12 or 20 (second series) questions with Terese Svoboda

A Guggenheim fellow, Terese Svoboda is the author of seven books of fiction, seven books of poetry, a prize-winning memoir, a book of translation from the Nuer, and a biography of the radical poet Lola Ridge. The Bloomsbury Review writes that “Terese Svoboda is one of those writers you would be tempted to read regardless of the setting or the period or the plot or even the genre.”

1 - How did your first book change your life?

Utter despair disappeared, I felt that at last there was a crack in the literary world that would admit me. How does your most recent work compare to your previous? The stories in Great American Desert aren't as oblique as those in Trailer Girl and Other Stories, and the new ones are linked by clifi, a genre that came into being very recently. How does it feel different? My most recent book, Anything That Burns You: A Portrait of Lola Ridge, Radical Poet, was a biography. It was a delight to abandon the declarative.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction? I recently uncovered a notebook written when I was eleven, listing my poems and their date of completion from age seven – but the box also contained a file with the weekly newspaper I put out at the age of eight that ran several fictional pieces. “First” is lost in the sauce. This question of genre-flitting is answered in Europe by the appellation “woman of letters.” I've even written a few letters.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Define “starting.” When the first draft looks viable? Or the first notes? Ideas are cheap and I'm easily entertained by utter nonsense. I work from unintelligibility. 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 write quickly so as to block thinking, that activity that so easily destroys interesting work. Seldom, however, do drafts arrive complete. More often than one likes to admit, a poem or a novel or a story takes ten years to piece out. It's kind of like killing an animal, peeling off the skin, staking it to the ground to cure, then turning it into a fur coat. The original experience would be the animal, the fur coat, the beautiful (down PETA) result of a long transformation.

4 - Where does a poem or work of poetry usually begin for you? Poetry appears in the half awake state, the hypnagogic, when the censors are still sawing logs. 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? I have tried both approaches, stirring the pot until the mess begins to stick together, and building on an idea. The second only seems easier because you just keep rotating one idea, but at some point you start repeating yourself. Okay, maybe you repeat yourself no matter what.

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 mind readings, they seem to be important to publicity and publicity sometimes equals sales and sales always helps get a press interested in another book which in turn holds back the utter despair. (see answer to first question). In this regard, however, I've only had the same press twice.

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? Any time I approach theory, the whole project loses air and nothing is worth the pixels I put down.

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? A writer should play. It's an art form. That play can be serious but it must be outside the confines of the strictly rational in order to tap into the larger meanings that make art worthwhile and eternal. An artist doesn't live in a vacuum (see above “loses air”), her mind must stay labile and open to whatever cultural materials present themselves. Artists can be bad.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)? I have seldom been disappointed by an editor, outside or in, flattered as I am by the attention. It's like being in love with the dental hygienist.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)? I walked into the Columbia grad office carrying a baby in a pouch and met Grace Paley. She said only one thing to me: Low rent.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction to memoir to biography)? What do you see as the appeal? It is never easy to move between genres. The inspiring image shreds or blossoms during the move and that result can't be anticipated. The writer has to discard many learned feints and thrusts to accommodate herself to any new genre. For example, very little poetic compression is allowed in biography and if that's where one's expertise lies, it can't and shouldn't be done. For my memoir, Black Glasses Like Clark Kent, I grafted on the form of the long lyric poem and inserted a little playlet in the middle to stir it up.

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? Adoration of the screen, sometimes even while getting dressed, transcribing whatever half-awake scribbles have been given to me. This is followed by trying to forget things – an activity these days doesn't seem to be too difficult – in order to write.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration? I'm never stalled. Sometimes I pace during my impatience to get the next image, or open the fridge. This last is so frightening I am compelled back to my seat.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home? Burning onions.

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? Chris Marker's video, Sans Soleil. Inspired by his work, I curated an exhibition called “Between Word and Image” for the Museum of Modern Art. I was fascinated by how one can join imagery with words to make metaphor vs. dramatic illustration, and this led me to produce 15 art videos myself.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work? My library's yelling.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done? I've done everything I've wanted to do. That doesn't mean everything's been published.

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? Real estate agent. This comes from being from a long line of peasants who venerate land over everything else. When I was nineteen, I was the rare manuscript curator for McGill University, bleeding from papercuts and stabbed by century-old straight pins holding letters together. Good reasons to move on.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else? I thought I decided to write when I discovered that creative writing classes had no finals or quizzes, but going through my boxes, I seem to have been writing as soon as I learned to make words.

19 - What was the last great book you read? Poetry: Twerk by Latasha Nevada Diggs, fiction: Insurrecto by Gina Apostol, nonfiction: The American Slave Coast by Ned Sublette. What was the last great film? Moonlight.

20 - What are you currently working on. Odalisque, an impossible novel about a multi-ethnic harem that meets a Chinese poet fleeing from re-education on the Sudanese pipeline, a book of poems God Gave Noah The Rainbow Sign that is nearly finished, and a book of short stories, Nothing Bad Has Happened Yet. I'm available.

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