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? Soldier On came out in 2015. It was my graduate thesis that I finished in 2011, so my relationship to it was a little complicated. But now I feel more connected to it, and am pretty proud of that young writer. I miss the joy in those poems, and the whimsy in their imagery. I loved language then. I don’t think Soldier On changed my life—or, it taught me a lot by not changing my life. A lesson that I keep learning is that I should never rely on outside approval when it comes to writing, that I should write for myself, for my own goals and objectives. Of course, this is near impossible to someone like me who has sought outside approval for almost everything. Publishing Helen in the middle of 2020 has retaught me this lesson as well.
Helen or My Hunger has been the most openly personal collection for me by far, and therefore the most difficult to write (and to read in public, eek!). Through Helen of Troy, I was able to address anger and misogyny and dysphoria more directly, as well as trauma and mental illness, while also working to build a kind of hope in the speaker’s story itself, or a way to come back and face what is there (“that I deserve / this riddled hunger”). My new poems post-Helen attempt to build on this even further, without the scaffolding of myth. I know this new work is asking me to give things a name, to put language to subject matter more directly. There is a succinct body and self writing these poems, a self at stake, and I think I am moving toward facing this self even more directly, for better or worse.
Since Soldier On, I got my PhD and am now directing the Creative Writing Program at Young Harris College in North Georgia. My new work is harder to write—mainly because I’ve become a bit distrustful of writing anything, especially in relation to the performativity of social media. I’ve found my new work harder to love, or feel joy in. But I do think it’s work I need to do, and hopefully produces better poems. I’m also spending a lot of time working closely with undergraduates, trying to decipher the code of “good” (or “effective”) poems, and so at the moment it is kind of hard to write a poem and not think about the pretty little machine I can make. I know that poems are crafted machines, objects of wonder, but for me the artifice of it can sometimes feel performative. So I’m working on reconciling that with my writing process. Any tips are welcome!
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction? I’ve been singing and playing music my entire life, so I think it just came naturally to see language as pattern, as little jewels of sound you can keep with you and turn over in your hand again and again. I also think it helped me trust my intuition, to lean into what feels right, or sounds right. That may be something fiction writers have as well, but seeing words as patterned sound more than anything helps me lean toward the lyric. I almost wanted to be a fiction writer in college, but after my first fiction class I realized it wasn’t going to be sustainable for me. I wrote the two short stories I wanted to write, and that was it. I was very proud of them, but I didn’t feel the need to make any more. But with poetry, something new always comes in.
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? My process is full of hesitancies and stumbles, notes and notes and notes until I build solid drafts from those notes. Over the last few years, I’ve paid more attention to revising, and taken riskier moves than I had before. I’ve felt more confined in what I can envision for a poem, and so I often ask other people for advice or ways to approach something. One new thing that has come up in the last few years is that I will write an essay and realize it’s a poem, or a poem and realize it should be an essay. Things also take a bit longer the last year or so because of my new job. I’m not someone who can write in the small minutes of the day. I need to be able to hyperfocus, and that’s not super compatible with having a stressful job with a lot of responsibilities. I’m becoming accustomed to the fact that most of my poems will have to be written in the summer, or over the weekend.
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? Except for Helen, which is of course a larger project, I generally don’t tend to think in terms of project. I do go through periods of obsessions, or thematic resonances, where I know that the poems I write are going to be in the same book, and that the book is going to be thinking about certain things. But I honestly try not to think about it too soon, because as soon as I have that realization—I’m writing a book!—I lose touch with the process. It happens when I bowl, too. If I start to notice that I’m bowling well, I can’t bowl at all after that. Sometimes, though, I’ll write a poem that really pulls at the different strings of thought I’m working through, and that’s when I’ll start to see a collection building.
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. They’re as close to stand-up as I’m going to get, haha. I do wish I could be more free with them, though. I get very conscious of how I look, how I act, and I zone out so much that I miss out on the embodiment of actually reading the poem, sometimes. That being said, though, I found so much joy and power in reading the poems from Helen or My Hunger. I got to relish in the sounds and patterns and battle cries that are a part of the series, and people seemed to really like it; I felt so supported when I read from it. When Helen came out last year, I decided that this year was going to be the year I was going to go on book tour! Then we had a little pandemic that changed that idea.
