12 or 20 (second series) questions with Ami Sands Brodoff

Ami Sands Brodoff is the award-winning author of three novels and two volumes of stories.  Her latest novel, In Many Waters, grapples with our worldwide refugee crisis. The White Space Between, which focuses on a mother and daughter struggling with the impact of the Holocaust, won The Canadian Jewish Book Award for Fiction (The Vine Award).  Bloodknots, a volume of thematically linked stories, was a finalist for The Re-Lit Award.  Ami has extensive experience visiting book clubs across Canada and in the U.S.  She loves to hear reader responses to her work. In addition, Ami leads creative writing workshops to teens, adults, and seniors. She has also taught writing to formerly incarcerated women and to people grappling with mental illness. Ami has been awarded fellowships to Yaddo, The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ragdale Foundation, and St. James Cavalier Arts Centre (Malta). The Sleep of Apples, her ring of stories is forthcoming in Spring, 2021. Learn more at: Amisandsbrodoff.com

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I worked for over five years to complete my debut novel, Can You See Me?  The story centres on a sister struggling to help her brother, the closest person to her in the world (they shared a private language and secret place during childhood), when he develops schizophrenia as a teenager. I landed a top NYC agent who loved the novel and was confident she would place it. However, many editors wanted me to change the novel into a memoir.  Finally, I brought the book out myself in 1999. The blurbs from writers I admire were superlative. On a tiny budget, I sent out review copies, while my husband acted as my publicist.  The novel garnered an excellent review in Publishers Weekly, even though at that time, they had an official policy of not reviewing self-published books.  It was widely reviewed and shown in bookstore windows in Princeton, N.J. where I lived near the university. The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) recommended it to their members or anyone wishing to learn more about schizophrenia. I received great community support.  It changed me in realizing how fulfilling it is to get my work out into the world and to receive reader responses.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
As a little girl, I took long walks talking to myself and telling stories. Fiction always felt like the most joyful natural form.  I also love reading fiction, getting lost in a story.

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 have a fiction antenna which buzzes when I have an inspiration. But transforming that glimmering idea into a story or novel is a long process. First drafts are agonizing but also exciting. I put the critic on the back porch or in the outhouse and just write and write, tapping into the imagination and unconscious.  I don’t even read what I’ve written for awhile.  I just get material out on the page.  Though my first drafts are disheveled, I always find parts that glow, elements to build on.  My process is like sculpting in clay.  I find the shape of the story, carving away extraneous bits, building and developing the core.

4 - Where does a work of prose 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?
I usually have a sense of whether a piece of fiction is a story, a novella, or a novel.  I’m not sure why or how.  My instincts have often been right.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love being invited to read and/or speak.  Though I get a bit nervous, the experience is always deeply fulfilling.  I guess I’m a bit of a performer.  And receiving face-to-face responses to my work is great, as well as meeting readers and being part of a literary community.

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?
Many of my stories and novels are driven by questions that have no simple answers. The writing is an exploration. For example, my first novel, Can You See Me? examined the question: What is it like to have schizophrenia? I wrote from the point of view of Doren, the brother grappling with madness.  It was terrifying, a kind if immersion and act of empathy and imagination.  I felt like Eugene O’Neill who wept at his desk while writing Long Days Journey Into Night.

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 like to believe that art can change and heal the world.  It shakes us up and enlightens in ways that news never can.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I find it both helpful and frustrating to work with an outside editor. When they can help me kick the work up a notch, I’m grateful.  Sometimes we disagree.  Fortunately, my editors have always assured me that I’m the final arbiter of my own work. That enables me to listen and hear what they have to say without getting too defensive or threatened.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
I keep this quote from the late African American playwright, August Wilson, above my writing desk.  It inspires and moves me every day anew: “You have to confront the dark parts of yourself and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness.  Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength.  When you’re working on your writing, it’s like walking down this strange road that is the landscape of the self. You have to be willing to confront whatever you discover there. It’s all a process of discovery. What happens too often is that we run from the parts of ourselves that we least recognize. You have to be willing to stand up to that and push beyond it.  That’s where your writing takes a leap.” - August Wilson.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (the novel to short stories)? What do you see as the appeal?
I don’t move much between genres, though I write both short fiction and novels. I do the occasional personal essay but they are short.  I love the freedom of fiction and the enveloping process of writing a novel. You always have something to work on!  Writing memoir feels to me like putting on a straitjacket.  The short story form is definitely challenging in its condensation, while the novel is expansive and requires shaping.

