Carrie Lorig is the author of The Pulp vs. The Throne (Artifice Press). Her chapbooks include The Book of Repulsive Women, which was
selected by Lily Hoang for the Essay Press Chapbook Contest, Reading as a Wildflower Activist, and NODS (Magic Helicopter Press). A
chapbook called The Blood Barn will
be published by Inside the Castle in Spring 2019. She lives in Atlanta, GA with
the poet Nick Sturm.
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, The Pulp
vs. The Throne, is an unleashing. It was and continues to be. I was in my
MFA and mostly was told I didn’t know how to write poems, that what I was
writing wasn’t poems. Blood said otherwise. River said otherwise. I said
otherwise. The Pulp vs. The Throne is
so literal to me! How do I speak using the magic / the gut inside me / inside
what surrounds me? How do I refuse laws / workshop / what harms our speaking /
our lives? How to collapse the versus?
My work has changed considerably. I see TP vs TT as a beginning now / I see how I’ve become a stronger
writer since then. My partner has said to me, about my new writing, “You are
becoming more unforgiving.” Writing has always helped me see myself / what I
need to do to be better for others / what terms I need to create for myself /
what healing is.
I’ve had a period of non-writing / not writing this past year
for the first time since I was maybe 24 (I’m 31 now). It’s related to some
difficult personal stuff that was quite simply, unavoidable in creating damage.
And right in the middle of working on my second book. It is scary /
uncomfortable, but I’m getting towards the end of that / to a new place where
I’m writing again, but differently. I can’t speak it yet, but I feel it coming.
I see it / there.
I just read Cornelia Barber’s essay / poem, “Bad Poems for Girls
Who Steal,” this morning at FANZINE,
and this paraphrase she includes from hearing Dolores Dorantes speak feels impossible
and like a stone I am / rubbing:
When you do reiki or other body work and it is painful it
means that the transformation you’ve been undergoing is at its last stages, at
the level of your cells. The physical pain means it’s almost over.
2 - How did you
come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I have a memory of another child telling me they knew I was not from
the place I was living because my face / my eyes were so odd to them. Sometimes
I think of this when people ask me this question. Sometimes I think, where else
can we be ourselves / destroying / creating. Sometimes I think, where else do
we ask and answer the question, what is it like for you to think / to live with
your thinking. I would also insist I do write fiction. I do write non-fiction.
I do write poems. I don’t.
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?
Someone told me once that Ashbery received titles first. So do
I. I receive the title and then most likely, the project. I get an idea for how
long it will go on. Right now, my second book will contain three differently
titled sections: The Book of Repulsive Women, The Blood Barn, and Collection /
Agency. All three sections will contain five poems that share the same title
with each other and with the title of their section. Length means so much to
me. I’m still learning to express it. I know we read long poems. I know we talk
about them. But I don’t feel we do so with nearly enough complexity, with
nearly enough ability to see / feel through what they are. Because of length, I
suppose, my process is “slow,” but my books are often twice / three times the
length of what’s expected / accepted as average. I don’t much care for thinking
about how time does or does not define what I do. I edit intensely as I go with
intentionality and thought. Each page has an individual feel to me and must
look as it becomes in front of me. I work on one poem at a time. Because my
poems are often connected to each other / feed into each other and back to each
other, they emerge chronologically (tho the experience of writing / reading
them, isn’t necessarily chronological). My partner, the poet Nick Sturm, is my
most cherished editor. The first receiver. Also, many other bodies. I will send
work to them or we’ll drink a beer and talk about it on a porch.
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?
Again, titles. They show up inside me. They are undeniable when
they appear.
I’m working on a book from the beginning while knowing the book
rarely ends or is limited to its physical book-ness. Edmond Jabès, Raúl Zurita,
and Bhanu Kapil most inform my understanding of the book.
5 - Are public
readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of
writer who enjoys doing readings?
Performance is inseparable from my work. I often write about
performances I’ve done or end up writing something as a response to something I
felt or noticed during a performance. Performance is an intense body experience
for me. Indescribably freeing and painful. The final poem in “The Book of
Repulsive Women” section tries to recount my experience touring with my first
book. I think many people, including myself, have found the reading /
performance / public space to have a great deal of potential to turn violent /
to exist as violence. I have committed or am capable of committing violence in
the reading space. We all are. I have also found the reading / performance /
public space to be revelatory. I go to it for revelation. Zurita, Kapil,
Jennifer Tamayo, Ana Mendieta, Abraham Smith, Ashley Chambers, Ji Yoon Lee,
Cecilia Vicuña, Elisabeth Workman, Alice Notley v. much inform my understanding
of the reading / performance / public space. To enter it with urgency.
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?
