Nikki Wallschlaeger, Houses

 

Bronze House

Statues in the concession gardens until the beachmaster hippo signaled it was time to move. He needs to learn about his male privilege but I’m actually talking about real hippos here.

This is the most miserable of all the animal prisons because it’s the largest. The barometer of the modern zoo is based on the spike in penguin mass suicides, but these places suck anyway so fuck it.

My father, who left me w/ my mother’s collections. This exacerbates into a goat barnyard in the petting area of the park. Both of them are experts in mannerisms that prevent disclosure. 

She has about 30 cookie jars now, ranging from chicken little to baseball tart. Someday I will have to sort them. I will do something strange to pay homage to what we couldn’t bridge. I will bring the pieces of

ceramic cows and giraffes and rearrange them into a pentagram on the sidewalk. As a teenager I refused to come home one night and got drunk, had sex, and passed out. The next day I was sentenced to 2 days

in the county mental health facility. When you picked me up, you didn’t say a word. So the first shared, a piece of a bear nose, goes here

I haven’t seen most of Wisconsin-based poet Nikki Wallschlaeger’s published collections, having caught only her third full-length title, Waterbaby (Port Townsend WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2021) [see my review of such here], so it is interesting to finally see a copy of her full-length debut, Houses (Grand Rapids MI: Horse Less Press, 2015). The author of four full-length collections—the other two being Crawlspace (Bloof Books, 2017) and HOLD YOUR OWN (Copper Canyon Press, 2024)—the poems in Houses hint at a foundation as a nesting book, but is far more complex, complicated. Composed as forty-six prose poems, each piece is titled as a separate house—“Little House,” “Silver House,” “Linen White House,” “Cranberry House,” etcetera—that each shape around and through a particular idea, commentary or thought; a foundation from which to begin a larger conversation on home and privilege, culture and class. “As a westerner,” begins “Yellow House,” “I will only paint thinking about Matisse. As a westerner, your poverty is romantic. As a westerner, overpopulation is the cause and not the effect. As a westerner, legwork is a numb strut.”

Edited/published by Jen Tynes, I keep telling myself that I’ve hardly seen any books or chapbooks by Horse Less Press, but a quick search through my archives finds reviews of Stephanie Anderson’s Lands of Yield (2018) [see my review of such here], Anna Gurton-Wachter’s Blank Blank Blues (2016) [see my review of such here], Kate Schapira’s Handbook For Hands That Alter As We Hold Them Out (2016) [see my review of such here], Anne Cecelia Holmes’ The Jitters (2015) [see my review of such here], Pattie McCarthy’s Nulls (2014) [see my review of such here], Kate Schapira's The Soft Place (2012) [see my review of such here], Rebecca Loudon’s TRISM (2012) [see my review of such here], Norma Cole’s Coleman Hawkins Ornette Coleman (2012) [see my review of such here] and Richard Froude’s Fabric (2011) [see my review of such here], so I’ve clearly been catching more than I’d realized, although I had not caught this.

It is interesting, that if her third collection was self-described as a collection “about Blackness, language, and motherhood in America; about the ancestral joys and sharp pains that travel together through the nervous system’s crowded riverways; about the holy sanctuary of the bathtub for a spirit that’s pushed beyond exhaustion,” then the bones of such articulations clearly sit in the poems that make up Houses. Her lyric suite of houses, beautifully and sharply composed, accumulatively write on the promise and the failures of home and community, and how the past seeps in. “Our night sweats bring active listening to the community,” Wallschlaeger writes, as part of “Silver House,” “the community who sleeps so the city becomes what we don’t recollect so we call it death. This is poor dream autophony when everything is about rent // death is not everything. It’s not the moon.”