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 have coffee in bed and then segue to my desk.  I like to work for at least 4-6 hours, then take a break walking or swimming or doing freelance jobs.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I try not to panic.  I take a walk or a long swim.  Usually movement helps loosen things up and jogs the imagination. Often I’ll get a brainwave or an epiphany about what I’m working on.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Orange blossom, lavender.

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’m inspired by nature, music, poetry and visual art.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I love the classics.  The work of the Brontes, particularly Emily and Charlotte, move me deeply as does their life story. I visited Haworth in Yorkshire last winter when snow covered the moors and saw the tiny books the siblings made as children. D.H. Lawrence’s Women In Love and Sons and Lovers are masterful in their layered portrayal of nature and the physical world, as well as human consciousness.  Sadly, he is out of fashion. I’ve also been influenced by Kafka and other Jewish writers like Isaac Bashevis Singer. In terms of contemporary work, I admire Jayne Anne Phillips’ stories and novels. Tessa Hadley is a wonderful stylist. Recently, I was blown away by Julia Phillips’ first novel, Disappearing Earth, which is a marvel.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Scuba diving.  Anything in water and you have me at hello.

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’d love to be a singer, if only I had a voice.  I sing in my car and in the bathtub.  Usually Aretha.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I can’t remember ever not wanting to be a writer.  It’s been great not having to figure out what I want to do in this short life.  I know.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Disappearing Earth, by Julia Phillips.  Parasite.

20 - What are you currently working on?
I’m working on a new novel, Incantation, about a teenage Hasidic girl and the bond she forges with a psychologist, a secular Jew, while at Children’s Hospital Psychiatric ward. The story then follows the two of them and the paths their lives take in New York and the Canadian Maritimes.  I’m excited about this book!

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Kim Fahner reviews my Mansfield Press poetry title, A halt, which is empty (2019) at Arc Poetry Magazine

I am incredibly grateful for Sudbury poet and critic Kim Fahner's attention this past week, after her review my Mansfield Press poetry title, A halt, which is empty (2019), was posted online over at Arc Poetry Magazine. Thanks so much! This is actually the fourth review of the book (which makes me feel even luckier, honestly), after Jessica Drake-Thomas reviewed it over at her site, Jonathan Ball reviewed it in the Winnipeg Free Press, and Mary Kasimor reviewed the same at Otoliths. You can see Fahner's original review here. There are options for you to order directly from the publisher, or through whichever of your local bookstores are doing delivery, I'm sure, but if you wish to pick up a signed copy directly from me, just let me know (I have a few copies kicking around).

A poetic love letter to Ottawa:
rob mclennan's A halt, which is empty
Toronto: Mansfield Press, 2019.

This beautiful book of poems is rooted in the history of Ottawa, but opens itself into so much more as you read through it. mclennan, a prolific writer, reviewer, and publisher of poetry, lives and works there. The epigraph to the first section, from Sarah Mangold’s “An Antenna Called the Body”, sets the tone, suggesting that we need to realize that we all should begin at a place of “not knowing.” From there, we can reconstruct our own meanings, histories, and personal stories.