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? Helen or my Hunger contends with a main theoretical concern that I’ve been battling for a while: that there is harm, as well as power, in putting something into language. That even to give words to an experience or feeling makes it real, but also takes away from the wholeness of an experience (or as Clarice Lispector wrote, “coherence is mutilation”). That for better or worse, there is always ego in the I of the poem (or any writing). In Helen, this concern of course shows up most explicitly by tackling the oppressive narratives of Helen of Troy, and of women in general. But instead of refuting these myths by saying “but this is Helen’s real story!” the book ends up questioning the idea of the “correct” story at all. I wanted to show that we will never be able to access any “real” Helen of Troy, or her story. As the poems in the book move further out and into my own experiences, the book questions the artifice of turning any experience, especially painful experience, into language. So much of the book is about the struggle to write at all: I braid into others’ layers. My hands fill others’ pockets. Here I am slipping on the same page. Even my handwriting changes when trying to get to you. Scratching into the screen I get only echoes. / Tell me what deserves intimacy, Helen. The public orange of writing, too much, much too much. How do I decipher my own name in its largeness?
I’ve had a hard time, especially in the last few years, battling the idea of the writer’s ego. The act of turning experience into language that ornaments, that makes patterns of beauty, makes it all feel inauthentic and theatrical. I’ve obviously been struggling with my writing process because of this main concern: how do you write about turning off a writer’s ego without using the writer’s ego? How do you use language to navigate your experiences when you don’t think your experiences are worth language at all?
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? Clearly based on my last answer I’m a little unsure about my role, but I do know that writers have saved me time and time again. Writers give reality to unspoken experiences, voices, or ideas, they mark time passing, they create and sustain communities that we find mystery and magic in, they help us recognize ourselves in another, and to recognize another in ourselves. They give us a world to aspire to, or they show us our world and press us to change it, they ask us to be moved—and here is where I quote Adrienne Rich again: “poetry / isn’t revolution but a way of knowing why it must come.”
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)? I think it depends on the editor and the project, really. I do think deeper and more clearly when I’m in dialogue with another person, and so I often find that outside editors can make suggestions that make the nebulous, intimidating world I’ve created into something coherent that a reader can take part in. KMA at YesYes Books was my editor for Helen or My Hunger, and I don’t know where the book would be without her insights and questions, pressing me to go further.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)? This part in James Tate’s introduction to the Best American Poetry 1997: “When I make the mistake of imagining how a whole poem should unfold, I immediately want to destroy that plan. Nothing should supplant the true act of discovery. […] What we want from poetry is to be moved, to be moved from where we now stand. We don't just want to have our ideas or emotions confirmed. Or if we do, then we turn to lesser poems, poems which are happy to tell you killing children is bad, chopping down the rainforest is bad, dying is sad. A good poet would agree with all of those sentiments, but would also strive for an understanding beyond those givens.”
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? I don’t really (yet) have a writing day that is combined with a work day. Right now I’ve taken on a bit much, so I’ve been in survival mode for a while. I tend to hyperfocus to get any writing done, so I use weekends and summer breaks to do the bulk of my work. But it always starts with reading. I need to see other people making language so I can feel comfortable doing it, or remember even what words are. My longer answer is here, on my (small press) writing day.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration? Reading. Always reading. It gets me out of the vacuum. A few books I always turn to: Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, Inger Christensen’s alphabet, Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, Marni Ludwig’s Pinwheel, and Bhanu Kapil’s Ban en Banlieue. I am also learning that if my writing gets stalled, it’s not always a bad thing. I am learning to be better at listening, and letting things marinate. Of course, it means fewer poems, but it’s much healthier for me. If I try to write and I’m not ready, nothing good is going to happen.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home? Gardenias. My old house in South Carolina had this huge gardenia bush outside that bloomed like, eight times a year, and my mom would cut the blossoms off and float them in water on the kitchen island. Also, the smell of vanilla when I’m baking.
