12 or 20 (second series) questions with Julian Carter
Julian Carter writes about touch, complicity, recognition, and temporal change. Hisnew choreotext, Dances of Time and Tenderness (Nightboat, 2024) is atranspoetic story cycle linking art,death, and kinky sex, through which he partners readers in intimate encounterswith trans/queer histories from Neolithic burials to coffee in present-day SanFrancisco.
1 - How did your firstbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous?How does it feel different?
My new book, Dances of Time and Tenderness, began inqueer art and political community and grew and shifted in conversations withboth dead and living people. It's been a relational project all the way along. Incontrast, my first book was lonely lonely work. It was my dissertation. I wroteit without an advisor and then revised it from the ground up 5 times over my 9years on the academic job market before finally using it as a tenure book. Idon't recall the editor who picked it up for Duke University Press talking withme about it beyond asking who should blurb. That book, The Heart of Whiteness, isnot bad at all, and it's found some audience over the years, but the processfelt contaminated. I didn't even consider writing another book for almost 20years. Which was ok.
2 - How did you come tocritical prose first, as opposed to, say, fiction or poetry?
I started with poetry& switched to critical prose as a grad student (sadly, Ph.D. in history,not an MFA). My elegantly WASPy undergrad poetry professor liked me because Iwas interested in formal mastery; I was too innocent to realize that meant hemight not be the best reader for a long, unmetered, explicit piece situated onthe edge of sexual consent--I was contemplating the erotic and community repercussionsof anti-dyke violence. When he told me this wasn't a poem at all, but amanifesto, I assumed he knew what he was talking about and turned my attentionto writing critical theory and historiography. I've never stopped writingpoetry, I just dropped out of the craft conversation.
3 - How long does it taketo start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially comequickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to theirfinal shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
Words spill out of me. Ihave to do a lot of pruning to find the moment of silence inside, or alongside,the swirl of language. That's the point when I understand what I'm doing.Sometimes it takes years.
4 - Where does a poem orwork of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that endup combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book"from the very beginning?
Usually I latch on to aword or an idea, or one latches on to me, and then follow it until I and my friendscan't take any more. I've just written my third long critical essay structuredlike a miniature book, with three tiny "chapters" developing a coreimage from different angles. I didn't start develop this form on purpose. Ithappened because I think most non-fiction books should be about 20% of theirpublished length, and I hate the idea of someone reading my work and thinking"oh, he should have cut that out, he's just quacking away." I dislikefiller.
Recently my poems havemostly been stories that began from something I overheard. I would like to makeenough of these to assemble these into a cycle--something with an arc that letsyou feel like you've been someplace. That sounds like it might be heading in abook sort of direction.
5 - Are public readingspart of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer whoenjoys doing readings?
I adore doing readings! Asa kid I learned how to read aloud in church, and also my mother read stories tous with different voices for different characters. I put care into the music ofvoice--modulating tone, playing with tempo--things like that have everything todo with how we receive meaning. I also read aloud to myself while I write. Ittells me when I don't know what I'm saying yet.
6 - Do you have anytheoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are youtrying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questionsare?
My big questions havealways been historical, or even mythic: how did we get here, and how has our roadbeen laid out for us? My current questions are about how we survive. I want toknow whether there will be anyone to care about the past.
7 – What do you see thecurrent role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? Whatdo you think the role of the writer should be?
We open windows.
8 - Do you find theprocess of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
10% essential. Sometimesdifficult also. Like any intimacy.
9 - What is the best pieceof advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Take the advice you'd giveto a student.
10 - How easy has it beenfor you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see asthe appeal?
I am feral as a poet andprofessional in prose. I have mostly kept the feral under wraps; allowing it tolead is both exhilarating and scary. That risk is the appeal.
11 - What kind of writingroutine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day(for you) begin?
I use birdsong as an alarmand prefer not to speak or be spoken to until I've had two cups of decaf, abowl of plain oatmeal, and 45 minutes of writing by hand. The cat has opinionsabout all of the above. So do my children, partner, students, co-parent, departmentchair, writing partner, colleagues, therapists, garden, sourdough starter and aseries of friends--though to be sure these have fewer feelings about the birds.My life is a constant series of relational interruptions. This means that ideaswander out for a long time in loose spirals and then the real conceptual andcompositional work has to happen in highly disciplined spasms.
12 - When your writinggets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word)inspiration?
Open sky, other writersdoing craft talks and interviews, and the Oxford English Dictionary.
13 - What fragrancereminds you of home?
My own body.
14 - David W. McFaddenonce said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influenceyour work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Dance has shaped more ofmy life than anything else except maybe growing up in the country. Ballet,tango, contra, country-western two-step and line dance, country waltz. Theattendant somatic practices (Feldenkrais and Pilates), physical therapy andcross-training, and bodywork are all techniques for increasing bodily awarenessand self-presence, so that you know what you are feeling and what you aredoing: a dancer is a way of being, like a writer is a way of being, onlydancing for me cultivates enormous curiosity and joy that happen almostentirely outside of language. Like dancing, writing comes from deep attention,curiosity about what is, and joyous moments of not-thinking. For me, times ofnot-writing and not-talking sponsor being-in-words on pages.
15 - What other writers orwritings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Subject to change in aflash; yet a few things stick around. I learned to read from Dr. Seuss's OneFish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. T.H. White's The Once and Future King and Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish bothinform a great deal of my thinking and voice. Both books dig into therelational nature of power; White's sentence structures and tonal variation resonatein my own, and I love and emulate the style with which Foucault loops back andforth from broad strokes to fine lines, vast epistemes to single images from asingle moment.
16 - What would you liketo do that you haven't yet done?
Study literary form (as opposed to following my inner metronome). Maybe evenwrite a villanelle.
17 - If you could pick anyother occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do youthink you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I am already so many otherthings--if I could choose anything it would be *only* to write. And read. Preferablyunder trees.
18 - What made you write,as opposed to doing something else?
I couldn't help it?
19 - What was the lastgreat book you read? What was the last great film?
I think more in terms ofgreat reading experiences rather than great books. The most recent book thatpulled me entirely into its world was Christine Smallwood's The Life of the Mind; the most recent tomake me read sections aloud to friends was Selby Wynn Schwartz's After Sappho. Not much into film.
20 - What are youcurrently working on?
I've just finished a shortscholarly/creative hybrid-genre art-historical essay called "Kissing theCavalier." It looks at van Dyck paintings, the history of lace, and theLost Cause of the Confederacy to tell a story about how aesthetic response canloop us into systems of power we wouldn't have chosen to touch if we'd knownwhat we were doing. I'm edging inexorably into a Southern Gothic book based onstories from my father's incredibly pathological Virginia family.