One would be mistaken to think this is just a simple book of historical poems, though. It isn’t dusty and worn, but instead is so very vibrant and alive. Each piece is popping with poetic energy, something which is a hallmark of mclennan’s poetic work. In “Mother Firth,” the poet creates a cluster of twelve small poems that trace the beginnings of settlement in the Ottawa area. The ninth piece is artful, as they all are. In that numbered piece, mclennan writes of how “Empire, what Dominion, // cut from cedar boughs, birchbark, / maple.” He alludes to the colonization of First Nations lands by referring to the destruction of trees.

mclennan uses language and poetics with a keen sense of awareness. In “shadow-puppet, everything is moonlit,” he writes evocatively of “the cadence of the city,” of the river and canal, and of “the necklace of floating logs.” Anyone who has lived in Ottawa can see how you can trace its history through its urban planning and structure. What this poet also does, though, is sing a song of tribute to the way in which cities are envisioned, formed, brought into being, and quietly invite us to consider how we fit in. 

In “Quarters: Calgary,” there are four poems that are almost prismed, somewhat reminiscent of the old paper origami Fortune Tellers that kids used to make in elementary school. You get a good sense of mclennan’s skill when you read something like this in “Quadrant: two.” He writes:

     Urban planning doesn’t fence. Magpie. Birds track, patterns. Radar,
     fumes. Breath, my neck. Atop the lungs, a trail. This little sweetness.
     Wheel, reverse.

     Ship, adrift. They coin a term.

These are images that are artfully layered, stippled with light and shadow, so that you are called to enter into the work and consider what it means to live in a city, and what it means to live carefully, to be observant of what is around you, and to notice the way in which a city breathes.

Poems like “Dear Catherine,” “Corporation of Snow,” and “Love letter,” as well as the gathered poems found in the sections titled “site map: draft,” “The particular and busy lives of side streets,” and “Poem at Forty-two” are all beautiful and multi-faceted. Every one of the poems sings. You end up having finished reading mclennan’s A halt, which is empty knowing that you’ll return to it over and over again, glad for its well-crafted artistry.

 

Jami Macarty, The Minuses

Through the Branches

Oranges as your kiss opens my mouth

forgetting where we are in a park full of mockingbirds.

When my eyes open I promise to tell the truth.

The truth changes.

A vulture eclipses. I become

the sun. A hanging swarm.

Seeing everywhere at once every thing

I cancel us to cross the desert. Solvitur ambulando.

Scent of sun on your forearm reverts to memory.

The casita’s roof absorbed into the mountain’s forged shadow.

From this angle the sky parts mesquite branches.

There’s an occurrence bright enough to notice.

The debut full-length poetry title by poet and editor Jami Macarty, who “lives between Tucson, Arizona and Vancouver, British Columbia,” is The Minuses (Louisville CO: The Center for Literary Publishing, 2020). The poems in The Minuses are composed as accumulations of declarations and description, that concurrently linearly build, and collage as lyric patchworks. Macarty writes on violence both domestic and ecological; writing the moments between the language and the lines, and out the other end of comprehension. Through The Minuses, she writes out a great deal of violence from a variety of perspectives, from the direct to the slant, even as she writes, to close the poem “Without Is Guide”: “I am repeating how I feel // My skin outward like intercepting leaves // In the throttle climate // The knife and fist climate // After lovemaking everyone is sad [.]” This is, as the back cover attests, a book of distress, of trauma, of witness: of, as she writes to open “Resuscitation,” “How we behave in drought and anticipation.”

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Stephanie Anderson

Stephanie Anderson is the author of three books of poetry, most recently the If You Love Error So Love Zero (Trembling Pillow Press), as well as several chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Bone Bouquet, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, DIAGRAM, Guernica, LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory, nonsite.org, Posit, the tiny, and elsewhere. She co-edits the micropress Projective Industries and currently lives in Singapore.

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 was In the Particular Particular, from DIAGRAM/New Michigan Press, in 2006. It had the double effect of both validating my sense of writing as my "vocation" and making me interested in becoming a publisher myself. My most recent work is a collection of poems written through the lenses of pregnancy, postpartum, the news cycle, and living in China; it's similar to that early work in that it remains committed to form and linguistic playfulness. But it's written by a speaker who has a very different sense of what the "personal" is, and what lyric's audiences might be.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Length! I'm joking but also not. I used to write in other genres--I still write in other genres!--but when I would write fiction I would walk around in that world, and it was hard to do anything else. With poetry I felt (and still feel) more in a constrained time of making: like maybe I prep class, or feed the baby, or write some email, or work on building the poem, and it's one accomplishment of the day. Admittedly, the items on this list aren't equal--the time of poetry-writing is intense.

