Christian Schlegel, The Blackbird

 

in this procedure of mine         you have a topic and get into it in public

            and it responds to the group of people            and to the place    and the

presence of danniel                  and the art on the walls            so i’m going to do one of

those now        because i’ve read from my book a couple of times                and it’s 

almost impossible to read from it                    why is it impossible?                              well

it’s very hard to capture my own way again                              not that my way is so great 

the first time                but it’s hard to find it in the book                    and you’ll see how

  it’s lineated it’s somewhat idiosyncratic                      harder to do that aloud again (“delhi”)

I’m fascinated by the myriad readability and expansive, conversational thinking of Somerville, MA poet Christian Schlegel through his third full-length title (and the first of his I’ve seen, I think), The Blackbird (Brooklyn NY: Beautiful Days Press, 2025), produced as “Beautiful Days Press #16.” Following his poetry titles honest james (The Song Cave, 2015) and ryman (Ricochet, 2022), the five extended poems that make up The Blackbird follow a structure developed by the late American poet David Antin (1932-2016), a name specifically referenced as part of the second page of the text, as Schlegel’s text appear adapted from informal talks, whether composed as texts read aloud or, as the text itself suggests, lectures informally presented off-the-cuff and transcribed (and shaped, at least visually) as individual, extended pieces. The performative element is fundamental to these works, and these poem-talks, poem-essays, seem the product of a writer/critic thoroughly aware and prepared through years of research, thinking and writing, presented in the moment, responding to the space and audience of each particular lecture. One might compare these pieces, also, to those infamous lectures the late American poet Jack Spicer (1925-1965) presented in Vancouver during the early 1980s, collected by Peter Gizzi in the house that jack built: The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer (Wesleyan University Press, 1998; 2025).

While Antin is referenced early in the first piece, it is where Schlegel begins to speak of American singer-songwriter Jason Molina (1973-2013) that provides a further, separate insight into his approach through these pieces: “two things i want to round off // on molina the first is that   his insistence i would argue                      on capturing the // artwork in the moment of its unfolding or including within it the possibilities of its falling // apart                 had something i think to do with his negotiation of openness and closure //                     he wanted things                or intuitively understood                that // his art worked best when it operated in that resonating chamber [.]” In a way, this might be one of the central structures of these talks, allowing for both openness and failure, negotiating all the possibilities of what might fail and what might land. These pieces are expansive and deeply intimate, managing a conversational and intellectual liveliness across the page in real time, the notation of words presumably transcribed and mapped across each page a rhythm, a syntax, that feels entirely natural.

Sandra Doller, Not Now Now

My review of Sandra Doller's Not Now Now (Rescue Press, 2025) is now online at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics. Catch my review of her collaborative (with Ben Doller) The Yesterday Project (Sidebrow Books, 2016) here, my review of her Chora (Ahsahta Press, 2010) here, and my review of her Leave Your Body Behind (Les Figues, 2015) here.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Barbara Sibbald

Barbara Sibbald [photo credit: Curtis Perry] is an award-winning journalist and author of five works of fiction. Almost English (Bayeux Arts, 2025) is a historical novel based on her Eurasian great-grandparents in India. Her short-fiction collection, The Museum of Possibilities (The Porcupine’s Quill), won a gold Foreword Indies Award and silver eLit. Her novel, Regarding Wanda (Bunkhouse Press), was short-listed for the Ottawa Book Award, and The Book of Love: Guidance in Affairs of the Heart (General Store Publishing House) was favourably reviewed. Kitchen Chronicles (Ottawa Magazine 2013/14) is an online novel told in 52 installments (now posted at www.barbarasibbald.com).When she’s not writing, she’s gardening. Barbara lives in a hidden in-fill house in downtown Ottawa with her husband, the visual artist Stuart Kinmond. 

