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?
The publication of my first chapbook Red Zone was definitely a moral poetry boost! Being a writer means dealing with a lot of rejections, so every publication is a celebration and an encouragement!
Red Zone and my full-length book B/RDS are located on the same ecological axis, and belong to the same investigative project into the roots and consequences of the Anthropocene: Red Zone through the ecologically devastated lands of WWI, and B/RDS through the ecologically shattered skies of North America. Both are experimental and intersect history and science. However, while Red Zone plays with some external texts, B/RDS is bringing intertextuality to its full extent, as the collection was written by erasing the entirety of Birds of America ––the iconic ornithological work of John James Audubon. B/RDS is also purposefully much more lyrical, as if a song.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
To some extent, I inherited my father’s love for poetry. Also, what I always have loved about poetry, is its capacity of dissent, against ideas but also against language itself ––both being intertwined. Discovering Baudelaire and Rimbaud, two poetry dissenters, was a defining moment for me, as a poet. Baudelaire shattered the idea of beauty and developed a symbolist aesthetic towards Modernism, while Rimbaud shattered metric versification towards the Modern free verse, and then, just abandoned poetry!
I will not abandon poetry, however I always have been interested in non-fiction too. Non-fiction finds its way in my poetry through preliminary research and/or through intertextuality.
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?
It always takes me a while to start a writing project. I do a lot of thinking and research beforehand. For example, for B/RDS, I researched 19th century naturalists and explored posthumanist philosophy and Object Oriented Ontology (OOO). The work of philosopher Timothy Morton (another dissenter!) who wrote the fascinating The Ecological Thought, was particularly influential. Morton’s work led me to wonder what could be an ecological, lyrical pronoun, and to experiment with the pronoun “we.”
I still continue researching and reflecting, even after I start the project. I am rather a slow writer. I like to spend time on a poem, which means that revisions are usually not extensive. For B/RDS, the revisions were mostly focused on the prose poems and the organization of the manuscript. The constraint that I had given myself on the erasure poems (keeping the order of words from the original text) made any revisions of these poems difficult, so I really spent time on their initial draft.
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 have a project ––to have a rough direction towards which I write my poems. Then, overtime, I redirect, which may lead me to drop some poems or revise others for the coherence of the project. For example, Red Zone was included in a much bigger project. However, I felt that the project was lacking coherence, so I decided to cull it and keep only the poems related to the ecological and historical impact of WWI.
Poems themselves often begin with an image, a moment, or a word collision. For example, the poem “Vimy” in Red Zone comes from the paradoxical, bucolic sight of the sheep used to mow the grass in the red zones of France. The red zones are former WWI battlefields prohibited to the public because unexploded explosives and harmful chemicals, from leaking ammunitions, riddle their soil. Hence the use of sheep to mow the grass.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I absolutely enjoy readings! I love how a poem becomes different once you voice it, where you recite it, or how the audience interprets it in so many various ways. Because my poetry projects are research projects, I also like to provide the background or context that help readers appreciate the poems more fully. It sometimes generates incredible discussions.
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?
My projects are conceived within postcolonial and posthumanist theoretical frameworks, and work towards developing a poetry of ecological awareness. I am particularly interested in environmental writing in the context of a critical investigation of settler colonialism, extractivism, and ecological imperialism. For example, my poetry collection B/RDS questions the disconnected approaches to the more-than-human world, through a lyrical erasure of Audubon’s iconic Birds of America.
I am also fascinated by how the lyric “I” can withstand the interconnectedness of all beings, or translate the ecological subject. What about a lyrical “we”?
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?
In these present times and society, I see writers as disrupters, inspirers, and/or awakeners. I write with the hope that poetry can shift perspectives and ways of seeing and being in the world, towards a kinder and more sustainable future.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
My work always benefits from the perspectives of outside readers/editors. And when the feedback or the conversation become challenging, it means it hit an important question or point. For example the final lay-out of B/RDS only came about after several discussions with poets Brenda Cárdenas and Kyce Bello, as well as my wife, who is always my first and bluntest editor. So, yes, feedback is essential and challenging. But, to some extent, if it weren’t challenging, it would not be constructive!
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
I had a mentor, Joan Kane, who suggested that before workshopping a poem, somebody else read the poem back to its author. Having somebody else read your own poem back to you, should be part of any feedback process!
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
Moving between poetry and critical essay allows me to approach a topic from different angles, so I do see them as complementary. I think they also influence each other. The critical prose might affect formal choices in my poems, while my poetry might support theoretical creativity.
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 like to have a wide swath of time to write, because I need to really dive into a poem, to spend time with it. So I often write on the weekend. If I am really deep in the mix of a project, my writing might spill over into the week, whenever I have time. I don’t really have a routine, except a cup of tea, that inevitably gets cold!
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
All my experiences somehow inform my writings. For example, B/RDS was written during the covid lockdown, which had a direct influence on the collection ––the “cages” we were in, the birds we could hear louder, the death toll, etc. However, to bring these experiences to the surface, I sometimes need a catalyst: non-fiction and poetry books, podcast, documentary films, etc., and nature. So when I get stuck, I delve back into these catalysts: grab a book or go for a hike!
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
The smell of bread, croissants, and books!
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?
Nature greatly influences my work. I am particularly interested in the relationship between humanity and the more-than-human world, in its zones of conflict and confluence. I am lucky to live in an area (Northern Arizona) with magnificent and vast expanses of wild life, however inexorably encroached upon. For example, the poem “Out of their Breast / as if” in B/RDS came from hikes in the forest around Flagstaff.
Other great influences are science, history, and art. My poetry is always in dialog with external fields.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
As mentioned earlier, the work of philosopher Timothy Morton has deeply influenced my poetry. My poetry is also indebted to the work of many poets: CD Wright, WS Merwin, Craig Santos Perez, Sherwin Bitsui, Joan Naviyuk Kane, James Thomas Stevens, Santee Frazier, Alice Oswald, M. NourbeSe Philip.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I would love to work in collaboration with an artist from another field, or a scientist. I can’t but wonder for example, what a collaboration with a scientist researching whale songs in the disrupted oceans could bring. I am fascinated by forms of expression, human or other!
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 would have loved to be an environmental scientist, an archivist, a medievalist, a park ranger, or an astronomer!
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I am passionate with language and books. How fascinating that we can dialogue across time and space through writing, or that words can sometimes change the course of history! Think about Martin Luther King’ s “I have a dream...”!
Also, I might have leaned towards writing because it is an activity I can practice anywhere, at my desk, by a river, on top of a mountain, etc.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
The last great book I read was To 2040 by Jorie Graham, and the last great movie I watched, Portrait of a Lady on Fire by Céline Sciamma.
20 - What are you currently working on?
I am working on a new poetry project and a non-fiction essay.
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