1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Yes. And how. And what. Becoming a label of “writer” equaled an uncomfortable mutation at first, for mostly my working class parts (i.e. my liver, gluteus maximus, cerebral cortex, et cetera). Family-like and community-like people made and make and have and do expectations for “poet” and rhymes, therefore and whereas my poetself doesn’t say “poet” but some who loves wording and sharing and uncertainty languaging and laughing and collaborative togethering and amateuring! Which is exact to the lea what my first and second and third and fourth and fifth books! Hopefully, are about. My textplay now feels more public… and moving toward performance-based experiments of equal-space-power-openness!
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Poetry fewer words offered art-like collage and sound fun. Because of especially bpNichol’s concrete freedoms & possibilities. Diffident and infinitied. Fiction requires confidence of extended reason and logic, or so I originally thoughted. Let’s see.
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?
Gosh. Everything deepens upon a different hallway, one door for each hour! Sometimes, sometimes, and sometimes. One day, one year. Six years. Each book has been a such process of difference and unknowing as exploration of a topic or sensation or time. Take, for instance. And the notes get folded & lost, which means forgotten, yet. Larger shapes prevail with some kind of drafty scaffolding.
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?
Every ways, whatev! I fear! In a can of spray paint or in another writer’s uvula or in a piece of white cheddar or another artist’s septum or but since as well as I do tend to dream book-length or chapbook-length recipes more often seeming than single-serving desserts.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Community = thought vitality + spirituality + mental health! Readings = community! Math is good! Meth is bad! Vowels are subtle!
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?
There is no sacred; everything is sacred! Language = ideas + playdough! Twenty-five years ago, I was writing with Derrida in my skull. Thanks, university! Now, I hold much more dire asks in my synapses, like language as light waves/particles, identity as searching, non-poets as inspired geniuses, giggles as productive solutions, holiness as touchable, self as who? Questions are gummy bears! Answers are indigestion!
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I was raised on He-man™ and Transformers™ and now I don’t know how to live my life. Writer and poet are increasingly antonymous. Writers should role over less, poets should role under more.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Sure! Is it? My secret is that I like most people and their ideas. This kind of energy is a radical generosity. Gerry Gilbert once called editors “angels from .” No he didn’t. Maybe he did. I bet he did.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Try not to be and to be fucking sincere. -John Lent (implied advice)
Please stop. -Laurel Eckhoff McPherson (direct “advice”)
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
Sentences are fences, unspaces—chain link is just as obstacle as cedar boards, and their function remains. However, some fences conduct lightning while some require staining… and even if they contain gates, it’s funner to jump over them! Boingo!
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?
Nope! Deadlines are friendly! Moments pervade! Emails to my mom are the new poetry! Comments on students’ papers are the new poetry! Poetry is the old poetry! Every is where!
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
My horse is always spinning. The sun has always shone on its back. The grass has always grown right up to its lips. And—oops—I’ve actually always kept more than one horse in my pasture. Usually, any kind of bureaucratic obligations or essay marking inspires my writing to gallop.
13 - If there was a fire, what's the first thing you'd grab?
Oh, why does fire even have to exist!?
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?
The truth of capitalization can be found my eyes by in places of some so many books and unbooks! Musics! Painting! Hiking! Conversations! Sitcoms! Essays! Sciences, yes! Daily news! Gardening! Patriarchies! Dance! Atrocious poetry readings! The clear night sky! Hollywood’s everything! Sculpture! Culinary arts! Love! Walmart! Sewing! Architectures! Storms! Bicycling!
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Today, the importance of names and lists believes in the following hugs of inspiration: My bestfriend is Jake Kennedy, and his words are soul envy! Our collaborations are blood carbonation! Also, to forever: John Lent—the giver, the Real Lisa Robertson, Tan Lin, Mr. Dr. Seuss, bpNichol, Zach Galifianakis, Gerty “the Hurty” Stein, Robert Fitterman, Vanessa Place, M. NourbeSe Philip, Jordan Scotty, Jason Christie, Dana Teen Lomax, Mathew Timmons, Sina Queyras, Reggie Watts, Kenny Goldylocksmith, very etc. I will trying to brain handle that, the very Bible, one day in faith and history and hope.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Suddenly, seemingly dropped from a cloud. Also, write a children’s book.
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? 18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I was supposed to inherit my dad’s concrete placing and finishing business. I may have been a painter, a security guard, a community theatre actor. Writing has side-doored into postsecondary teaching, while concrete placing and finishing would have front-doored into living in my car. Writing requires very few wheelbarrows, canvases and Advil.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Animalway Armfay by Mahala Woodford! And BS Johnson’s The Unfortunates? And Gertrude Stein’s History or Messages from History! Ebbflux also makes my poet tingle! I want to experience Harmony Korine’s Gummo, but don’t know the how-to! I will soon!
20 - What are you currently working on?
I co-tend a horse with Jake Kennedy—it’s named Death Valley: A Collaborative Community Western Novel and is being being built by soliciting single, western-themed sentences from folks in and around our Okanagan community. After collecting some couple of thousand lines, the novel will begin to interest our skulls and ribcages because of course will shifts into from poetry qualities (compression; chance; assemblage; disjuncture) into the realm of narrative. Lastly and also, I recently curated their biography, which in asks the anyone and everyone to add words to my lifestory. Simple! Now-also, and even lastly, I am trying the stand-up comedy jokes in public and starting to thinking about translating some poetries by Mario Santiago Papasquiaro. Perhaps should just finish a guest-edited Jake Kennedy withness issue of Open Letter future numinous. Thanks!
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
Dear Jan Zwicky,
ReplyDeleteI am sorry and not sorry for stealing your book title.
Sincerely,
kevin mcpherson eckhoff