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Tracy Zeman

Writing at the intersection of ecology and culture, habitat and habitation, Tracy Zeman’s work traverses environmental crises, documents disappearing species, and mediates the moral and ethical implications of this age of ecological unraveling. Her previous collection of poems, Empire (Parlor Press, 2020), received the New Measure Poetry Prize. In 2027, she will travel to the Arctic Circle with 30 other artists and scientists. She teaches at the University of Michigan and lives outside Detroit, Michigan, with her husband, daughter, and dog, where she hikes and bird watches in all seasons.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Interglacial is a continuation of what I began in my first book Empire. In Empire, I was figuring out where we were, environmentally, through reading about extinction stories, colonial destruction and displacement of peoples and animal-others, and the evolution of natural history. Interglacial is a continuation of that education. Though with Empire's underpinning, I was also interested in thinking about what it means to watch the world move further into these crises and how having a daughter changes what's at stake. Empire also helped me think about how to use form in tandem with subject. Because of that, the process of developing the form for Interglacial was more intentional from the beginning of the project.   

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Growing up, I loved reading, though I didn't really start reading poetry until high school. In high school and college, in the 90's, friends and I would seek out book stores and record stores to hunt for new books and albums, in our own town and nearby towns too. We would swap the good stuff we discovered. Emily Dickinson was foundational for me then and still is. Also, I just don't think in terms of character or plot. I'm more drawn to images and moments. I have been experimenting with nonfiction. I have some unfinished essays that I need to return to eventually.  
 
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 process is both fast and slow! It can take me a year or more to figure out a project's subject and form. That process involves lots of reading and notetaking and experimenting. Once I have those pieces sorted out, the remainder of the work often comes more quickly, like over the course of a year. First drafts of early poems often do not look like their final shapes, but once I sort out those early poems, then I can write with fewer major revisions. 

My work does come from copious notes! I read many books and articles before and during the writing of both Empire and Interglacial. Nonfiction, criticism, poetry, natural histories. I also spend time in the field--hiking, walking, birding, driving. I probably filled about 4-5 notebooks during each of those projects.  

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?
Similar to my answer above, at the beginning, I'm experimenting, but then once I have the form and subject I write into it. I have a hard time writing short poems--I love sequences because you can stay in the subject and keep working it from different places, repeating images and language in different contexts. The poems in Interglacial are mostly divided by specific places. 

After that initial period of searching and experimenting, I am working on a book. And it's usually based on something I want to know more about--like the prairie in my first book and the Great Lakes in my second.  

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Public readings are not part of my process. I do enjoy people though so I like giving readings and attending readings and then chatting with other creative people at those kinds of events. I think community is really important to creative work.  
 
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 have many theoretical concerns: What are the origins of our current environmental crises, and how are they entangled with power and empire? What does it mean for us and for other species that humans are disappearing so many other forms of life, ethically, morally, for our survival and the survival of other lifeways? Why can't we address any of our current problems, environmental or otherwise? What does it mean for my daughter? What comes after, what remains, and what will it mean? How does language shape our perception of all of this?  

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 one role for writers is to notice and make connections. Notice events and phenomena and connect them across time and history and communicate those observations and entanglements to others so we are aware or will remember and more people will notice too and think about those events and phenomena. 

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I usually think working with others who are reading your work is exciting. But I think you have to know when suggestions are being made that improve the work of the writer rather than shape the work into something else.  

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Hmm, to believe people when they tell you things, to be realistic when setting goals, to let yourself feel joy even when things feel bleak. Those are kind of self-helpy, but they are things I think of regularly! 
 
10 - 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 tend to write in bursts over a few months or a year, and then for periods of time I'm just reading and taking notes towards something new. When I'm in the middle of a project I tend to start by reading either NF or poetry, then I write for an hour or two and then maybe edit some previous work.  
 
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I turn to other writers, like many writers do, and I always have my notebook to fall back on.  

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Hmm, I don't think I have one. Flat fields and rural roads sort of remind me of my childhood home. I live in a pretty urban neighborhood now, but I have some native plants in my yard and bird feeders and those things make my house feel like home. 
 