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

As I held my first book of fiction I felt I had arrived. Pay-off after all those years of toiling in obscurity (aside from a few stories published in literary journals). That novel, Regarding Wanda, was a bildungsroman, heavily based on my experiences growing up in a military family, my overbearing father, my work as a small-town journalist and an eye impairment I developed in my early 30s. Aside from that it’s all made up! My most recent work, Almost English, is the result of years of research into the British Raj and my great-grandparents. Stephen Turner was a quarter Indian, but to the late 19th century Raj he was wholly native: underpaid, underemployed and mocked. Nevertheless, Stephen and his wife Lily Turner never wavered in their struggle to belong to the British establishment in Northern India from 1885 to 1912. This is the story of their quest, their frequent disappointments and their enduring love. It’s also my story. I break the fourth wall as the novel unfolds to recount my parallel search for community. This genre-bending work, which includes family photographs, paintings and sketches, brings a fresh perspective to this era. This structure, a melange of historic fiction and autobiography felt necessary, and I think the story is much richer as a result. It was also risky; publishers were wary

There has been a progression in my work from essentially auto-fiction, to heavily researched historic fiction interspersed with short non-fiction essays that riff on the fictional text. It’s more experimental.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?

Actually, I came to journalism first. I wanted to write short stories (poetry being somewhat mysterious to me) but knew I had to make a living, so I studied journalism at Carleton University and made my living for decades as a journalist, but only ever 4 days a week. Day 5 was always for fiction writing.

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?

Starting, getting that initial idea, comes quickly. The first draft often does as well. But then I edit endlessly, producing one version after another, second-guessing, fine tuning. I also rely on feedback from my writing group and other literary friends. The process works, but it is time consuming.

4 - Where does a work of prose 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?

Regarding Wanda began as a series of short stories. I had envisioned it as a story cycle, a structure that I enjoy reading (think Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town), wherein the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. But then I showed it to Audrey Thomas, my mentor at the Banff School of Writing back in the day and she said it was a novel. And so it was.  It didn’t require much to weave the stories together. Since then, my novels have always started as a larger work. I still write short fiction, but it’s destined to stay as such; I feel no compunction to expand on those works.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

 It took me a while to get used to public readings; I was just so nervous. I’m not now, and I enjoy reading my stories aloud to an audience. Reading aloud is definitely part of the writing process as well; a story has to sound right!

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?

My work revolves around notions of belonging, whether to a community, a “significant” other, a family or a group of friends. I grew up as an itinerant air force brat moving every 3 or 4 years. This left me without roots, or a place. In different ways, each of my books deals with this central issue.

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?

Writers allow readers to take deep emotional dives (as opposed to the superficial dog paddling on the web) into relevant topics. The best writers bring fresh perspectives, well-researched information with emotional resonance, and perhaps a glimpse of the past and future. Given climate change, I think the role of the writer should be provocateur and soothsayer.

8 – Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

Editors are essential. Full stop. I always save up so I can hire one, and I believe this has helped me get published. It also helps me make the work as good as it can be. Best to get the heavy lifting out of the way before approaching publishing houses (some of which go very light on the editing).

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Virginia Woolf said: “So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.”

This is the key to inspiration; you have to care about what you write.

10 – How easy has it been for you to move between genres (short stories to journalism to the novel)? What do you see as the appeal?

Journalism, at its heart, is story telling. I enjoy writing profiles and these in particular allow scope for telling people’s stories. Moving from that to short stories was really not a stretch at all. And then, I wove those stories into my first novel. So, the whole trajectory had a rather natural progression.

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?

When I was enmeshed in researching and writing Almost English, I was hard at it from early a.m. until mid afternoon or later. But since completing that, I’ve concentrated on publishing it and been less rigorous about my creative writing. I usually manage two or three mornings a week on fiction. BUT I do read and write poetry first thing every morning. And I have grand plans for the new year; hoping to write fiction five mornings a week (no email or scrolling till noon seems a good starting point).

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I turn to books I know I love (Woolf or Ondaatje for example) or new authors who have been recommended. I also dip into old how-to favs like Anne Lamont’s bird by bird.

