1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Walden Pond is my first published book, but it’s my third or fourth manuscript, depending on how I’m counting. My earliest manuscripts consisted of single poems that I had more or less haphazardly stapled together, the later ones were more interested in specific topics. With WP, I was narrowly interested in a broad constellation: nationhood, institutions of religion and language, the exchange of capital, how these make us identify and relate in codified ways. I was particularly interested in national narratives and figures, like Martin Luther, whose high German translation of the Bible paved the way for Germany to think of itself as a nation. I live in Germany, and for about two years, I would intentionally seek out sightseeing trips or site-specific “research” that made sense for the book. This was different to my writing process before, which entailed me sort of waiting for things to happen. I also started working on longer poems and series in this book, many of which didn’t even make it into the final manuscript. It was originally over 200 pages long…
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I started writing poems because I thought I didn’t have to know the rules. What others called “good” poems seemed to me totally random at the time (I was a teenager), at least compared to novels, which had (to me) clearer markers of success or failure. I’m not sure I still agree with my earlier self, but I still feel more freedom writing poems than I do in other genres.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
My tendency is to struggle for a long time around a single conceit, like for months. Then, after some break in routine, everything coheres and suddenly starts working, or I find a form that’s so much fun I can’t stop wringing it out. Still, most of my writing is a slog. My early drafts are quite messy and often quite different from their final versions.
4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
Since writing WP, I have become convinced of long poems. The longer the better! I like working on a “book” from the very beginning, but the “book” often splinters off into other iterations or siblings… I enjoy pursuing a question without having fully articulated it yet, because then everything I do has a poem underneath it. That sounds instrumentalizing, but it really isn’t – my poems often surprise me in how they confound my initial experience of something, be it a wedding or a group excursion into the woods or a doctor’s appointment.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love public readings. The poems that are best suited for public readings aren’t always the ones that make it into journals, sadly – which is why I like reading them, looking the audience in the eye. That’s my big thing: eye contact.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
This is a big question… I’m not sure I can answer completely. More recently, I’m thinking about the forces that allow or impel me to think of myself as a subject in the first place, someone with descriptive or denotative authority. Isn’t it curious – the fact that my experience can be trusted, at least in certain contexts? Why is that? If these are current questions, I think they’re also perennial questions writers ask – about relations, about power, about systems, about death, but also how we make sense of them, how we emote in them. For me, the central instrument of that sensemaking is my “I,” but it’s so strange and arbitrary that I have come to think of myself in this way, and not some other pronoun or grammatical unit of affiliation. It seems quite constructed, but also conflated with my whiteness, my German-Americanness. I also see this responsibility to look at that instrument as an instrument of power. If there were a question I’m trying to answer with my work, it would be “What is going on?” And then: “What happened?” And then: “What’s that?” Of course, the central question of “Who am I”, which is quite common in lyric poetry, attends as well… I don’t want to take anything for granted, and I don’t want to detect these big questions in monuments or grand historical gestures, but like, when I’m eating breakfast, for example, or watering my houseplants.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I think good writers make everything strange, or at least call attention to how “normalcy” is a motivated aesthetic device. To be more sentimental: it’s bizarre that we are on this earth, and equally bizarre that the world is the way it is! Isn’t it? I think writers should be as various as they want to be. Broadly speaking, I am glad that there are lots of different kinds of writers and texts.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
It’s absolutely essential. My work would be terrible without the input of readers, friends, and editors. The editors at Thirdhand Books (Lindsey Webb and Kylan Rice) absolutely made my first manuscript better than I could have alone.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
I am frequently told that taking a break will make my writing better. It’s true, but I don’t always follow the advice, and instead churn out dozens of middling poems until I become too frustrated with myself to go on. Then I take a break and things are indeed easier and more exciting.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose/reviews)? What do you see as the appeal?
I’m currently writing my dissertation, and it’s frightening how similar that process feels to me compared to writing poems, though on the surface the process would seem so opposed. I have the same associative compositional style and many similar formal questions when I’m writing the dissertation, i.e., a vague question that I can only articulate when seeing it written. I also research a lot, though it’s questionable how much of that research makes it into the poems themselves. And in both I force myself to slog through even when the productivity has long since waned. Unfortunately, the creative energy I bring to the dissertation drains the poems, so I have to be careful about how much I’m working on each.
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?
Sometimes, I do a daily writing practice, often sharing the poems in a poem-a-day doc started by a friend, poet Emily Bark Brown. Then I have months when I try to sit down twice a week to look at my poems or write a new one. Typically, it’s about four or five times a week, however. Before starting the PhD, writing was like popping a zit, a compulsion, because it felt so necessary compared to my day job. Now I have to be more intentional about carving out time and, more importantly, interest. I typically write in the mornings, after I get back from the gym and before I sit down for the “real work.” My best poems are written, however, when I haven’t scheduled writing and actually should be doing something else.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
With the exception of Wikipedia and select Youtube videos, the internet is horrible for my writing. When I feel stalled, I do something I (ideally) feel ambivalent about, like going to a museum or forcing myself into an uncomfortable social interaction. I like churning that ambivalence into a poem. The resulting poem is usually not very good but it is a good distraction. If I have the means, I skip town – breaks in routine are fantastic for my writing and usually the best way to start something new. I honestly think the best thing for my writing, however, is not writing. I have this compulsion to always be writing and I think it leads to bad poems.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Douglas firs! Gasoline.
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
I do like opera a lot, but I’m not sure it influences my work. Same goes for movies. I think fantasy RPGs have found their way into my poems, surprisingly – I like this idea of suspended contingency, of being someone else and trying things out, erasing them, moving around. I played Morrowind while writing Walden Pond. My boyfriend introduced me to it and I spent hundreds of hours there… I hadn’t really played any games before, besides The Sims.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
This is so hard, because there are so many. But I do wish I could write with the same unabashed ambition as Thomas Mann and Leo Tolstoy – I sense this desire to combine forms, fiction and history. I love reading both of their works, though I have to say I don’t always love the books themselves, if that makes sense. The books are so determined and controlled, and yet with historical distance it’s also possible to make diagnoses from afar – Magic Mountain is to me a book about this deadly idea of Europe as much as it is about sickness, time, and modernity.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I really would like to write a libretto. I have started a few but don’t have a composer yet, sadly.
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 a writer?
I honestly like being a poet, but I wish I had picked up training for a job that would allow me to earn a living wage without working more than 20 hours a week. Does that exist? I really love writing, but I hate having to earn money and worry about that.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I wish I knew! I enjoyed writing and it was easy to do logistically (I didn’t need extra equipment, or anyone supporting me). I think that was the main reason.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
The last great book I read was The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky and this time translated by Michael R. Katz. The last film I enjoyed was Dahomey, directed by Mati Diop.
20 - What are you currently working on?
I am pregnant and, if all goes well, my baby is due in 1.5
weeks. Pregnancy is a very strange experience and has, rather predictably,
consumed my writing. When I found out I was pregnant, I started a book called The Experiment, which is composed of
various little sections, but also inspired by a pregnancy experiment I’m taking
part in at the Berlin Philharmonic. (You’ll have to read the book to learn
more.) But the bigger, more looming
project is another one. For the past three years, I’ve been working on a
book-length poem about historical Hanses, titled HANS – “Hans” being the diminutive of Johannes in German, and
related to names John, Ian, Sean, Giovanni, Jean, Yahya, Johanna, Hannah, Ivan,
Anna, Nancy, and many more. The book is interested in historical reproduction
and repetition, which occurs through the same name in different persons. There
are a lot of historical Hanses that could make it into the book. The issue is
actually keeping the number down…
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
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