12 or 20 (second series) questions with Martha Ronk
Martha Ronk
has had intersecting careers as aprofessor of Renaissance Literature and as a poet. She received her PhD fromYale University and has written numerous articles on Shakespeare’s plays,focusing on the interplay of the verbal and visual—a topic in her poetry aswell. Teaching classes on 17th century literature and on modern andcontemporary poetry revived her practice of writing poems leading to poetryworkshops at Bennington College. She has taught at Tufts University, ImmaculateHeart College, Otis College of Art and Design, and for most of her career atOccidental College in Los Angeles where for many years she taught creativewriting and coordinated the campus-wide Creative Writing Program. Ronk has published eleven books of poetry, mostrecently with Omnidawn Press: CLAY bodies+ matter 2025, The Place One Is2022, Silences 2019, Ocular Proof 2016 on photographs, and Transfer of Qualities 2013 (the title aquotation from Henry James), long-listed for the National Book Award. Also in2022 Parlor Press issued A Myth ofAriadne. Her book, Partially Kept,published with Nightboat Books, is in dialogue with Sir Thomas Browne’s Garden of Cyrus; Vertigo, a National Poetry Series selection with Coffee House Presspays homage to W.G. Sebald, and why/whynot, UC Press, plays off to be or notto be and is indebted to the play, Hamlet. In alandscape of having to repeat, influenced by Freud’s essay on “ScreenMemory,” won the PEN USA best poetry book of 2005.
Often in dialogue with other authors, Ronk seesher work taking shape in the spaces between various forms, vocabularies, andgenres, each volume operating as a coherent whole rather than a series ofindividual poems. Besides the profoundinfluences of other authors, Ronk has also focused her poems on paintings,photographs, ceramics, and photograms, and many of her books include ekphrasticpoems. Her collection of short stories, GlassGrapes and other stories, utilizes a variety of obsessive, unreliablenarrators; and her book on food, Displeasuresof the Table—semi-autobiographical, satiric, appreciative of allcooks—recommends reading over eating.
She has received a NEA award, had residencies atMacDowell Colony and Djerassi. She received the Sterling Award for scholarlyexcellence at Occidental College. Ronk has had readings at numerous bookstoresand other venues, was a visiting writer at the University of Montana and atGeorge Mason University. She was an editor of poetry books published by LittoralPress, and has had work included in eight anthologies, most recently North American Women Poets of the 21stCentury, Wesleyan 2021.
1 - How did your first book change yourlife? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feeldifferent?
I wrote CLAYbodies+matter when I returned to the potter's wheel after a longacademic career at Occidental College. It is the practice of making pots on thewheel that is the change in my life. The Clay book is different since itfocuses on a specific practice, on the merging of hands and clay, on theemptiness inside a bowl, and on another form of practicing as writing poetry isa practice. I found myself working at both, revising in both arenas, doingresearch, and thinking about the ways in which they reflect one another. Clayis far messier. I so much enjoyed reading about Japanese practices, theirlong tradition in clay.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, asopposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Itaught 16th and 17th century poetry, wrote a dissertation on Milton, taughtShakespeare. I love John Donne. I was always drawn to poetry even as a child. Iwrote one book of short fiction, Glass Grapes, because I wanted tocreate an obsessive narrator. I am not sure why this seemed to me to befiction, but it did. I also find that poetry, for me, has to wrestle more withmy interest in the visual. Although many poets don't like to use imagery,I do; I also like to write about photography and paintings: ekphrastic poems
3 - How long does it take to start anyparticular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is ita slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, ordoes your work come out of copious notes?
It has depended onthe particular project. Some come quickly or in tandem with an experience.Right now I am writing poems that seem distinct from one another,, but it isearly days. A book usually takes 4 years and I mean for each project to be aunified book.
4 - Where does a poem usuallybegin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into alarger project, or are you working on a "book" from the verybeginning?
I write drafts and individualpoems until I have a fairly firm sense of what "book" I am workingon; most of my books have been in dialogue with other authors: W.G. Sebalf,Henry James, Shakespeare's Hamlet, or specific places. I like having a partner,another to influence my narrow views.
5 - Are public readings part of orcounter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doingreadings?
