Andrea Baker is the author of Each Thing Unblurred is Broken (Omnidawn, 2015), Famous Rapes, a paper and packing tape
constructed not-quite-graphic-novel about the depiction of sexual assault from
Mesopotamia to the present day (forthcoming, Water Street Press), and Like Wind Loves a Window (Slope
Editions, 2005). Her recent work
has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Fence, Pleiades, The Rumpus, Tin House,
and Typo. It has also been anthologized in Family Resemblance: An
Anthology of Eight Hybrid Literary Genres (Rose Metal Press, 2015), Verse
Daily, and Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn (New York University
Press, 2007). In addition to her work on the page, she is a subject in the
documentary, A Rubberband is an Unlikely Instrument. She works as an
appraiser of arts and antiques in New York City.
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?
My first book, Like Wind Loves a Window gave me community. I got to know Jennifer Bartlett and Matt Hendrickson
and the circles of people around them.
And I found my way onto the mom-poet listserv, which was a lifesaver for
me.
I had been living a very marginal,
Bohemian life, which was comforting and it’s own sort of shelter from world,
but I was extremely isolated, crushingly poor, and in a restrictive
relationship.
I didn’t do it all at once, and I
didn’t always do it gracefully, but having the book provided with me with a
trail of breadcrumbs to follow out into the world beyond the walls of my
apartment and my role as a wife.
My second book, Each Thing Unblurred Is Broken is the inner life of following that
trail.
2 - How did you come to poetry first,
as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
True story. I was at a reading for the first journal to
accepted my work (which I considered minimalist fiction) when I learned that
they only publish poetry, and that they thought I was writing poetry. Then the poetry editor from a larger journal
called 3rd Bed happened to
see my work in the first journal and she asked me for work to consider for 3rd Bed. The next issue they asked me on as associate
poetry editor. Soon after I began to
employ line breaks.
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?
Poetry is meditation. I record my wandering mind and build things
from the fragments. But I don’t think
I’ve written a single poem in the last year.
For the last couple years I’ve been
working on a hybrid not-quite-graphic-novel/art/non-fiction book called Famous Rapes, which keeps getting pushed
back, but is now due out Spring 2016.
It’s about the depiction of sexual assault from Mesopotamia to the
current day. Most of the writing there
looked like researching. Actually, in
poetry most of the writing looks like researching too, but it’s research into
own my being.
So, yeah, I’m a slow writer. A very slow writer.
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?
It’s too overwhelming to think of
writing a book. I just do something then
keep shaping and shaping and shaping.
I’m shaping little pieces, and then I’m shaping little pieces together. Then I’m shaping bigger-than-little pieces
together. Then I turn my head, and
there’s a book.
5 - Are public readings part of or
counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing
readings?
I don’t enjoy attempting to hustle up
an audience—that is counter to my creative process. And I don’t love tiny readings, or
travel. But giving readings with at
least twenty or thirty people, and where it isn’t on me to get people there
bring me closer to my own 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 some spiritual questions that
approach theory—matters of immanence and the nature of the material world, and
the nature of absence as its own sort of presence—but coming to terms with the
fickleness of perception and making it through the day—how to be—are what
interest me most. I’m more about
navigating than I am about questions or answers.
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 don’t think in these terms. I know that we all help one another through
speaking and through reflecting and through recording the authenticity of acts
of play, and writing is an act of play, but I’m not interested in roles.
8 - Do you find the process of
working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Essential. I love to be edited. I’m much more of a reviser than I am a
writer, and I appreciate thoughtful editors to no end. They bring me further than I can get on my
own.
9 - What is the best piece of advice
you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Once I was sitting in on a figure
drawing class. The professor came in and
drew a big sine wave on the blackboard.
He told the students that it was at the lower peaks of the wave that the
work was being done—the times of difficulty, when things aren’t going
right. Then he put his chalk on the top
of the wave and said that the upper peak is great, but it’s just the
reward. It isn’t the work.
His voice was cracking with angst. Personally, I know that a more even-keeled and
thoroughly creative life is possible, but twenty years have passed and I’m
still reflecting and extracting meaning, even if some of my own meaning entails
a rejection of his premise... so I’ll say that was the best advice.
10 - How easy has it been for you to
move between genres (poetry to visual works)? What do you see as the appeal?
In my late teens I was more or less
obsessed with figuring out what unities all the arts—there was a spirit I could
feel below all of them, and I had no idea what it was. In college I designed a major for myself
called Comparative Arts. My goal was to
understand each of the arts as articulate bodies of work and to understand what
held them together.
My interests have always been really
broad. I was a girl obsessed with dance
class, and then I was teenager at an art school majoring in cello. Then I found the world of writing, and was
glad to have found a way to explore and play around that was outside the competitive
world of music performance, where I knew I didn’t stand a shot at getting a job
in a major city.
All the arts are really the same
thing to me. They’re all just messing
around—play—and expressions of/records of humanity, or spirituality, or the
human spirit, or however you want to say it.
I don’t have a lot of intent involved
in moving between genres. I just play
around however I want to play around.
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?
The dog gets fed, a cup of coffee is
had, and, often, I go to work. I’m an
appraiser of fine and decorative art and do a lot of consulting in the
mid-market auction world. Writing isn’t
an element of structure in my life.
12 - When your writing gets stalled,
where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Rilke, Roethke, and Wallace Stevens.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of
home?
That question almost successfully
plants in my mind that idea that some fragrance reminds me of home. That isn’t the case.
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?
Eastern philosophy and contemporary
choreography are fairly direct influences, but it isn’t an exaggeration to say
the entire material world influences me.
As an appraiser I am very engaged with “stuff,” and with the way stuff
moves through the world. I spend a much
higher than average amount of time in dead people’s homes.
Lately, I’ve been interested in hip-hop
and rap, and in the significance of banality.
......though, at the end of the day, I might agree with McFadden. Reading is what makes me write.
15 - What other writers or writings
are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I’m not sure I have an inside and an
outside, in relation to my work, but I love the compressed and precise language
of auction catalogs.
16 - What would you like to do that
you haven't yet done?
I don’t like talking about things
before I do them.
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 don’t conceive of writing,
especially writing poetry, as an occupation.
Many writers are academics, and being an academic is occupation. If I had been born into any particular
religion I might have made engagement with that religion my occupation. And in some alternate plane of the life I was
born into, I might be very fulfilled living as a Buddhist nun.
.......but I am very happy with the
life I have. I worked my ass off to get
it. And I did the work because I was
engaged and wanted to do it; I never would have believed that the things I have
accomplished were possible for me.
18 - What made you write, as opposed
to doing something else?
“Something else” here means, to me,
working in another art form. I’m not
very interested in anything other the arts, though I am voraciously interested
in the arts, and interested ideas (philosophy and psychology) as expressed in material
forms and play-things.
Maybe I would have been a visual
artist, if that hadn’t been my mother’s space.
Classical music is too hard, and the culture of bars doesn’t appeal to
me, which eliminates most other forms.
Dance is too hard, and the career is too short. Acting never appealed to me.
19 - What was the last great book you
read? What was the last great film?
Maggie Nelson’s Argonauts was great. I don’t
love movies—when I watch something I prefer to enter a familiar world, and live
in that world for an extended period of time.
But the Netflix series Longmire
is great. It’s very Terrence Malick-y. After a few episodes I started wondering how
it could be so good, so I googled and there’s a poet involved—Tony Tost.
20 - What are you currently working
on?
This makes me happy. I get to make a companion adult coloring book
for Famous Rapes. A handful of test images are at the printer’s
now. After I assess line quality, I’ll
dig in further.
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