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?
The process really varies from project to project, depending on constraints, form, and so on. That said, for me lately, I think the biggest moment of suspension (the waiting for things to gel, or for my sight to clear, or whatever form of sensory attention and distillation you want to put here) comes when I've generated enough content to begin to shape it and am working toward seeing that shape. This moment feels slow, that's why I call it a suspension, but in terms of real time I'm not sure it's especially quick or slow.

I'm fumbling here. Partly because the circumstances of my life have become such that writing occurs in smaller increments, more frequently, grasped and darting and fought for dearly, so it's hard for me to answer this question. I used to sit down and not get up until I'd really drafted something, or get up only to pace around my apartment, alone. Now I write some silly shit at 1am in a WeChat memo to myself in the space just after a small human has gone back to sleep, I write material for something (not even a draft yet) in a journal in a 10 minute break, I go about doing writing in ways that are more improvisatory and I am not sure I can clearly state what that process looks like. It pleases me: at this moment, writing and reading are tethering me to myself. But they are always, always on the fly right now.

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 varies. If You Love Error certainly began as pieces/series, whereas some of my other books have been "book projects" immediately. I do like setting myself constraints (Lands of Yield is entirely in syllabics) and making things more difficult, and I also like shifting those constraints/difficulties as I write myself into a project, so that I'm always challenging myself. I don't always mean formal constraints; lately "I" find myself trying to admit things or use sentences in a way I haven't previously.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Oh fuck no. I mean, I love having done readings, and talking to people after readings. And I don't dislike a moment during, the one when I realize I will actually live. But before the reading, on the day of, I cry and question all of my life choices. This is not exaggeration.

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'm always having big feelings about time (where here feelings are theoretical concerns that haven't been robustly articulated yet?). My partner said something to me a few months ago: "I don't think people remember as much about their lives as you think they do." Writing is for me often the thing Socrates frets about in Phaedrus, a compensation machine for a bad memory. But re: questions: oof. My "creative" mode is not separable from my "scholarly" one but at the same time one of its pleasures is not having to put things in this frame. Who are we talking to? How can language let us imagine a world differently?

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?
Oh this one's a doozy. I mean, can it be to write? Is that glib? I think I'm being sort of serious -- the writer can have many different kinds of public roles, and can be imbued with various expectations/meanings in different cultural contexts -- that's all well and good. And it would be nice if writers were all good people, and some were ludic, and some were vatic, and some were solitary, and some were community-oriented, and some were empathic. But to me there's no obvious public role for the writer. Ideally, they aspire to produce texts that allow us to see the world differently, and to imagine other possibilities for the world.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I haven't done this much in my creative work, and would love to do more of it. In my scholarly work it has been essential; I have trouble seeing the middle register of an argument sometimes and identifying the stakes.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Leave something for tomorrow.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
It's... not all that easy. I like the idea of working on all the projects at once, pivoting back and forth, and am always working toward that model, but it's probably a mistake. But on the today when I'm typing this sentence, I've done a little bit on several things and I feel very satisfied. Part of the appeal of moving between genres is having to express ideas or things vaguely intuited in different ways.

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?
Hahaha. I have a routine when I can; when I can't, I just try to get time to write. Right now, I wake up and care for children and do Duolingo and care for children and the moment I can I read or write, and then I do those things all over again in other orders. I have sometimes written in the morning, which I love. I have sometimes written in the evening, which I love. I have, on a few occasions, written in the middle of the night.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
To memory. To sensory experience. To dreams. To the minutiae of the everyday.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Sulfur and woodsmoke. That's one version of home, anyway. I'm constantly re-configuring my understanding of "home."

