Heidi Seaborn is the author the award-winning debut
book of poetry Give a Girl Chaos {see what she can do} (C&R Press/Mastodon Books, March 2019), Editorial
Director for The Adroit Journal and a
New York University MFA candidate. Since Heidi started writing in 2016, she’s
won or been shortlisted for nearly two dozen awards including the International
Rita Dove Award in Poetry and published in numerous journals and anthologies
including The Missouri Review,
Mississippi Review, Penn Review and Nimrod, a chapbook and a political pamphlet. She
graduated from Stanford University and is on the board of Tupelo Press. heidiseabornpoet.com
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?
In my previous life,
I founded a couple companies. When someone chooses to invest in your idea or in
your work, it’s an amazing validation but it’s also a responsibility to make a
company or a book financially successful. With a book, something very personal
becomes an enterprise. My chapbook Finding My Way Home was published last April and now, less than a year later, I’ve
got my first full-length collection, Give
a Girl Chaos {see what she can do} coming out. These two books talk to one
another, but my work is constantly evolving as a I learn and flex as a poet.
This time around, I feel there is more at stake because it is my debut book and
because poetry has gone from part-time to profession for me.
2 - How did you come to poetry first,
as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I wrote poetry as a
kid, as a teen and then stopped altogether for decades. About five years ago, I
decided to take a fiction writing class thinking I might write a novel. I wrote
short stories that read like long poems. Then a little over three years ago, I
attended a poetry workshop and have been writing ever since.
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 generally write in
bursts, then run fallow for a while. In the lapses, I tend to the other aspects
of my writing life (as an Editor, reading, submitting, writing reviews and
interviews, etc.). I find that I write into projects—meaning that I discover
myself pressing on an issue, subject or idea as I draft poems and eventually it
draws my attention. Is there something more here that I want to really dive
into? Is it a series, is a book? I don’t know until I’m in deep. For example, I
wrote a series of poems in a burst over the summer of 2017 that I thought was a
chapbook. Maybe it was, but it became the second section in Give a Girl Chaos {see what she can do}
and that’s exactly where they needed to end up.
As for poems, some
just write themselves and I just try to get the hell out of the way. Those
often require minor revisions. The majority of my poems are written quickly but
spend a good deal of their childhood being revised, researched, revised again
before they get to go outside and play.
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?
Comedians look for
funny everywhere and in everything. Poets do the same thing for inspiration. I
keep my eyes wide, ears perked for the thing that needs to be written. I write
poems that accumulate sometimes in to piles of poems, sometimes into a unified
collection. To set out to write a book is too daunting. I take it poem by poem.
I have a series of poems that I am writing now that may lead to a book if I
keep going. But it’s a fragile creation and it could just dry up at any point.
I’m hopeful, I have a good start, but I can’t see the end.
5 - Are public readings part of or
counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing
readings?
I love to read! I
especially love to read to an audience of civilians—non-poets—who are
uncomfortable with poetry. I want to make it accessible, fun, impactful. I tell
little stories about the poems, bring them into the making of the poem, give
them ownership. I find it’s useful to read new work out loud to more writerly
audiences. It helps me discover what works and what doesn’t. The oral nature of
poetry is really important to me. I read aloud as I write. I need to hear the
sound. I’m fortunate to have had decades of public presenting experience, so
there’s that too.
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 larger questions
that roll around in my brain lately concern power. Who holds it, how we regain
it, how to find one’s power after trauma and tragedy and how to empower others?
I think about this as a woman of course, but also more expansively as we are
living in chaotic times. How do we muscle our way through this chaos? As
individuals, as a society, as residents of this earth?
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?
The writer has to
write what they know, write what they witness. Not every writer needs to assume
a political stance, but writing itself is a political act, particularly in some
parts of the world. We can write about our garden, and it may be about the
garden, or it might be about walls and borders or it might be about power
subordination.
8 - Do you find the process of working
with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I have lovely editors
who work hard to bring our books to market and ensure their success. We push
each other, but it is with the same goal in mind.
9 - What is the best piece of advice
you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Read, read, read.
It’s the cliché that works.
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?
When I’m writing, I
hunker down at my desk in the kitchen and just write. It doesn’t matter what
time it is. I may not get dressed, I may not eat. But there’s coffee, always
coffee. Recently, a poem came while I was preparing dinner. I tried to capture
it as quickly as possible and not ruin our meal. Sometimes, sacrifices are
made! Otherwise, I try to get my emails, the business-y stuff out of the way in
the morning. Then read or revise in the afternoons. I wish I could write every
morning like William Stafford did and so many others. Maybe one day.
11 - When your writing gets stalled,
where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Usually, reading
other poets unsticks me. I see something I want to try or am reminded of an
experience to write about. I’m in the NYU MFA program and need to be writing
fresh work constantly and against deadlines. As a burst writer, I’m not always
able to turn it on for a deadline. When that happens, I go through all my
scraps and rejects and see if I there is something to resurrect and revise it
into a real poem.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of
home?
Salt air. I live on
Puget Sound. I wake up to the smell of sea. But I grew up a few miles from here
in a house in the woods—the damp wet earth, and scent of fir trees. Eau de
Northwest.
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 always,
including the humans and human nature. My work is often grounded in the natural
world and the body.
14 - What other writers or writings are
important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
That is a constantly
changing answer. Whoever I am reading now. Currently a lot of Glück. But as
Poetry Editor for The Adroit Journal
and in general, I read what is being written right now, hot off the press.
Zadie Smith has said that to be a good writer you need to write new. To write
new you need to know what’s being written now.
15 - What would you like to do that you
haven't yet done?
Travel in South
America.
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 something else
for well over thirty years. I worked in communications, marketing and media
becoming a senior executive, living all over the world. Been there. Done that.
Loved it. Happy to have moved on.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to
doing something else?
I guess I’d have to
answer that differently since I did do something else for so long. What made me
return to writing after forever? I felt restless. The minute I invited poetry
back into my life it was as if my head exploded with images. The images became
poems and I haven’t looked back since. If you had asked me five years ago if I
would become a poet, I would have shaken my head and said, nah that was my
teenage dream. I feel like a teenager again!
18 - What was the last great book you
read? What was the last great film?
I’m bound to
disappoint because I’m up to my ears in required academic reading, whether it’s
poetry or books on form and craft. But I just finished reading Michael
Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid. It was written eons ago, in 1970. He was a poet then and as he
wrote this book in the persona of Billy the Kid, he slipped into fictional
passages. The experience opened up fiction for him, and the rest is history. All
these decades later, the book is incredibly compelling—as a brilliant example
of persona, of historical fiction, of hybrid experimentation—all in vogue now. Plus,
his lyrical voice set loose on the open range of the Wild, Wild West is
wonderful!
Beautiful Boy broke my heart, may not be Great with
a capital G, but impactful for me.
19 - What are you currently working on?
A series of persona poems, historical in nature, possibly
hybrid in form. And my MFA. I am hopeful that they are one and the same in the
end. Fingers crossed at this stage.
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