12 or 20 (second series) questions with Kevin Holden
Kevin Holden is a poet, critic, and translator. Heis the author of seven books and chapbooks of poetry, including Solar, whichwon the Fence Modern Poets Prize, Birch, which won the Ahsahta PressAward, and Pink Noise, recently out from Nightboat Books. Histranslation of Jean Daive’s The Figure Outward is forthcoming thisspring from Black Square Editions. His work has appeared in severalanthologies, including Best American Experimental Writing (Omnidawn) andIf Bees Are Few (Minnesota). He has taught at Bard, Harvard, and Iowaand is currently a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. He is alsoan activist and cares a great deal about trees.
1 - How did yourfirst book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to yourprevious? How does it feel different?
Back in 2009,Cannibal Books published a chapbook of mine called Identity.I'd published two little ones before that, but this was a different experience.The publisher of Cannibal, Matthew Henriksen, deeply, passionately believed inthe poetry. There’d been validation of my work before, but this came fromanother space, an editorial one, and outside of the contexts of people I knewor of an academic program. Matt was extraordinary, and I got to know him moreat the Frank Stanford Festival he organized in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Heconvinced me that I was doing something significant. That my work was unusual.There's a lot to say about him, that time, the press’s energy and community. Forme, in short, he made me feel that my work merited being published in bookform, that that was something that needed to happen. When my first full-lengthbook, Solar, won the Fence Prize, that was something on a larger scaleof course, and the attention the book received was very meaningful to me. Butthat earlier work with Matt, on something that was “only” a chapbook, wasreally important and encouraging. As to how the more recent work compares, I’dsay it’s… stranger? It’s certainly gotten more complex. Matt was actually oneof the people who convinced me that the stranger and “harder” work was theright trajectory, that it was rarer, surprising, unique. I think Pink Noiseis definitely a further step along that path. In certain aspects it mightactually be more “accessible” than Solar, but it is likely also deeper,more dimensional, and more complex.
2 - How did you cometo poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
For me it wasalways poetry. I like novels, but poetry, once I began reading it, spoke to meand seemed right; it made sense to me in a much deeper and more immediateand natural way. I came across The Waste Land more or less byaccident when I was eleven years old. It felt true, like a world,and like magic. It harmonized with how I felt and perceived, I suppose.(Syntactically, emotionally, musically, imagistically.) It was that way onward.I also started writing poetry around that time. I've never tried writingfiction. I do write essays, and philosophy is very important to me. But thenovels I care most about are often considered to be “closest” to poetry: Woolf,Faulkner, Genet, Toomer… Poetic grammar just feels... accurate. And wherebeauty resides. I can't imagine it otherwise.
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?
I’d say itcomes and goes. When it’s there, it often comes fairly quickly, but then theprocess of putting it all together is slow. And there are lots of notes andscribbles, but when something feels like it’s happening as a “poem,” it’susually quick (and often close to what will be its final shape). The process ofarranging the pieces is more arduous, especially as some of the poems and sectionsare quite long.
4- Where does a poem or work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an authorof short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you workingon a "book" from the very beginning?
They begin inperceptions, feelings, or in the words themselves. I think I’m mainly an authorof pieces that combine into larger projects, but fairly early on, once thereare more pieces and different kinds, I’m trying to think of how they will cometogether and harmonize into a book.
5- Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you thesort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
After allthis time, I still get nervous before readings. But I do enjoy doing them, andI think hearing the work is important. The poems’ sound is very central for me,and they are usually pretty musically dense. I certainly write hearingthem in my ear, and the poetry’s internal architectures become clearer when readaloud (especially as they often involve distortions of grammar). I often readat a somewhat fast pace, and that’s intentional; there’s an intensity and akind of heaping up of rhythm that is important for me.
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?
I’minterested in the way in which poetry is or makes reality. I suppose, in asense, these are Modernist (or adjacent) concerns. There are things said by Vicente Huidobro and Tristan Tzara that feel very right to me. I also feel close tosomething Paul Celan said: “I try to reproduce cuttings from the spectralanalysis of things.” And to various aspects of the polyhedron that isObjectivist poetics. I don’t know if there are theoretical concerns “behind”the writing — the writing is, I’d say, just itself, emergent and organic — andI’m certainly not trying to write so as to “demonstrate” or enact some theory. Butthere are theoretical questions and apparatuses out in the world that interestme, for sure. Adorno’s aesthetic theory feels right. Wittgenstein. I’minterested in the poem and the book as their own monadic worlds, being orextending into reality. And I believe that poetic objects are like bundled upcross-sections of perception, feeling, and actuality cohering in language andsound. And they are formed. And in all this there is a kind of politics,to which, it seems, your next question speaks. So, the questions the work istrying to answer, as it were, regard the nature of this word I keep using,“reality.” And memory and desire, for example, are just as much a part of thatas grammar and physics. Lastly, queerness, in all its own kaleidoscopicentanglement, is central for me.