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?
The moment when I realized that I could use some of the skills I'd acquired as a child musician in my writing was a really important one for me.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Bernadette Mayer,  Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Joe Brainard,  Marilynne Robinson, Susan Howe, Gwendolyn Brooks, Larry Eigner, Gertrude Stein, so many others, and my friends.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Write a novel, learn to better identify trees, go skydiving.

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?
Lately I think about having been a book designer, but I probably would have kept doing non-profit work of one sort or another. I mean, I'm a teacher now, but I could well have become a different teacher.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Some combination of temperament and misplaced ambition and overactive imagination and sensitivity.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Stefania Heim's Hour Book, Lupe Gómez's Camouflage (trans. Erín Moure). Erm, films have been... rare, lately.

20 - What are you currently working on?
Spies in the Audience, a collection of interviews with women involved in small-press publishing between the '50s and the '80s. Ash for Snow, a novel-in-verse. All this Thinking Grammar (tentative title), the complete correspondence of Bernadette Mayer and Clark Coolidge (co-edited with Kristen Tapson). The Magpie Letters, a manuscript of poems that's just about finished. Dating the Poem, a scholarly monograph. A picture book about Cassie the Cicada who wants to sing. The caretaking of very young children. Reading, breathing, doing free zumba classes in Singapore's HDB courtyards in the evenings.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Four poems for Frank O’Hara’s birthday

1.

Cold, dishwater wind. The snow is not alive,

but sleeps. A blade of grass.

Happy birthday. You claimed to be

the least difficult of men. The shadows of culture, sex,

and the Museum of Modern Art.

How different might be the movie version of your life

against the video game. Or Frank O’Hara On Ice,

sweeping Toller Cranston loops of Lady, Lady.

There were years I thought “On Ice”

the logical endpoint

to Michael Turner’s Hard Core Logo: poetry book,

novel, film adaptation, graphic novel adaptation,

stage production, unwatched sequel,

a screenwriter’s diary of the original. Now I realize

that nothing ends, or dies: it all

returns.

2.

Beaudelaire’s casual observance. I did this,

and this

and that. One walks: I hardly ever think of March 27, 1926,

or most dates, really. A hierarchy

of moments, pinpoints, recollections. The question

of whether we are writing poems

as a sequence of promissory notes: to time, the living and

the endless dead; to echoes, reached out and dismantled, across

a wide variety of interactions.

I miss you, David W. McFadden. Ken Norris, retired,

has woken from a lengthy silence. Meredith Quartermain

walks the western rail and fault, line

after seacoast line.

There is a twitter account I follow, self-christened

Is Today Ted Danson’s

Birthday? Daily tweets, informing all

who wish to know. Most days are not,

but by December 29:

Cheers.

3.

In the absence of matter, a baseline

curvature. I can say anything. A heartvein, throbs

beneath the skin of every sidewalk,

lyric, casemate. You hear the sun. Francis Russell

“Frank” O’Hara: one hundred years,

give or take,

since you arrived. We calculate direction, skin,

soft tissue. The least difficult of men: a claim

I also make, but reaps

such skepticism. Scrutiny, I ask,

can any poem stand? Who said a work of art

is not a living thing? The triple axel,

spun in furor, sleek

and nigh impossible. Joe Dick throws the mic stand

down the ice, flips tavern tables. All I want, he wrote,

is a subway handy. All I want

is boundless love.

4.

If your eyes were vague blue, mine might be

a smoky grey. Dead poets walking. A germ theory

of contagion. It doesn’t matter

when your birthday was. Although I

track mine with an attention

bordering on fervor. The whole of your life,

unaware your parents displaced your delivery

three full months, reassigned to cover up

a pre-wedding conception: a stigma scandalous

to their Irish-Catholic fetters. And so,

they lied. Does this gift you neither birthday, faux-Cancer,

displaced Aries? Or two? As Artie Gold wrote, O’Hara

died like Christ, and baby Jesus, too, a birthday

fluid at the edge of orthodoxies. I step outside,

I make a shape inside the figure

of a word. Is this for real?