13 - 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 and science both influence my work, also experiences out in the field, walking, birding, driving--the visuals and bodily experiences of all those. 

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Emily Dickinson, Susan Howe, Lorine Niedecker, but also science writers and essayists like EO Wilson and Barry Lopez, and theorists and critics like Donna Haraway, Lynn Keller, and Joan Retallack. I try to read a lot of poetry and am mainly interested in poetics that are experimenting at least a little. I read fiction for fun--where I'm not thinking as much about my own work but getting lost in a story. 

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Regarding writing, I've mostly participated in experiential residencies. I'd like to try one that is just for working where they feed you! In May 2027, I will be visiting the Arctic Circle with the Arctic Circle Artist and Science Residency Program. I've wanted to visit the far north for a while since working on subjects related to climate change for the last 20 years--I'm very excited to do that. I'm looking forward to traveling more with my daughter now that she's gotten a little older. I'm going to Glacier National Park this summer with my family and my brother's family. 

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 not been a writer?
I was interested in international studies as a student or publishing. Strangely I've also thought about nursing because of the interpersonal dimension, field biologist, maybe?

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I've always had to do "something else" as most writers do and those other things have alternated between teaching and nonprofit programming and fundraising, and I've just kept writing on the side--I've had some windows of time where writing became a bigger part of my time and times where it really was relegated to the sidelines. I imagine maybe that will continue to be the case in future!
 
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Instead of last great book, I'll mention two interesting books I've recently read: The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano--it's wild. And then Charlotte McConaghy's Wild Dark Shore which is a kind of eco-suspense book, a real-page turner. Re: film, late to the game, I recently watched Sinners with my husband. A great film, many intersecting themes and genre-mixing, working on all sorts of levels!

19 - What are you currently working on?
I am working on a book-length series of roadkill poems based on notes I accumulated while commuting over the last four years. It approaches some of my writing themes from a different angle. The first half of the project is sort of singular and composed of many firsthand observations. I'm thinking more about the commons and the collective in the second half. I'm also reading texts about the Arctic for my trip next year, starting with A Woman in the Polar Night, a memior by Christaine Ritter from the 1930s and Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez. I've been studying some pelagic birding field guides too. 

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Spotlight series #120 : Carlos A. Pittella

The one hundred and twentieth in my monthly "spotlight" series, each featuring a different poet with a short statement and a new poem or two, is now online, featuring Lethbridge-based Brazil-born poet Carlos A. Pittella.

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, American expat poet in London Katie Ebbit, Brooklyn poet Nada Gordon, Kingston poet Jason Heroux and Vancouver poet Scott Inniss!
 
The whole series can be found online here.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Nadia de Vries

Nadia de Vries is a poet from Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her selected works of poetry All My Dead Jesters, edited by Dominic Jaeckle, just came out with Tenement Press (2026). She also writes fiction in Dutch. Her latest novel Overgave op commando (2025; English translation Surrender on Demand by Sarah Timmer Harvey forthcoming with Bloomsbury in 2027) is currently shortlisted for the Libris Prize, the biggest literary prize of the Low Countries.

1 - How did your first book  change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I always dreamed of becoming a professional writer. When my first book Dark Hour came out in early 2018, I started to believe my dream could come true. Now, in 2026, the dream has become an undeniable reality and I live in an ongoing state of bliss.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Ideas come to me in the shape of sentences, so poetry feels most natural to me. Some people get ideas in the shape of plots or arguments. I think those people tend to become novelists or critics first.
 
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?
Most sentences come to me fully formed while I'm going about my day. The only thing I have to do is make sure I write them down before I forget them. I collect these sentences in my Notes app until I have enough of them to see a narrative or image unfold. I then start shaping the sentences into poems. I trim away as many lines as I can until only the essence of the poem remains. This process can take 10 minutes or 18 months, depending on how capricious the poem's central sentence is. It usually only takes one sentence for a poem to work as a poem.