And sometimes, I go to the art gallery and spend times with pictorial pals.

13 – What fragrance reminds you of home?

Pledge wood cleaner. My mom was a compulsive cleaner. I am not.

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?

Gardening is profoundly influential. For me, the zen like space gardening creates in my life allows my mind to trip off in new directions. It helps to get my hands dirty too!

I also find walking, especially in a forest, is very conducive to imaginative trolling. My therapist recommends spending an hour, three days a week, in nature. I aim for that.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

There’s a long list, but here are a few: Sigrid Nunez, Hilary Mantel, Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes, Alice Munro (I know, but her writing is stellar), etc. etc.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Publish a chap book of poetry. I came to poetry during COVID and found I loved it. I now write a poem nearly every day. Most matter (to me) for mere minutes, but some have potential.

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?

Landscape architecture holds great appeal. I love working with plants and I love to design. I suppose I would end up writing about it too!

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

I knew when I was 12 that I wanted to be a writer. I wrote poems, a play and wee stories back then. I just loved this act of creation: imaginative and so enjoyable. I never even considered doing anything else!

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

The vulnerables, Sigrid Nunez: understated but so astute and the writing zings. I adore her work.  

The room next door Dir. Pedro Almodovar. Starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore. An adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s novel What are you going through. Deep and dark, about end of life, about the degradation of the earth and depression. A thought jarring film.

20 - What are you currently working on?

Marketing my new historic novel, Almost English, seems to take up most of my time, but I will soon get to more creative work. I want to delve into my poetry drafts to find some pearls (I hope) and craft them into something fuller. I also have a half-dozen short stories finished for a new collection. Maybe. And I’m considering writing a novel that somehow melds gardening with historic fiction. TBD.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Spotlight series #117 : Nada Gordon

The one hundred and seventeenth in my monthly "spotlight" series, each featuring a different poet with a short statement and a new poem or two, is now online, featuring Brooklyn poet Nada Gordon.

