areyou the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I do enjoy doingpublic readings, in fact. I think they help sell my work—and I don’t just meanfinancially, but I mean that reading my work aloud adds another element to itthat hits people in a way that reading it on the page might not. I don’t thinkthey are a part of the process of creating my work so much as they are aprocess of my poetry once it’s “done” (always in quotation marks--)
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kindsof questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even thinkthe current questions are?
Orchid Alpha’sfeminist speaker is constantly grappling with technology and desire in theAnthropocene—and how these ideas come up against each other. I suppose it’sbecause a lot of the time she is me, and I am grappling with these things.(Have I already said, “The Speaker is Dead; Long Live the Speaker”? It’s my newfavorite eye roll emoji response to is the speaker me. Yes! No! Sometimes!Maybe! Who is the speaker? I don’t know! Third base!)
Anyway, now thatI’m a mother, that adds a whole other layer into the questions of existencethat my work encounters, as technology, desire, and climate change are evenmore complex when I think about my daughter’s generation.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in largerculture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer shouldbe?
I was reading thiscritical text on Emily Dickinson yesterday, and it was talking about how poetsin the 1800s, specifically those writing in America around the time of theCivil War, were expected to be political, and how they often used both theprivate lyrical “I” speaker and the larger, national communal “we” voice—andhow these two didn’t compete, necessarily, but also weren’t the same. Then Iwas thinking about how I’ve seen people complain about readers who are like“why is poetry so political these days, geeez, bring back the frost and thegeese and the sunset,” and how those people have no concept of what poetry’srole has been in America and the world since… forever. That being said, eachwriter has to figure out for themselves what their “role” is, and I would sayanyone who wants to write should most certainly write, be it about the geeseand the frost or how Rome is burning. The harder part is about sharing yourwork. If it’s just the geese and the frost, your audience is going to bedifferent than if it’s about how Rome is burning. No matter what, audienceswill be critical. Ever since we started defining poetry as “the lyric” and thelyric as “overheard genius,” there has been a lot of pressure on people callingthemselves poets. We don’t really draw lines anymore between “verse” and“poetry,” either, in the same way we did in the earliest colonial days inAmerica. If you want people to read your work, then you should want them to getsomething out of it—each writer has their own “something,” and I hope they knowwhat that is before they start sending their work out to publishers. But eitherway—write, writers, write!
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficultor essential (or both)?
Hm, I haven’t hadtoo many hands-on editors in my life, so it’s been easy so far.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily givento you directly)?
When I gave myvery first public reading (aside from any I’d done related to school/college)at Franklin Park in Brooklyn, my favorite coworker, Ben McFall, and also mysecond favorite exboyfriend both gave meadvice, and I like it because it works well for reading your work aloud andalso for life in general. I don’t remember who of them said what, but theysaid: “Don’t be self-deprecating” and “Be loud.”
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry toessays to plays)? What do you see as the appeal?
I have a memoirinside of me somewhere about giving birth to my first and only child in March 2020.I’ve filtered a lot of everything I was dealing with leading up to giving birthand into those first weeks through poetry—especially because of where NaPoWriMofalls each year—but I find myself coming back to the details when I hear ofothers’ birth experiences outside of my very strange one. I have trouble withsustaining anything longer than a poem, though, as a mother to anow-three-year-old with my very first salaried job in academia plus as theeditor in chief of a long-running literary journal, amongst other many hats Iwear. So I feel lucky to be a poet, and unlucky not to have the time to put ingood work on anything longer.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you evenhave one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I don’t writeevery day, and I am fine with that.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (forlack of a better word) inspiration?
Okay, so it’s lessthat my writing ever gets stalled, and more like there are 2,752 other things Ineed to be doing, and it’s hard to prioritize my poetry when I know that to bethe case. BUT, aside from editing my poems and shuffling them around in themanuscript I’ve been building now since 2020, I make decoupage (or decoupe)poems. I have a lot of strict rules I set for myself—for example, I only cliplines from one magazine for each poem, and I try to keep the poem’s progressiongrammatical, etc.—and doing this really relaxes me and reunites me with some ofthe things I love about both language and specifically poetry.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Which home are wetalking? I have too many homes. Honeysuckle reminds me of my youth.
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but arethere any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, scienceor visual art?
When my firstchapbook was published, I remember reading through it and being like, “oh man,that’s from a song—that’s from a song—that’s from a song too!” I had sort ofunconsciously picked up these allusions and images from the music that I hadbeen listening to.
Also, I don’tthink I can watch a David Attenborough documentary without writing a poemafterwards. I will tell anyone who listens, too, about how when I don’t knowwhat to do with a poem, a sea creature usually makes its way into it to help mefigure that out.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, orsimply your life outside of your work?
The two poets Ilikely draw the most inspiration from are Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath,which is the most canonical answer possible, I am well aware. But they are theskyscrapers, you know? And I’ve read so much by and about them.
Recently I askedon twitter which musical artists/bands made poets think the most about poetry.It was probably my most popular tweet. But I listen to a ton of music, and sooften I wind up loving a song because it makes me think about poetry. Usuallyit’s more the lyrics than anything else, but also how the music of the songitself makes the lyrics work. Jenny Lewis/Rilo Kiley, The National, and FionaApple are probably my top three answers to my own question and serve well as ananswer here, too.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I would love tovisit Japan.
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 notbeen a writer?
I would havereally loved to be the person who makes montages for live sports games and likethrows together graphics to illustrate statistics and stuff. I know that seemsso random, but I always think about how much fun that would be!
I think I wouldhave made a decent lawyer if I didn’t have so many feelings. (I cry at TVcommercials, for example.) If I didn’t spend the first 20 or so years of mylife being so very shy, I think I would have had fun as an actress. Not one whoever has to sing though.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
People kepttelling me I was good at it. I feel like so many of the paths I chose come frompeople suggesting I do something because I was good at it or would be good atit—teachers and classmates, mostly.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I am reallyobsessed with Martha Wells’ Murderbot series. My colleagues and I have asci-fi/spec fic book club, and I read the first novella for that and thendevoured the rest of the series.
I really loved the2022 documentary film Fire of Love—it felt like poetry.
20 - What are you currently working on?
I’ve been startingto think about my decoupage works as a part to a whole rather than individual stand-alonepieces, though thinking of them that way doesn’t much change them or myprocess, it just makes working on them feel more like a “project.” I startedthem because my daughter would sit beside me and decorate envelopes, letting mecut lines from magazines and put them together—whereas, when I would try towrite or edit on my laptop, she would insist on banging on the keys from mylap. She is less interested in decorating envelopes these days, but stillinterested in my laptop, but now the project has become more than a replacementfor writing and editing my poetry at home.
The moretraditional poetry I’ve been working on is coming together as my “secondfull-length collection” now, and even has been sent out to some contests/openperiods in earlier drafts, to no success. I think the draft of the manuscript Iam working on now is more complete and might get some different attention. Ihope, though, that poetry about covid and motherhood isn’t rejected simplybecause of its subject matters, as I know poetry about motherhood isn’t alwaysmet well, and I can imagine poetry that forefronts covid may begin to feel oldor dated as we move away from the virus’s arrival and lockdown. Though, I don’tthink either subject is too much or should be shied away from for any writer orpublisher, and I don’t just say that as a mother who gave birth in March 2020,but as an editor as well. The collection has had a few different titles, buteven before covid, it tackled the ideas of loss and what we lose personally andhow we might connect those smaller losses to the larger loss of climate change,in order to give over the best possible planet to our children and theirs.