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?
Everything I write begins in the Notes app. I usually start getting really passionate about a project once I've thought of a title for it. There are titles that have lived with me for many years. But it takes the right amount of experience and thought to write a book that fits the title I've envisioned for it. I try to be patient so I don't ruin my ideas before they're ripe.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Yes! I love performing and reading my poems to people. It gives me a lot of confidence.
 
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?
The main question that runs through all in my work is: How vulnerable can a person be without getting ostracized? I often wonder what it takes for a person to be rejected by society. So far I've learned that people are willing to forgive sentimentality, but not cruelty.

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?
The writer creates a private space for working people. Most people have to keep their emotions hidden to survive at work, or in daily life in general. These people need stories to decompress. This is why, as a writer, you cannot afford to be vain, insecure, or easily ashamed. You have to put it all out there so that people without the privilege of emotional visibility have a place to go.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I'm a very stubborn person, but in the case of my writing I think my stubbornness is earned. The way I format or phrase a sentence is never an accident and I get frustrated whenever an editor wants to change my work. Luckily most editors I work with know me by now, and they're very careful about touching my text, which I appreciate.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Never put your housekeys in your checked baggage and never date a man who fears more than he loves

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to prose to criticism)? What do you see as the appeal?
I find it very challenging, and that's why it excites me. Each genre requires a completely different skill set, which is why some master novelists are shit poets, and why some brilliant poets can't tell a story, or make a point. I like to practice my skill in each genre because I feel it makes me a better writer across the board.

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 have no routine, I live like an animal

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
The inspiration never stops, if anything I have too many ideas and I have to make sure to filter out the ones that don't fit the project I'm working on. I also want to pace myself because I don't want to become one of those writers who puts out a book every six months. 

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Drum Mild tobacco

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?
Music! I know nothing about the technical parts of music, but I love listening to it, and other people's rhythms and melodies often give me ideas. I also like going to museums and looking at paintings. I can't paint or draw to save my life, but I find it very energizing to look at a medium that's alien to me on a practical level and still find creative meaning in it. 

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I eavesdrop a lot on public transport and steal language from conversations I overhear

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Write a masterpiece, drive along the PCH from Mendocino to Orange County with the love of my life (where are they?)

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?
Brain surgeon

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Lack of money and skill

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk, Rosetta by the Dardenne brothers

20 - What are you currently working on?
I just started collecting sentences for my third novel, which will hopefully be my first masterpiece. So far I have the first and final line in place. I'm giving myself three years to decide what goes in between.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Ongoing notes: mid-April, 2026: Carlos A. Pittella + Corey Page Martin,

Poetry month! Have you been catching the daily poems posted over at the Chaudiere Books blog? Or the weekly interviews posted via the above/ground press substack? Or the weekly posts in the Canadian Poets Series via Peripety and/or Tronies? There’s a lot going on, as you most likely know. And will I see later this coming week in Victoria? I’m apparently doing two readings and hosting a podcast, live on stage! All through Planet Earth Poetry. That should be pretty cool.

Lethbridge AB/Toronto ON: The third chapbook and debut manifesto by Brazillian-born and Lethbridge-based poet Carlos A. Pittella is Dante’a Bureau: A Deformalist Manifesto (Toronto ON: Anstruther Press, 2026), a curious lyric and layered essay that counterpoints a thread of Dante and Saramago against a commentary around the difficulties around attempting to garner a passport one can’t travel to, due to an outdated passport. “The last Holy Roman Emperor died and the First Florentine Republic legislated a new balance of power,” Pittella writes, as part of the first thread, “requiring new rules of representation for landed aristocrats, merchant magnates, lower nobles, bankers, artisans… Bureaucracy was just budding when Dante projected its ideal form. Hell is a rational dream.” Counterpoint that against the other thread on the same page, that begins:

It took me eight years to get my Northern passport
By jus soli I already had one from the South.
By jus sanguinis I could apply for other ones.
By marriage I could’ve got one more but then
would have had to swear I revoked all others.
I started the new passport application
but the agents at the consulate
didn’t really want more citizens
so it took years to reconstruct my genealogy
with birth & marriage & death certificates
all notarized & translated
from a believable ancestor to myself.

