12 or 20 (second series) questions with Lesley Wheeler
Lesley Wheeler, Poetry Editor of Shenandoah, is the author ofMycocosmic, runner-up for the Dorset Prize and her sixth poetry collection.Her other books include the hybrid memoir Poetry’s Possible Worlds andthe novel Unbecoming; previous poetry books include The State She’s In and Heterotopia, winner of the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize.Wheeler’s work has received support from the Fulbright Foundation, the NationalEndowment for the Humanities, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Workshop, andthe Sewanee Writers Workshop. Her poems and essays have appeared in Poetry,Poets & Writers, Kenyon Review Online, Ecotone, Guernica,Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Virginia and teachesat W&L University.
1 - How did your firstbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous?How does it feel different?
This is weird to saybecause poetry books earn virtually nothing, but the biggest way publicationchanged my life was economic. Publication is artistically validating and joyous,and those first books in each genre transformed my sense of identity, but inthe academic reward system, books enable tenure and promotion.
Mydebut full-length poetry collection, Heathen, was, like many firstbooks, a best-of album honed at live readings. Mycocosmic is a concept album aboutthe underworlds that support above-ground transformation.
2 - How did you come topoetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Poetry suits me becauseI love sound patterns and my brain prefers associative to logical moves. Iwrote fiction constantly as a child, though, and I’ve circled back to bring thatgenre into my writing life again.
3 - How long does ittake to 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?
Initial drafts tend to flowrapidly: the bad first draft of my novel Unbecoming, for example, emerged in a seven-week writing binge. It’s veryrare, though, for me to draft a poem or anything else that doesn’t then requiremassive revision. I tend to put a draft away for months, pull it out for a radicaloverhaul, and repeat the process a few times. It takes me a long time to seethe work from a critical distance.
4 - Where does a poemusually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combininginto a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the verybeginning?
I’ve worked both ways,but most commonly: I write by impulse until I accumulate a pile of poems. ThenI sift through them, thinking about throughlines. Finally, I start writing andrevising toward that throughline, and the book comes together. “Underpoem [FireFungus]” in Mycocosmic, a verse essay that unites the book by threadingacross the bottom of every page, was probably the last poem I wrote for thecollection.
5 - Are public readingspart of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer whoenjoys doing readings?
I always feel lucky to givea reading to a live audience—to connect with people through poetry in real time.I enjoy conversations about poetry even more, whether in interviews orclassrooms. Like a lot of professors, though, I’m an introvert-extrovert: it’sfun to ham it up, but then I have to pay myself back with solitude.
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?
I tell students when Iteach speculative fiction that its operative questions are “what’s real, whatmatters.” That’s true for poetry as well, whether it arises from a documentaryimpulse, relies on autobiography, imitates prayer, or springs from some otherfield. For the past ten years I’ve also been probing the question “who am Inow?” Midlife transforms a person in many ways, but it’s electrifying to readabout microbiota, too. If 80% of the DNA in my body is not human, is it in anyway meaningful to use first-person singular pronouns? Obviously I’m doing soright now, but I’m interrogating the habit.
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?
It’s incredibly various,thank god. I’m so glad there are activist poets, linguistic experimenters,spiritual poets, entertainers, and more.
8 - Do you find theprocess of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
To engage deeply withsomeone else’s work in progress is an act of incredible generosity. I find thatpush-and-pull rewarding. Yes, occasionally I’ve thought an editor got somethingwrong or, ouch, could have managed their tone a bit better, but in poetry, forme, that’s never, never seemed motivated by ego. Literary editing is a labor oflove.
9 - What is the bestpiece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
I always give adifferent answer to this question, but what’s on my mind today is somethingAsali Solomon tells her fiction students: the first obligation of any writer isto be interesting.
10 - How easy has itbeen for you to move between genres (poetry to non-fiction to critical prose)?What do you see as the appeal?
I never stopped writingcritical prose or had trouble toggling between criticism and poetry. Writing literaryprose, though, is not, as I once foolishly thought, a natural meeting pointbetween the two. Managing verb tenses alone—wow! As in poetry, the writer ofprose narrative is always juggling the question of what to explain and what toelide, but the math is fundamentally different.
11 - What kind ofwriting routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does atypical day (for you) begin?
I wake up slowly, drinka pot of tea, do puzzles. When I’m alert, I reluctantly drag myself to thedesk, but I’m happy once I get going, even if I’m mainly prepping for class. Actualwriting and revision happen only sporadically during the academic terms butdaily during summers and sabbaticals—I’m pretty disciplined then.
12 - When your writinggets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word)inspiration?
I read or take a walk,trying not to worry about it, because the writing always comes back. If movingmy body or immersion in someone else’s book doesn’t work, I just switch gears.It’s good to have multiple projects going so there’s always a productive way toprocrastinate.
13 - What fragrancereminds you of home?
Bus exhaust in the rainreminds me of my mother, which isn’t very flattering, but when I was six wevisited her home in Liverpool for the first time. Everything amazed me, thatfirst time on a plane, even the smelly rank of buses that greeted us at theairport.
14 - David W. McFaddenonce said that books come from books, but are there any other forms thatinfluence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Walking around a museumoften jolts me into poetry. Mycocosmic came largely from scientificreading about mycelium and biochemical transformations. TheState She’s In drawsat least as much from history and politics. Poetry’sPossible Worldswas inspired by narrative theory and cognitive science almost as much astwenty-first-century poetry. Sources are always myriad—the whole world canexcite the writing impulse, if you’re paying attention—but some projects leanon one discipline more than another.
15 - What other writersor writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of yourwork?
Emily Dickinson, H.D.,Gwendolyn Brooks, and Langston Hughes are poets I steer through the world by. Iread fiction daily, and when the news is this terrible, I lean toward mysteriesand fantasy. This year there’s been a lot of Martha Wells, T. Kingfisher, andJohn Dickson Carr.
16 - What would you liketo do that you haven't yet done?
I aspire to write abook-length poem, but everything keeps splintering on me. I came closest in aterza rima novella called “The Receptionist” in TheReceptionist and Other Tales. That was crazy fun to write, but could I sustainthe energy in a less narrative mode? We shall see!
17 - If you could pickany other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do youthink you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Making some kind of artwould always have been an avocation. Teaching undergraduates is a good fit forme as a day job, to the point that I wonder if any other paying employmentcould have satisfied me as much. Honestly, I have no idea.
18 - What made youwrite, as opposed to doing something else?
I loved painting anddrawing when I was young, but AP Physics clashed with Art in my high schoolschedule and my father insisted on the former. I envy singers, but I can’tcarry a tune.
19 - What was the lastgreat book you read? What was the last great film?
I have trouble with theword “great.” It’s not that I don’t make judgments constantly, I’m veryopinionated, but it suggests stable hierarchies of value I don’t believe in.Context matters so much: great for what, for whom, where, when? I still feelawe when I reread “The Book of Ephraim,” Life on Mars, Montage of a Dream Deferred, or just about anything by Ursula K. Le Guin, but last year Ireread Anne Carson’s Autobiography ofRed, which has always inspired thesame feeling, and it wobbled for reasons I can’t articulate yet. Was I just ina bad space that week? I don’t think A Complete Unknown was a perfectmovie by a long shot, but it was utterly absorbing and great to talk aboutlater.
20 - What are youcurrently working on?
I’vebeen writing poems that in various ways invoke the spiral as subject matter orformal principle. I also have a novel ms, Grievous,under consideration, and I’mdrafting a nonfiction collection with the working title Community with the Dead: Reading ModernismStrangely.