The first eleven in the series were attached to the Drunken Boat blog, and the series has so far featured poets including Seattle, Washington poet Sarah Mangold, Colborne, Ontario poet Gil McElroy, Vancouver poet Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Ottawa poet Jason Christie, Montreal poet and performer Kaie Kellough, Ottawa poet Amanda Earl, American poet Elizabeth Robinson, American poet Jennifer Kronovet, Ottawa poet Michael Dennis, Vancouver poet Sonnet L’Abbé, Montreal writer Sarah Burgoyne, Fredericton poet Joe Blades, American poet Genève Chao, Northampton MA poet Brittany Billmeyer-Finn, Oji-Cree, Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer from Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1 territory) poet, critic and editor Joshua Whitehead, American expat/Barcelona poet, editor and publisher Edward Smallfield, Kentucky poet Amelia Martens, Ottawa poet Pearl Pirie, Burlington, Ontario poet Sacha Archer, Washington DC poet Buck Downs, Toronto poet Shannon Bramer, Vancouver poet and editor Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Vancouver poet Geoffrey Nilson, Oakland, California poets and editors Rusty Morrison and Jamie Townsend, Ottawa poet and editor Manahil Bandukwala, Toronto poet and editor Dani Spinosa, Kingston writer and editor Trish Salah, Calgary poet, editor and publisher Kyle Flemmer, Vancouver poet Adrienne Gruber, California poet and editor Susanne Dyckman, Brooklyn poet-filmmaker Stephanie Gray, Vernon, BC poet Kerry Gilbert, South Carolina poet and translator Lindsay Turner, Vancouver poet and editor Adèle Barclay, Thorold, Ontario poet Franco Cortese, Ottawa poet Conyer Clayton, Lawrence, Kansas poet Megan Kaminski, Ottawa poet and fiction writer Frances Boyle, Ithica, NY poet, editor and publisher Marty Cain, New York City poet Amanda Deutch, Iranian-born and Toronto-based writer/translator Khashayar Mohammadi, Mendocino County writer, librarian, and a visual artist Melissa Eleftherion, Ottawa poet and editor Sarah MacDonell, Montreal poet Simina Banu, Canadian-born UK-based artist, writer, and practice-led researcher J. R. Carpenter, Toronto poet MLA Chernoff, Boise, Idaho poet and critic Martin Corless-Smith, Canadian poet and fiction writer Erin Emily Ann Vance, Toronto poet, editor and publisher Kate Siklosi, Fredericton poet Matthew Gwathmey, Canadian poet Peter Jaeger, Birmingham, Alabama poet and editor Alina Stefanescu, Waterloo, Ontario poet Chris Banks, Chicago poet and editor Carrie Olivia Adams, Vancouver poet and editor Danielle Lafrance, Toronto-based poet and literary critic Dale Martin Smith, American poet, scholar and book-maker Genevieve Kaplan, Toronto-based poet, editor and critic ryan fitzpatrick, American poet and editor Carleen Tibbetts, British Columbia poet nathan dueck, Tiohtiá:ke-based sick slick, poet/critic em/ilie kneifel, writer, translator and lecturer Mark Tardi, New Mexico poet Kōan Anne Brink, Winnipeg poet, editor and critic Melanie Dennis Unrau, Vancouver poet, editor and critic Stephen Collis, poet and social justice coach Aja Couchois Duncan, Colorado poet Sara Renee Marshall, Toronto writer Bahar Orang, Ottawa writer Matthew Firth, Victoria poet Saba Pakdel, Winnipeg poet Julian Day, Ottawa poet, writer and performer nina jane drystek, Comox BC poet Jamie Sharpe, Canadian visual artist and poet Laura Kerr, Quebec City-area poet and translator Simon Brown, Ottawa poet Jennifer Baker, Rwandese Canadian Brooklyn-based writer Victoria Mbabazi, Nova Scotia-based poet and facilitator Nanci Lee, Irish-American poet Nathanael O'Reilly, Canadian poet Tom Prime, Regina-based poet and translator Jérôme Melançon, New York-based poet Emmalea Russo, Toronto-based poet, editor and critic Eric Schmaltz, San Francisco poet Maw Shein Win, Toronto-based writer, playwright and editor Daniel Sarah Karasik, Ottawa poet and editor Dessa Bayrock, Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia poet Alice Burdick, poet, writer and editor Jade Wallace, San Francisco-based poet Jennifer Hasegawa, California poet Kyla Houbolt, Toronto poet and editor Emma Rhodes, Canadian-in-Iowa writer Jon Cone, Edmonton/Sicily-based poet, educator, translator, researcher, editor and publisher Adriana Oniță, California-based poet, scholar and teacher Monica Mody, Ottawa poet and editor AJ Dolman, Sudbury poet, critic and fiction writer Kim Fahner, Canadian poet Kemeny Babineau, Indiana poet Nate Logan, Toronto poet and editor Michael Boughn, North Georgia poet and editor Gale Marie Thompson, award-winning poet Ellen Chang-Richardson, Montreal-based poet, professor and scholar of feminist poetics, Jessi MacEachern, Toronto poet and physician Dr. Conor Mc Donnell, San Francisco poet Micah Ballard, Montreal poet Misha Solomon, Ottawa writer and editor Mahaila Smith, American poet and asemic artist Terri Witek, Ottawa-based freelance editor and writer Margo LaPierre, Ottawa poet Helen Robertson, Oakville poet Mandy Sandhu, New Westminster, British Columbia poet Christina Shah, poet, critic, curator and former publisher Geoffrey Young, Calgary poet Anna Veprinska and American expat poet in London Katie Ebbit!
 
