12 or 20 (second series) questions with Hannah Brooks-Motl
HannahBrooks-Motl
wasborn and raised in Wisconsin. She is author of the poetry collections
TheNew Years
(2014), M (2015),
Earth
(2019),and Ultraviolet of the Genuine (2025), as well as chapbooksfrom the Song Cave, arrow as aarow, and The Year. She lives in westernMassachusetts.1 - How did your first book or chapbook change yourlife? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feeldifferent?
My first book came out in 2014. I had the sense that something elseshould happen then, so I did a variety of things that now seem unbelievable tome—danced it, chanted it, etc. I haven’t pursued such activities with recentbooks, but the experience relaxed my relation to ideas about “the work”generally. I’d say it helped me welcome contingency, accident, potentialembarrassment. Otherwise, there’s a general kind of vibe that persists acrossthe books, sort of earthy and philosophical (I hope).
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction ornon-fiction?
As a reader, I came first to novels. My family took many cross-countrydrives when I was a kid. I read for the days it took us to get somewhere.Non-stop, fully immersed—that’s my dream. Poetry arrived in the form of my mucholder sister, who was a poet then (now she’s a forensic pathologist); her 90spoet life seemed impossibly glamorous. She let me hang out in bars with her andher writer friends when I was a teen.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Doesyour writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first draftsappear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out ofcopious notes?
I write a lot in notebooks, accruing language and concerns. At some pointthe feeling mysteriously arrives that a poem should result. The poems undulateacross the many days or weeks of gathering and jots. I sort of find them there,lead them out.
4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of shortpieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a"book" from the very beginning?
I wrote one book “project,” involving the essays of Michel de Montaigne.Mainly now I let reading, practice, life be my guide.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Areyou the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I like readings, sometimes very much. Sometimes a poetry reading willmanifest and crystallize the happy, nervy, hopeful energy of people together, yearningto be.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kindsof questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even thinkthe current questions are?
One concern is with poetry’srescue of discourse, where the poem, or the kind of thinking a poem is, can bea true statement, albeit one that we only very briefly inhabit or are allowed. Recently,I’m invested—to my surprise—in rehabilitating the old quarrel between Shelleyand Wordsworth, via Mill, poems of the head vs poems of the heart, to ask: whychoose? As in, why is that the choice we are asked to make again andagain? There’s (always) questions of what reading is good for; in what waysdoes poetry do a kind of (moral) philosophizing; interest in humans, theirbehaviors and reasons (actual, believed), and the lives of creatures.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in largerculture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer shouldbe?
Writers and artists and thinkers I admire tend to believe in some different or otherreality, the pursuit and discovery of which language, image, aestheticexpression uniquely allow. Art is a bridge one walks on and toward—an earthy,clumsy substance and a spiritual, extravagant one. It often encodes a personallonging but it’s also social, environmental, historical, political. Who but writersand artists will honor these stubborn, modest, generous dreams?
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficultor essential (or both)?
I am a scholarly editor—I mean I edit monographs, edited collections,journal articles. I was an acquisitions editor for a university press full-timefor years, now I do free-lance developmental editing. I have lots to say aboutediting and its importance, but yes, I think working with editors is essential.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily givento you directly)?
I have a poem in my latest book that includes the line “Keep going +believe = ‘advice.’” It’s a joke but not a joke.
10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you evenhave one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
Most days I get up very early to write. People used to sleepdifferently—a first sleep, an interlude around 3:00 am, a second sleep. Thishistoric interlude is where a lot of my work’s language arrives.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (forlack of a better word) inspiration?
Philosophy. Biography. Walks in the woods.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Cut grass, violet skies with a thunderstorm somewhere, slight farm.
13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but arethere any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, scienceor visual art?
Working and being with animals. Listening to the anecdotes of others.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, orsimply your life outside of your work?
Iris Murdoch, Marguerite Young, Lorine Niedecker, Paul Valéry, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Ernst Bloch, Paul Goodman, Wong May, Dan Bevacqua, Peter Gizzi, Emily Hunt, Sara Nicholson, Ben Estes, Alan Felsenthal, Kai Ihns,Hai-dang Phan, Patrick Morrissey.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Hike the AT. Live in France. Write a play with my husband and stage it inour house.
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 notbeen a writer?
I frequently wish I had been an ethologist. It’s the science of, someonehas said, interviewing animals in their own language.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
My other artistic talents were minimal. Other forms of more regular orprofessionally legible work leave me feeling half-alive.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Last great book was Unclay by TF Powys; last great film was a rewatchingof The Souvenir by Joanna Hogg.
19 - What are you currently working on?
More poems and a novel about a self-taught artist in rural Illinois.
