12 or 20 (second series) questions with Kim Rosenfield

Kim Rosenfield  isa poet and psychotherapist. She is the author of several books of poetry,including USO: I’ll Be Seeing You from Ugly Duckling Presse(2014). She is the 2023 recipient of the FENCE Ottoline Prize. Her latestbook, Phantom Captain, will be published by FENCE in fall2023. Rosenfield is an originating member of the international artist/writerscollective, Collective Task. Her clinical writing can be found in  Psychoanalytic Dialogues and Studies in Gender and Sexuality. Shelives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

1- How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your mostrecent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

Myfirst chapbook, SOME OF US (Ouija Madness Press), came out when I was 15 yearsold.  It took me from writing alone in myteenage bedroom to having a community and place for my work to be seen and heard.  It helped get me to college.  It most certainly changed my life.  I also though that poetry could change theworld. I don’t think that now.  I was newto it all.  It was an unprecedented  time, the Beyond Baroque 80’s Los Angelespoetry scene.

Overthe years my work has become darker, more complex, less youthfully confidentthan that early work, but I still feel connected to it as a formative templateof everything I continue to think and write about today.  Just with more life lived and much moreuncertainty mixed in.

2- How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

Icame to poetry alongside fiction and am a lifelong reader of both. I was avoracious reader with a library card and a parent willing to drive me to ourlocal branch.  I  read everything  In addition, I loved  language absorbed through cereal boxes,shampoo bottles, magazine ads, t.v. jingles, synagogue prayers, music,arguments, newscasts, my grandparents accents, etc.  all were a kind of poetry.  The form didn’t much matter so much.

3- How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does yourwriting initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appearlooking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copiousnotes?

Slowly,over months and years, with endless lines in endless note books.  Eventually loosely refashioned together like asewing pattern. Then refined and edited and then edited some more, thenfinished in a “final” form even though all my work is just one continuousthread spooling out  from book to book.

4- Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short piecesthat end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a"book" from the very beginning?

Seeabove.

5- Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you thesort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

Ilove giving readings and speaking my work out loud. There’s bodies and voicesand bloodstreams and smells and laughter and coughing fits and rustlings anyawns, and eyes closed and walking out, and street noise, and mic static,  etc. which I find so exciting!  It’s more and less intimate at the sametime.  The work gets changed in acollective listening space.  I don’t know how to describe it  but  somuch happens to the poems in a room when read aloud to others.

6- Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds ofquestions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think thecurrent questions are?

Whatdoes It mean to be human is all I ever think about.

7– What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Dothey even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

Idon’t really think about this in any significant way. 

8- Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult oressential (or both)?

Itdepends on who it is but I generally like having another mind in on the work, andbeing in the fortunate position of having someone pay such close attention tomy writing is a gift.

9- What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to youdirectly)?

Don’tlisten to anyone else’s advice

10- What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even haveone? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

Idon’t have a routine.  I have a  demanding job so I write when I haveavailable time and energy.   A typical day, however, ALWAYS begins with coffee.  Lots of coffee.

11- When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack ofa better word) inspiration?

Itdepends how stalled and for how long but usually conversations with other poets.

12- What fragrance reminds you of home?

L’HeureBlue and damp kitty litter

13- David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there anyother forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visualart?

Allof the above mentioned + animals + insects

14- What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply yourlife outside of your work?

Asampling:

Freud,Bion. Klein, Winnicott, LaPlanche, Kristeva, Weil, Iregary, the Barangers,Abraham and Torok, Gail Scott, Leonora Carrington, Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys,Marguerite Duras, Etel Adnan, Buckminster Fuller, Samuel Becket… I could go onand on

15- What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Retire

16- 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 awriter?

Ilove my work as both a therapist and a poet. There’s nothing else that I would ever do.

17- What made you write, as opposed to doing something else? 

I’vealways written and done something else simultaneously.

18- What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

Book:The Hearing Trumpet—Leonora Carrington

Film:Meshes of the Afternoon—Maya Deren

19- What are you currently working on?

It’sa surprise!  Hint: think “Spanish Inquisition.”

12 or 20 (second series) questions;