The whole series can be found online here.

reading in the margins : Susan Howe and Stephen Collis

I've been working for a few years, since the Covid-era, short essays on works by prose writers, most of which I've been posting over at the substack for a while now, and two of the latest have now landed: on the work of American poet and critic Susan Howe, and on the work of Vancouver poet, critic and editor Stephen Collis. Prior pieces have been posting for a while now, on works by Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Ernest Hemingway, Joy Williams, Kristjana Gunnars, Gail Scott, Jean McKay, Anne Carson, Sheila Heti, Stuart Ross, Christine McNair, Sina Queyras, Jordan Abel, Karla Kelsey and Lydia Davis. You can see where my reading interest lay: a bit lyric, a bit off-side. Certainly not the straightforward narrative. I don't know: I might be half-way through a manuscript of such? "reading in the margins: essays on prose writers." Either way, I know there are further to go. Michael Ondaatje? Dany Laferriere? Sheila Watson? L. Maud Montgomery? Elizabeth Hay? Elizabeth Smart? Ken Sparling? John Lavery?

12 or 20 (second series) questions with E.G. Cunningham

E. G. Cunningham is the author of several books of poetry, most recently the text-image collection Field Notes (River River Books, 2025).  Her work has appeared in The Abandoned Playground, Barrow Street, Colorado Review, Fugue, The Nation, Poetry London, The Poetry Review, Southern Humanities Review, ZYZZYVA, and other publications. She received the LUMINA Nonfiction Award for her lyric essay “The Exedra,” and the Judith Siegel Pearson Award for her collection of lyric vignettes, Women & Children. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Edmonds College in Western Washington. 

1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

Once a book is in the world, there’s a sense of having closed a door on something—some question, preoccupation, mode of dealing in language, specific investigation. It’s at that point that I tend to feel a kind of wistful relief: relief at being released from the demands of the project, a wistfulness for the process, for the book’s pre-publication possibilities. Each of my books has its own set of concerns; there are continuities, of course, such as a fascination with time, memory, geography, class, climate, but each book exists in a chronotope specific to itself. Field Notes, for example, was drawn from the specificities of California’s Central Valley, from my eight years’ time there, and as such it occupies a very different place in my mind than does my earlier work.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I came to prose first; I enjoyed writing stories as a child. In college, I signed up for a poetry workshop. It became apparent to me that poetry was the marriage of two of my great passions: language and music. I was done for.  

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?

It depends. Sometimes the work comes quickly and sometimes not. Some drafts, as with Field Notes, look very close to their final form; others, particularly novel projects, endure much more revision. Sometimes a project will emerge from fragments I’ve jotted down, but more often than not, projects have found their momentum after I’ve heard a complete first line knocking about in my head.

4 - Where does a poem or work of prose 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?

I’m rarely working on A Book from the beginning. I like to let the language reveal its form to me. For that reason, I’m not quite sure what scale of project I’m working on until I begin to realize a distinct shape.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

Readings certainly alter the reception of the text; depending on the text’s form, I find readings more or less additive to the presentation of the language on the page. Sometimes, such performances add a depth of meaning and experientiality that the page simply can’t provide, particularly so with highly musical language that really should be heard. These are the readings I especially enjoy, both as listener and as reader.

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?

I try to be as aware as I can about the questions that the work is asking. Equally as interesting to me are the unconscious pulls and drivers that inform the writing itself. Only after the fact am I often aware of the questions being asked. As an example: when I began writing Field Notes, I knew I wanted to explore the relationship between the field as an historical site of oppression and the field as a kind of idyllic mythos; I was surprised, however, by how forcefully other inquiries, related to family history, memory, and the making of art itself, arose.

My theoretical concerns have to do with the nature of time and memory, the role of desire in both, the relationship between place and (personal, social, familial, political) identity, the loss of and role of nature, death, endings, the invisible and the unknown. These of course are questions that artists have always confronted; the difference now, as I see it, has to do with a shared awareness of a foreshortened future in a truly ongoing, accelerating, and global sense. All of the metaphysical questions, the epistemological and existential questions, are entirely rearranged by the exponential facts of climate catastrophe (which I’m using here as shorthand for myriad ills, including biodiversity loss, species collapse, soil depletion, extreme weather, etc., etc.).

