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 really felt like it was necessary to write Gut before I wrote any other book; Gut lays out a theory of writing. I feel a bit more freedom, now, with what I am currently working on. That’s not to say it feels any less urgent, but there is less of a need to justify its existence.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I came to poetry through the band The Wonder Years, and their album based on Ginsberg’s “America.” I was very angry and I couldn’t take the pace of fiction or non-fiction, it was too slow, I was a teenager and everything had a kind of immediacy. I found that anger in the Beats and Charles Bukowski, and the immediacy in Richard Siken’s work.
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 write every day. I have a huge Pages document that I write in, and I change out the document each year. When I’m working on prose poems, I move to a Word document. I like to write whole books, or projects, not just individual poems. I like something I can look at, that I can see growing, and see laying out a theory of thought. Some poems come all at once and some poems require months of revision. With the books, I want to create a kind of emotional arc.
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?
I like to think of myself as a person who writes books. I am usually working on a book from the very beginning, though I do write individual, lineated poems. I really love how words sound and I love music. I like putting sounds together, and that is where the lineated poems start. With the larger projects I write the books that I want to read, and that I’m frustrated don’t already exist.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I did some readings in college and realized I hated the experience of reading and watching a whole room full of people murmur. That being said, I got more confident with them over the course of my MFA, but I don’t think they contribute to my creative process any more than existing and socializing contribute to my creative process. I love hosting parties and going to them and I would rather do that.
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 believe that poetry allows for us to negotiate our relationship to impulse, through its manipulation of the breath. I am very concerned with how quickly we exert our impulses, especially our impulses towards violence and towards punishment, and how physical violence enables a kind of clarity, in that it alters physical reality in a very clear way. Gut was very concerned with the question of learned knowledge versus the knowledge gained through experience, and how trauma impacts our views towards how we are willing to live, and what we are willing to do. It was also very concerned with the extent of our individual control, especially over our desires. I want my reader to question their impulses and their judgments, and to redirect them to a kind of beauty.
My second book thinks about childhood and adolescence. There, I’m concerned with when an adolescent becomes culpable for their actions, and how and when we place blame on individual actors.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I think it is very important for writers to believe in what they are saying, and to believe in a clear vision. That doesn’t mean every book has to be overwhelmingly inspirational, or even make narrative sense, but that the writer should be able to lay out a way of thinking about the world that has helped them, and can help others as a result.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I have a select handful of readers who are really essential to me. They are also some of the same people I talk through the guiding principles and questions of my work with, and who I am lucky enough to have as readers. I didn’t revise the manuscript of Gut significantly after its submission, but I am grateful for the editors at Omnidawn who were so attentive to my vision for the book.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
When I was about to go to my MFA I was incredibly nervous, because I didn’t—and still don’t—have a “brand” as a writer, and I didn’t know how to present myself. I was talking to my thesis advisor Warren Liu about this, and he told me: just focus on the writing. It helped me significantly.
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 wake up around 8 and I have a coffee and a banana I write until 11 or 12 every day. I nanny so I work in the afternoons.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
It took me awhile to get to the place where I genuinely believed that me writing is ethical, but I do, in that I think I can help people through navigating certain topics, and creating new language surrounding them, and new ways of interpreting time. So I think about my ethical duty! And I think about the books that have helped me. I don’t really get stalled that often.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Fresh-cut grass.
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?
I’m very influenced by music and by movies and by nature and by visual art.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Toni Morrison’s novels are really important to me, and so are James Baldwin’s. Maggie Nelson’s writing and Claudia Rankine’s writing showed me what was possible in terms of form, how form can challenge time. Louise Glück taught me a lot about power and syntax, and so did Matthew Dickman. There are so many other works by other writers whose lines repeat in my head and simplify my life.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I would like to publish another book and teach in-person at the college level (if you read this and want me to teach an Introductory Workshop please know that I would absolutely love to, anytime, anywhere). I would like to read some Russian novels.
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 would be a second-grade teacher.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I didn’t really have a choice. I did a couple of other things before I really committed to writing but I kept getting distracted by the language.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
The last great book I read was Ada Limón’s The Hurting Kind.
The last great film I saw was Everything Everywhere All At Once. And C’mon, C’mon, earlier this year—Mike Mills’s films have been a huge influence on me and on my books.
19 - What are you currently working on?
I’m currently working on my second poetry book, which is titled Absolute Threshold, the term for the smallest amount of matter that can be perceived by the senses. I’m also working on a novel that is going to take a long time.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
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