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 documentaries have been my go-to for years, as well as music. I also read a lot about science, especially physics and astronomy. Parts of Helen are written after watching a documentary about the Northern Passage, the indigenous cultures that comprise it, and how climate change is affecting their lives in the Arctic. Because of this film I also began listening to throat-singing artists, and had such an emotional response to it that it ended up being a big part of the book’s resolution. I also did a lot of adult ballet classes for a few years that helped me navigate some big ideas in my writing. I also feel like baking is the form most similar to poetry, for me. All of these involve the beauty of intuition, and the tiny alterations a craftsperson makes onto each iteration of the object. The form becomes the telling: The palette marks on a cake, the way an ankle bone holds fifth position, the tiny fluctuations in a throat-singer’s breath, how nature carves itself into itself.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work? All of the above books, along with Adrienne Rich, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath (poems yes, but the journals are so necessary), Paul Celan, Elena Ferrante, and the work of my friends. I also owe most of my dream of being a writer to reading the diary of Anne Frank over and over again as I was growing up.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done? 1) write a non-poetry book, maybe a novel, 2) write a song, 3) actually write habitually in a journal.
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 was going to be a veterinarian, and I still dream about it. That, or something in the medical field. But my life is so different that it’s hard to imagine that now. But I loved biology and math, I loved learning languages, and I felt like I had to give those things up in college to focus on writing. I also have a secret wish to be a singer-songwriter-slash-rock-star.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else? I think I’ve used it to tie myself to the world a bit. It sometimes is very easy to feel like you’re slipping away from the world—from people, or from your own life, your own experiences, your life’s purpose. Memories blur, experiences and faces blur, and time becomes a flat circle when I can’t use language to make it real. I want to be able to see and experience this world, not just pass it through; I don’t want to be a sieve, and I think writing helps me do that.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film? I haven’t been able to read too many non-required books lately, but over the last year I read The Overstory and The Great Believers and both ripped my heart out and made me want to be a new person. I felt like I wanted to get a print copy of The Great Believers and read it like a sacred text every day, and I’ve only felt that way about a very small number of books. In terms of poetry, I got to teach Ross Gay’s Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude and Kiki Petrosino’s White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia this year, both books I had fallen in love with and couldn’t WAIT to share with my students. Molly Brodak’s The Cipher was an incredible read as well, and come to think of it, explores a lot of the same questions I’ve been thinking about in this interview…just 100x more brilliantly and skillfully—the limits of knowing and seeing, and how we come to be known and seen. Oh! And Emily Skaja’s The Brute was such a thrilling, delicious recent read as well.
19 - What are you currently working on? I’ve been working on this manuscript called Dummy Prayer for a number of years now, and new poems come in each year and change its face a bit more each time. During the pandemic I’ve been hiking and reading in the mountains around where I live, and even before the pandemic I was living a pretty isolated life here in North Georgia. Over the last few years, I’ve had a few friends pass away unexpectedly, as well as some other losses and oblivions and changes that (like always) have affected my relationship with the world. So, all of that together means that my poems are very much influenced by the messiness of nature in Appalachia, along with the messiness of loneliness and grief, of a longing for connection. In these poems, nature is constantly working on its own disappearance. The rotting plants and animal bones and organic matter are housed in the same world as the ramps and bellflowers on the verge of opening. All this to say, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about how we connect with each other, or, to quote Adrienne Rich, “the grit of human arrangements and relationships: how we are with each other.” The frictions in communicating public and private experiences to each other. And so I was thinking about these arrangements, how we keep each other alive, and that’s a huge part of Dummy Prayer.
The title “Dummy Prayer” comes from an episode of The West Wing Weekly podcast, when Josh Molina describes performing a prayer for Passover seder on an episode of Sports Night. (For the sake of clarity: I am not Jewish, I just love theology). Because he wasn’t literally praying to God in this episode, he decided to use the substitutes (adoshem/elokeinu) for the name of God to protect it. He described this use as “a kind of dummy prayer,” a fake or model prayer to use as a reference. This concept resonated with me so strongly, the idea of following through with the ritual act, still going through the gestures, still living in the reality of it and understanding its meaning and purpose—even if it’s outside of its intended use. The impacts of ritual on community and communication outside of a historical, literal meaning. And it made me think about the importance of those almost-performative gestures in building trust and connecting with people. In its simplest terms: That you do need to call your mom on Fridays, no matter what; that cliché words of comfort might be more helpful now to your friend in need than anything else; or that you do need to say I love you before leaving no matter how pissed off you are at your partner/parent/etc. It is how we treat ourselves and each other, it is a longing for connection, it is the calling out, even if we never get an answer.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
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