For the painfully aware, even something as seemingly simple and beautiful as a walk on the beach conflicts sharply with the paradigms of decades prior. Once one knows, for example, that ocean spray releases more microplastics than nearly any other natural phenomenon, well, that quite changes one’s view of and relationship to and available means of expression for such phenomena.

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?

It seems to me that the current role of the writer is as it’s always been: ideally, to reflect the complex, paradoxical conditions under which we work and love and struggle; to agitate for transformation of the statuses quo that fail to honor life; to promote serious thinking and feeling within readers about the lives they lead.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

It may be either, depending on the compatibility of writer and editor. I’ve had great experiences with thoughtful, attentive, generous editors; this was certainly the case working with River River Books toward the publication of Field Notes.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Two come to mind:

1.     From James Wright to his son Franz Wright, recounted by a professor of mine on the first day of class: “I’ll be damned. You’re a poet. Welcome to hell.”

2.     Keep going.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to essays to stories)? What do you see as the appeal?

I like to move among genres. Much of my work is hybrid in nature—the forms in Field Notes, for example, might best be described as “lyric vignettes” or “documentarian poetry” juxtaposed with original photography. I’ve worked with this form elsewhere, as in my collection Women & Children, which similarly offers textual “windows” but through a fictive (though with many references to actual historical events) lens. Similarly, my essays tend to be lyrical and fragmented; as the essay functions as an attempt at testing some idea, I think that the fragment has a place there; the fragment provides visual and conceptual evidence of the attempt. I also move between more traditional poetic forms and long-form prose; there’s something resolute and very satisfying about the compression of traditional poetic forms, and I appreciate equally the breadth and scope of world that longer-form prose is able to render.

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?

I try to write. Sometimes I do write, usually at night. A typical day begins by finding the nearest window from which to check the condition of the sky, followed by a strong cup of tea.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I find space and solitude to be the best sources of inspiration. Nature is especially helpful: a wide, natural vista clears and opens my mind. Solitude for staring off and listening, for thinking and feeling without interruption in order that I might catch a line or image or music or idea as it comes.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

The ocean. 

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?

Nature inspires me. Science, too, science being the invisible architecture that constitutes nature. I’m inspired by the systemic depths revealed by the relationship of space to lived experience: what is the relationship between the low-income housing at one end of a street and the Private Drive residences on the other? Who frequents that corner store? How do place and personhood inform one another?

I also love to hear people speak, to note the rhythms and tics and elisions of speech, and to investigate what these distinct aural fingerprints might suggest about other contexts.

Theory and philosophy are frequent co-collaborators in my creative process.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

There are simply too many to name here. For the sake of brevity: James Baldwin, Annie Ernaux, bell hooks, June Jordan, Patrick Modiano, Matthew Nye, John Steinbeck, Antonio Tabucchi, Virginia Woolf. Innumerable exquisite poems by my wonderful friends and teachers.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

When I was a child, my family and I lived for four years in Rome, Italy. Those were some of the happiest days of my life. I haven’t been back to Italy in 20 years; I’d very much like to get back there while I’m alive.

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?

Musician, mother, spy, actor, nun, delinquent, revolutionary, therapist.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

The main reason is my love of language and music, for the cadences and rhythms of language, for the vast and varied registers and tones that language is able to capture. As a child, I was fascinated by the way that people speak, as I still am. I like to observe, to listen—important qualities for writing. Beyond these reasons, there’s something enormously fulfilling about documenting some aspect of life in language so that this capture can be transmitted across space and time. Writing is time travel. In a practical sense, writing requires little equipment and nearly no money. It’s something that can be done nearly anywhere.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

Books: James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain; Émile Zola’s Germinal

Films: Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border; Felix van Groeningen’s and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s The Eight Mountains

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’m writing poems and writing music. I’m also working on an essay that’s partly about seismology and partly about the deep structural rifts endemic to American life.  

12 or 20 (second series) questions;