As I've gotten older I've been less andless interested and able to travel to give readings. I always enjoyed them, butrecently not so much.I always liked listening to the others I was reading with.I'm reading for Omnidawn on Zoom on July 13 with others published in the fall.
6 - Do you have any theoreticalconcerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answerwith your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
It seems to me that manyrecent books concern gender, immigration, grief & war, and displacements ofvarious sorts. There are so many gifted young writers from other countries. Itis important for poetry to address these issues. I have written an unpublishedmanuscript on climate change; I will continue to write more about trees, birds,drought, and the environment. (A few poems to be published by The ColoradoReview.) As a past teacher, I find myself interested in my relationship to pastauthors. I am interested in fragility (bodies, clay pots, cultures), in poetrythat manages to include conceptual as well as linguistic work: that is, workthat asks for deep engagement and thinking. Work that I want to re-read.
7 – What do you see the current role ofthe writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you thinkthe role of the writer should be?
See #6
8 - Do you find the process of workingwith an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I wish Ihad an editor. I do have a poetry group that meets every few weeks and I getgood critical readings from the other poets. It helps enormously to have otherpoets respond to one's work before it goes public.
9 - What is the best piece of adviceyou've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
"To be a goodpoet you have to have a good seat." That is, show up. Practice. Show upagain. Etc. It is also good to wait sometime to review one’s work.
10 - How easy has it been for you tomove between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
As an academic I wrote academic articles on Shakespeare'splays; I also got up early to write poetry before leaving to take my son to school and me to class. I likethat both require precision, research, reading, revision etc. I do lessacademic work now.
11 - What kind of writing routine doyou tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you)begin?
I write something most days; Iprefer early morning. Other poets often provide inspiration. Also form itselfcan inspire: choosing to write prose poems or epigrams or dialogues or longpoems. Recently, I found myself inspired by memories of paintings ,memories of people I've lost track of or lost. I also like walking:sometimes, if I’m lucky, a word or stairway or song will fall out as I’mwalking: also there are all the things one sees: clouds, trash, a window ledge,leaf.
12 - When your writing gets stalled,where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
13 - What was your last Hallowe'encostume?
none. I watched achild put on heavy make-up to be a cat.
14 - David W. McFadden once said thatbooks come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work,whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Yes, paintings and especially black and white photographs: I wrote an entirebook on photographs: “Ocular Proof.” My first husband was a photographer. I nowlook at pictures by great potters; I love the paintings of Giorgio Morandi. Ilike photographs of reflections in water, the idea of correspondences. New toCA I wrote a book about the desert (and HIV): “Desert Geometries,” and anothercalled “State of Mind.” The paintings of Ariadne by De Chirico influenced my bookon A Myth of Ariadne from ParlorPress: focused on the vulnerability of women, women’s bodies.
15 - What other writers or writings areimportant for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
W.G. Sebald. Edmund De Waal. mostrecently. Many poets. The Autobiography of Red. Shakespearemost especially because his plays were central to my teaching forso long. I was moved by the writer Claire Keegan’s new novels.
16 - What would you like to do that youhaven't yet done?
I wish I hadtraveled more. Scenes fill up the brain: I went to Sicily most recently andkeep seeing temples in my mind’s eye. Andmosaics. And the view to Africa.
17 - If you could pick any otheroccupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think youwould have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I think that moving from the eastcoast to LA had a profound effect on me as I found it strange, “familiar/unfamiliar’ asI’ve written in The Place One Is.
18 - What made you write, as opposed todoing something else?
I couldn’t seem to help it. I think Ineeded to say things I believed I couldn’t say in any other way.
19 - What was the last great book youread? What was the last great film?
I liked the films on tv: Wolf Hall,The Fall. I listened on Audible to Little Dorrit and havecome to appreciate Dickens and his skewering of the wealthy as I didn't ingraduate school. I'll never tire of re-reading Hamlet.
20 - What are you currently working on?
I'm trying to write about "thespecious present" (William James) and time. Trying the operative word.Failing. Etc. Don't all beginnings feel like tripping and falling and feelingas awkward as possible? I keep asking “what is a moment?” How might I define it or live it or imaginethe ends of my own time? Reading his words on time stick with me, pushed me totry to find other ways of expressing the way amoment contains both past and future as well.