Toronto/Kingston ON: Another title from Anstruther is by Kingston poet Corey Page Martin, the sleek chapbook JIM (2026), which appears to be their debut. JIM is a suite of poems that respond to the death of the author’s father in 2010, as the first piece, “Suddenly,” offers his obituary: “MARTIN, James Edward – Passed away / suddenly on December 1, 2010 in his 43^rd / year.” Composed as a chapbook-length elegy, the poems assemble, cluster, accumulate, writing through and around this central point, sketching errant truths and pressure points, play and open space, and new spaces that have yet to be filled. “we buried him in the backyard,” begins the poem “On father’s day,” “construction-paper / coffin // garden-stone tomb // he was supposed to be a goldfish / but he was blue / then white / then dead [.]” In certain ways, this is entirely an assemblage of poems on form, as Martin works through grief and loss from a variety of angles, playing with shape and structure, from a variation on Wallace Steven’s infamous 1917 “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” to poems composed through erasure, grids or found material. As the fifth poem in Martin’s sequence, a clever riff off memory, loss, their father and a particular beloved song by The Beatles, “Thirteen ways of listening to ‘Blackbird,’” Martin writes:

with a different voice every time

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Richard Smith

Richard Smith is the author of Beyond Where Words Can Go: A Novel in 200 Sonnets (Bauhan Publishing, April 2026). His first book, Not a Soul but Us, is a narrative in sonnets about the plague pandemic in mid-14th-century England. It won the 2021 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize and was released in 2022 by Bauhan Publishing. Richard is a psychologist with a clinical practice in Washington, D.C.

He is on the core faculty of the Center for Existential Studies and Psychotherapy, for which he gives presentations on existential themes in plays and novels, ranging from Sophocles to Ta-Nehisi Coates. He and his partner live with their two dogs, who inspired Richard’s initial foray into sonnet writing.

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

The day before my first book was accepted for publication, it got rejected (again) by another publisher. I’d begun work on the second book but that day decided to drop it and devote my time and energy elsewhere, as the whole enterprise felt pointless. So without that first publication, there wouldn't have been a second book, and now a few more in gestation.

My first book, Not a Soul but Us, is narrated by an illiterate mid-14th-century shepherd, so I kept his language as plain as possible—mostly words of Anglo-Saxon origin. My second book, Beyond Where Words Can Go, is narrated by a 16th-century monk raised bilingual in English and Latin, whose vocabulary would have been quite broad, so his voice could be much more sophisticated. (I could claim that this difference in narrators’ voices is the reason my second book reads a bit more smoothly than the first, but the real truth is just that I got more fluent in the sonnet form.)

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

I didn’t. I came to fiction first and in my twenties wrote two mediocre novels (all typescripts of which have been destroyed or hidden). Poetry came later: I was listening to a lecture about Romeo and Juliet and was reminded that at their first meeting they spontaneously co-create a sonnet. And I thought, “I love our dog; I should write sonnets to him.” One of those sonnets imagined the two of us as medieval shepherd and sheepdog. Then it expanded, eventually morphing into an 84-sonnet story about a 12-year-old boy orphaned and abandoned during the mid-14th century plague pandemic.

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?

Because I’m writing about past historical periods (my second book traces a group of monks through the English Reformation and Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries), I spend a lot of time researching. By the time I draft individual sonnets, I’ve taken lots of notes and sketched an outline and let it all simmer awhile. Whatever I’m writing has to happen first inside me—inside my body—vividly enough that my mind starts finding words for it. Then, once I start writing, it tends to flow pretty steadily.