So much enters and surrounds the reading / how the reading
continues beyond having finished the reading. Lisa Robertson's first essay in Nilling is v. close to how I think about
how the text enters the text you are writing. Right now, I have been thinking
of questions which refuse the (question) mark because the mark is already so
unbearably present and uttered elsewhere and otherwise. All reading is blood.
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?
To write poems. To continue to question / consider what it means
to write / read poems / to live.
8 - Do you find the
process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I genuinely see myself as both the writer and editor of my
poems. I feel like that is important to me. That I give that agency to myself.
That said, I always learn a great deal from how others experience / read my
work. I wouldn’t say I find working with editors difficult because I will tell
them no.
9 - What is the
best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Alice Notley appeared in a dream, years ago now, holding an owl
skull. She said, Fuck U. Write like the startling you lay down on. Lol.
10 - How easy has
it been for you to move between genres (your individual work vs.
collaboration)? What do you see as the appeal?
I haven’t done any collaboration recently because my individual
writing has become so demanding / time consuming. There’s also just been a lot
of upheaval, change, difficulty these last few years. But it has always been
easy for me to move between genres / types of writing. I write reviews often
and continue to write them now. I’m sure I’ll return to collaboration sometime
in the future. I get a lot out of being in proximity to the work / feelings /
thought processes of others. It’s a joyful experience. Working on these other
things has always made my individual writing better. I dream of teaching a
poetry class where you just write reviews of or responses to books / writing. I
think they are poems. I think they have much to teach us about reading / writing.
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 feel like I’m writing even when I’m not physically doing it.
My routine changes according to what I need to do to ensure my family is taken
care of. In grad school, before I had a family, I wrote for hours every day,
often in 7-8 hours stretches. Now, I write at work with coffee for as big of a
stretch as I can manage. I write on the weekend after going to kickboxing /
chores / walking the dogs. The only thing that has always been true about my
routine is that I do not write once the sun has gone down.
12 - When your
writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better
word) inspiration?
I resist thinking of my work as stalled or not stalled /
assigning logic about time that the poems themselves don’t really adhere to.
But I did mention this recent interruption. I am turning to books, therapy, and
to a greater understanding of what healing is.
13 - What fragrance
reminds you of home?
Any smell that involves horses.
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?
I very intentionally create and build playlists for every poem /
project I’m working on. They feel very important to me when I’m writing and I
won’t write without music or headphones. I use a lot of images in my work. I
use Twitter / Instagram. There will be photographs (a collaboration with
photographer Stephanie Dowda) in what I’m working on now. I have a page in my
book rn that just says *PHOTOS OF TUBES.* (Will a photo of tubes end up there?
Idk.) I know I can’t include everything that makes the poem but I want to / try
to include it all. Sometimes it’s crazy to me that we lump poetry in *writing* more readily than we do with
painting / dance / these incredibly textural, physically present arts. Bc yes,
language is inevitably communicative here, but is it not also somehow a
material / somehow becoming something else? Poetry is inevitably
multidimensional and interdisciplinary / utterly tangled in it all. Etel Adnan
is someone I turn to in this respect.
15 - What other
writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of
your work?
I think I’ve named many of them already. I joke with Nick often
that reading for me has nothing to do with loyalty. I think what I mean is
reading linearly / with lineage + reverence in mind has never made sense to me.
I have named many of the writers I return to. I am always trying to expand /
consider what’s important to me and my work. I don’t turn to poetry or writers
bc they have simple answers. I turn to reading and there is / complication. Truly
listening for the writing / the work in your proximity that is necessary /
transformative / that reveals itself to you.
16 - What would you
like to do that you haven't yet done?
More travelling, having more compassion / kindness for myself (that
Cancer risinggggg). I want to help those in education: teachers, students, grad
students, etc. I’m returning to school in the fall to become a school
psychologist.
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 will always be a poet. I always have been. Survival within
capitalism won’t ever negate that, but it has meant rethinking what a word like
occupation signals. I have had many / occupations.
18 - What made you
write, as opposed to doing something else?
I started writing when I was v. young. It has always felt
inevitable to me.
19 - What was the
last great book you read? What was the last great film?
How To Keep You Alive by Ella Longpre. I know Jennifer S.Cheng’s new book, Moon: Letters, Maps, Poems, will mean a great deal to me once it’s near to me / I’m reading it.
I’m actually not much of a film person at all so I’ll mention music. I’ve been
re-listening to the Jai Paul songs that are publicly available. I think we
are impossibly lucky to have the Jai Paul songs we do.
20 - What are you
currently working on?
My second book
will be called Collection / Agency. I’m
working on the last section, which will also be called “Collection / Agency.”
I’m working with Inside the Castle,
a small press in Kansas run by John Trefry, to publish The Blood Barn as a chapbook in early 2019.
No comments:
Post a Comment