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?
Ideally, itis a role of truth, beauty, complexity, rigor. Perhaps to be guardians oflanguage. For a long time, I’ve felt that there is a politics of estrangementin aesthetic work, a resistance to the flattening of thought and experience thatis inflicted by commodification and capital, one that is made possible throughthe complexity and strangeness, through the distortions and reformations ofgrammar and thought, that are in poetry. This is, along various axes, a Marxistsentiment. And it also suggests something as simple as the awakening andexpansion of consciousness. I believe this. But lately, as we seem to beentering an era that is sometimes called “after truth,” I also believe thatpoetic language — in its particularities and nonconformities, but also in itsperceptions, accuracies, and recordings — is necessary for holding on to howthings really are, as weird and complex as that realness is. Among otherthings, this is to say that poetry is also a form of vigilance and witness. Ina very pragmatic, honest sense, the “there there” is slipping away in socialmedia algorithms, AI, and political misinformation. Poetic language can andshould work to resist that. Though poetry’s relation to truth is an ancienttopic that could be exfoliated forever, one thing that is accurate, howevercomplicatedly, is that it can be “extra true,” so to speak. Practically, there’sa small audience, surely, especially in the US. But that doesn’t meanthe “role of the writer” is any less real.
8- Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult oressential (or both)?
I often findit helpful. It can be clarifying when it’s difficult to see the forest for thetrees.
9- What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to youdirectly)?
For poetry,“make it new”? For life, the Heart Sutra.
10- How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to translationsto essays)? What do you see as the appeal?
They’re doingquite different things, and they each involve or require, for me anyway, prettydifferent “mental states.” If I’m really in the rhythm or mood of poetry, itwould be difficult to pivot suddenly and try to write essayistic prose. So,they would come in different phases, at different times. That said, they arealso just different forms or focal points to which to turn attention, sosometimes the rotation is not as hard. All of the forms are difficult, but I’dsay that translating poetry especially can be very intense cognitive labor. Ina sense, it’s also nice, because you’re working off of something that isalready “there,” a surface, not trying to bring something into being all onyour own, as it were. Anyhow, each mode and activity can say and show differentthings and do so differently. And that multiplicity feels valuable.
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?
It’s a littlesporadic. When I was at Iowa, I had the open time to write every day. That wasalso part of the culture. Sit at the kitchen table, go to a café, write things.That’s the luxury and also (kind of) the responsibility. I don’t really havethe space to do that now. Hopefully there’s time and “head space” for notes,scraps of things. And then windows open where more fluid or focused work ispossible.
12- When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack ofa better word) inspiration?
Nature (orthe thought of it), woods, rivers, snow. And to other art, pretty much allgenres. For a bare language engine, Modernist fiction. For something like aworld aspect ratio, “art” film like Bergman or Tarkovsky.
13- What fragrance reminds you of home?
That’s abeautiful question. I’ll conflate it a bit with “childhood.” I grew up in morethan one place. Succinctly: for my father, woodsmoke; for my mother,honeysuckle.
14- 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?
Oh,absolutely. I’d say all of those. The natural world is extremely important tome, trees and forests especially. There’s a lot of math and science in my work,especially topology and geometry. Ballet, lots of music, maybe especially electronicand minimalist, and lots of painting, particularly abstraction of the 20thCentury.
15- What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply yourlife outside of your work?
For poetry:Paul Celan, Leslie Scalapino, Louis Zukofsky, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Emily Dickinson are some. For philosophy: Adorno, Thoreau, and Wittgenstein. And thenovelists I mention above, especially Woolf.
16- What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
In life, goto the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. In art, somehow make a film?
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 awriter?
Perhaps visualart curator. (Maybe of sculpture, specifically.) I’ve written on art historyand theory at points in my life, and a long time ago I almost worked at The Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. In completely different directions, maybe amath teacher or psychotherapist.
18- What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Perhaps it’sa cliché, but I honestly can’t imagine not doing it. It’s a fundamental part ofme and my perception of reality. It’s how I hold on to the world.
19- What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I will do2x2. László Krasznahorkai’s Seiobo There Below and J. H. Prynne’s Poems2016-2024; Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria and Hirokazu Kore-eda’sMonster.
20- What are you currently working on?
I’m working on a book called Firn.It’s a book of long poems/sections, and the title is a kind of snow. I alsofinished a translation of a book of Jean Daive’s that I’ve titled The FigureOutward; it’s coming out from Black Square Editions this spring.