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?

I’m doing book-length projects. Some sonnets show up early on, during the research and outlining phase, and may inspire a change in the overall shape of the book. Some sonnets grow out of the arc of the narrative but don’t bend that arc. I like the interplay between planning and randomness.

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

I love doing readings. Humans have been speaking a lot longer than they’ve been reading and writing. And I like it when the common space between me and my audience isn’t figurative but real.

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 doubt these qualify as theory, but I have two main preoccupations as I write. Top priority is my relationship with the reader. I want readers to be as fully engaged as possible—mentally, emotionally, physically. And the narrative should pull them forward, so they want to keep reading, but also invite them to linger, so they want to stop and reflect. Which they choose is up to them.

My second concern is—well, I like aesthetic experiences that are both dense and spare. (Imagine dark fudge with no nuts or other add-ons.) I prefer Bach’s pieces for keyboard or solo cello or violin to his orchestral works, and I’d rather hear a good singer-songwriter solo than with a backup band. In other words, I want the music or writing or painting or whatever to be interesting and involving—with as few component parts as possible. One thing I like about the sonnet form is its demandingness: It takes lots of work to say anything of substance in 140 syllables.

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?

This is a complicated question. I don’t think writers (or anyone, really) deserve a societal “role” simply by virtue of occupation or publication. But writers can choose to take on responsibilities. Different writers will opt for different ones: commenting on social injustice; ridiculing human folly; imagining and depicting people whose stories haven’t been told; entertaining, comforting, challenging, unsettling, shocking, teaching, enraging (etc.) the reader. What responsibilities writers assume depends on their values, and readers get to decide whether or not they’re interested.

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

Essential. And I like getting reactions from a number of first readers.

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

“Pause awhile.” (Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing)

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

Every day begins with a lot of coffee. I don’t have a writing routine. If I’m in the researching phase, I read and take notes in whatever chunks of time I have free. When I’m actively writing, I try to clear longer stretches. Most importantly, I try to write at least a bit every day, so what I’m working on lingers in my mind and my brain can work on it in background mode.

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

The best way to get my mind unclenched is to walk in the woods with my dogs.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Furniture wax. My maternal grandparents’ house (which I loved) had a curved wooden banister on the staircase leading to the second floor. It must have been waxed regularly. As a little kid, I’d stand and scratch at the wax with my thumbnail to release more scent.

13 - 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?

Music is huge. I studied piano for 12 years as a kid and 12 years in adulthood. I try to absorb music from the period I’m writing about. Most recently this involved listening to all 150 Psalms as they would have been sung by medieval monks. Music’s ability to stir a complex emotional, cognitive, and physical response is something I envy and try to emulate in writing.

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

E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Milan Kundera, Charlotte Bronte, Anton Chekhov. Of course, William Shakespeare.

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

See the Northern Lights.

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 not been a writer?

Well, I did pick another occupation. In my thirties, I got my doctorate in psychology and have had my own clinical practice ever since. I find the work profoundly gratifying, and I can’t imagine a better day job for a writer than helping people find language for their most difficult and baffling experiences.

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

I kept writing, on top of my work as a psychologist, because the process of writing collects and grounds and soothes me. It seems to function as a meditative practice that I rather desperately need.

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

The last great book: The Water Dancer, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Last great film: The Ballad of Wallis Island.  

19 - What are you currently working on?

Two projects: My second book is narrated by a man who was left as a newborn on the threshold of a monastery. I became curious about who his mother might be and what she went through, so she’s getting her own book. The other project: I have Long Covid (3 years now), and I’m writing about that: the compromised brain functioning that disrupts the ordinary generation of consciousness; the unease of having a medical condition doctors and researchers don’t understand (and often don’t recognize); the experiences of other Long Covid patients, most of whom have significant physical limitations (which I don’t); our society’s reaction to the Covid pandemic and its lingering aftermath.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;