Kristin Sanders is the author of CUNTRY
(Trembling Pillow Press 2017 and a finalist for the 2015 National Poetry
Series), This is a map of their watching
me (BOAAT 2015), and Orthorexia (Dancing Girl Press 2011).
She has taught at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo; Loyola University, New Orleans;
Belmont University; and Louisiana State University. She is currently a poetry
editor for the New Orleans Review and
a contributing writer at Weird Sister.
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 chapbook, Orthorexia, was with Dancing Girl Press
in 2011. Of course, that first published chapbook or book is very validating.
My first full-length book, CUNTRY, is
coming out in June 2017. I’ve been working on this project, and publishing
pieces from it, since 2012, so it feels good to have it out in the world. In
between was a second chapbook, This is a
map of their watching me, from BOAAT Press in 2015. I don’t think these
books have changed my life, but they’ve affirmed the sense that I want to write
about certain themes—gender, sexuality, feminism—and are a record of how I felt
in my twenties.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed
to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I think my love of
reading and writing poetry has to do with the English teachers I had in
elementary school, high school, college, and grad school. Poetry teachers are
the best, aren’t they? My high school English teacher, Mrs. May, who I adore,
made a Xeroxed poetry packet for her classes. I still have it. One of the poems
in the packet was Denise
Levertov’s “The Secret.” The romantic ideas in
that poem probably influenced me more than I knew.
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?
I don’t start with
notes, but more of a conceptual idea. The writing usually starts loose, and
then I have to pare it down.
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?
Book from the beginning,
usually. If I write an individual poem I often don’t know what to do with it
next, if it doesn’t fit into a specific project. I have a few of those, and
they make me sad. They feel homeless.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to
your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I do enjoy readings! I
like to participate in readings at all stages of the creative process. I’ve
been reading (and, okay, singing) pieces from CUNTRY since 2012.
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?
Theoretically, I’m
interested in writing that makes the reader feel uncomfortable, not only in
regard to content but also genre and the hybrid text. There’s a Hélène Cixous
quote which I always remember from Laura
Mullen’s brilliant “Hybrid Text Talk”: “If you haven’t, as a reader, burned your house
down, if you are still at home, then you don’t want to go abroad. People who
don’t like what I call ‘the text’ are phobic, they are people who... dislike
being displaced” (Cixous, Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing 81). What’s
the use of art that feels easy and safe? The questions I’m interested in have
to do with bodies, sexuality, desire, gender, feminism, and technology’s
effects on these things. The questions are constantly changing, developing—pornography,
identities, labels, trends—and yet the questions are unchanging, always the
same—love, the nature of desire, communication between two people, the ways we
move in the world as individuals and within our prescribed societal roles.
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’m going to quote Chris
Kraus on this, because I can’t really think about the role of the writer
divorced from the roles of gender: “Because I’m moved in writing to be
irrepressible. Writing to you seems like some holy cause, cause there’s not
enough female irrepressibility written down. I’ve fused my silence and
repression with the entire female gender’s silence and repression. I think the
sheer fact of women talking, being, paradoxical, inexplicable, flip,
self-destructive but above all else public is the most
revolutionary thing in the world. I could be 20 years too late but epiphanies
don’t always synchronize with style” (I
Love Dick, 210).
8 - Do you find the process of working with an
outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I haven’t had that
experience yet. Most of my poetry editors and publishers have been fairly
hands-off, which has benefits.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've
heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
One of my favorite
quotes is from Rumi: “Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your
reputation. Be notorious.” That’s probably an odd choice, because by all
accounts I’m a generic-looking, rule-abiding Californian woman. My risk-taking
tends to live out in my writing.
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?
No writing routine! I
write in bursts, most often at night. I’m a night owl. I have zero willpower in
the mornings. I’ll press snooze for hours.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do
you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I turn to other books,
or I talk to any of my brilliant women friends (or my sister, or my mother) to
compare stories, bounce around ideas, get advice, etc. I’m lucky to have an
amazing network of intellectual, artistic friends. I’d get more writing done if
I spent less time reading and socializing, but I’d be a much less happy person.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Eucalyptus.
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?
Books influence me the
most, but also music and visual art. My dad is a painter, and my uncle and
cousin are country songwriters. I spend a lot of time thinking about how
different forms of artistic expression are limiting in different ways. I
suppose I’m influenced by the idea of boundaries, whether those are
self-imposed or imposed by genre or industry. I hate feeling limited or controlled,
and literary writing allows me the most freedom.
14 - What other writers or writings are
important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Hélène Cixous’ Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing.
Chris Kraus’ I Love Dick. Jean Rhys,
Elena Ferrante, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, bell hooks, Clarice Lispector, Plath, and Sexton. Louise Glück and Margaret Atwood’s poetry. The
life-outside-of-my-work writer friends who are not just important but necessary
are Laura Mullen, Megan Burns, Carolyn Mikulencak, Jenn Marie Nunes, Mel Coyle,
Elizabeth Hall, Ben Kopel.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't
yet done?
Figure out a way to
teach English—which I love—without grading a gazillion papers—which I
absolutely hate.
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 did attempt to be a
country songwriter in Nashville, but I’ve mostly been a writer and English
teacher. I might’ve missed my calling to be a tap-dancing contortionist.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing
something else?
I wasn’t good enough at
not saying impolite/gross/weird/sexual/darkly humorous things—in country songs
or in real life.
18 – What was the last great book you read? What
was the last great film?
I’ve been on a huge Jean Rhys kick; I’m currently reading her biography by Carole Angier. I also
recently read Peggy Orenstein’s Girls and Sex, which I think is saying a lot of the same things I’m saying in CUNTRY, but through research and
journalism. I just re-read The Lover,
too, to remember how gorgeous a book can be.
19 - What are you currently working on?
A novel and essays.
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