Kimberly Ann Southwick is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and English at Jacksonville State University. Her debut full-length poetry collection, ORCHID ALPHA, is out via Trembling Pillow Press as of April 2023. Kimberly is the founder and Editor in Chief of the literary-arts journal GIGANTIC SEQUINS. Find her on twitter @kimannjosouth or visit kimberlyannsouthwick.com for more.
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 with multiple poems all in one book changed my life in the same way that being alive and writing and sharing my work in the early 2010s did—I felt like I was a part of something larger than just myself as a writer. I suppose I didn’t know much about the “world” I was entering by sharing my work with people I didn’t necessarily know and by starting my own literary journal, all which happened around the same time. Orchid Alpha is my first full-length poetry book— it feels more thought out, in a way, than any other shorter collections of my work, and I think I feel farther from my speaker than I did when my previous chaps debuted.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
When I was at Emerson, I wrote “everything—” a lot of us said this. It was when I was rejected from the invite-only fiction class that I really dove into poetry, honestly. I stepped back and analyzed my fiction and found that my plots were simple, but the language and emotion were where my writing really throbbed. And poetry is often more about those things than plot, so.
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?
For the past few years, I have been running and participating in a NaPoWriMo prompt-a-day writing group, and through that, I feel like I have more of a process than I had in previous years. I write probably 20-30 poems that month, and then I write sporadically throughout the year, be it sitting in front of my laptop or scribbling on the backs of envelopes or taking notes in my phone. And then most of my time is spent editing and organizing from there. My works almost never come out fully formed the first time—especially since I am sometimes starting with prompts that my editing allows me to let go of.
4 - Where does a poem or work of fiction 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 feel like writing Orchid Alpha helped me understand what putting a book together takes, and now my editing and organizing can benefit from those lessons. I don’t think of my poems when I am writing them as something that can be a part of a book, but then once they are written, I go through and consider how they might fit together into a collection.
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 doing public readings, in fact. I think they help sell my work—and I don’t just mean financially, but I mean that reading my work aloud adds another element to it that hits people in a way that reading it on the page might not. I don’t think they are a part of the process of creating my work so much as they are a process of my poetry once it’s “done” (always in quotation marks--)
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?
Orchid Alpha’s feminist speaker is constantly grappling with technology and desire in the Anthropocene—and how these ideas come up against each other. I suppose it’s because a lot of the time she is me, and I am grappling with these things. (Have I already said, “The Speaker is Dead; Long Live the Speaker”? It’s my new favorite eye roll emoji response to is the speaker me. Yes! No! Sometimes! Maybe! Who is the speaker? I don’t know! Third base!)
Anyway, now that I’m a mother, that adds a whole other layer into the questions of existence that my work encounters, as technology, desire, and climate change are even more complex when I think about my daughter’s generation.
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 was reading this critical text on Emily Dickinson yesterday, and it was talking about how poets in the 1800s, specifically those writing in America around the time of the Civil War, were expected to be political, and how they often used both the private lyrical “I” speaker and the larger, national communal “we” voice—and how these two didn’t compete, necessarily, but also weren’t the same. Then I was thinking about how I’ve seen people complain about readers who are like “why is poetry so political these days, geeez, bring back the frost and the geese and the sunset,” and how those people have no concept of what poetry’s role has been in America and the world since… forever. That being said, each writer has to figure out for themselves what their “role” is, and I would say anyone who wants to write should most certainly write, be it about the geese and the frost or how Rome is burning. The harder part is about sharing your work. If it’s just the geese and the frost, your audience is going to be different than if it’s about how Rome is burning. No matter what, audiences will be critical. Ever since we started defining poetry as “the lyric” and the lyric as “overheard genius,” there has been a lot of pressure on people calling themselves poets. We don’t really draw lines anymore between “verse” and “poetry,” either, in the same way we did in the earliest colonial days in America. If you want people to read your work, then you should want them to get something out of it—each writer has their own “something,” and I hope they know what that is before they start sending their work out to publishers. But either way—write, writers, write!
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Hm, I haven’t had too many hands-on editors in my life, so it’s been easy so far.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
When I gave my very first public reading (aside from any I’d done related to school/college) at Franklin Park in Brooklyn, my favorite coworker, Ben McFall, and also my second favorite exboyfriend both gave me advice, and I like it because it works well for reading your work aloud and also for life in general. I don’t remember who of them said what, but they said: “Don’t be self-deprecating” and “Be loud.”
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to essays to plays)? What do you see as the appeal?
I have a memoir inside of me somewhere about giving birth to my first and only child in March 2020. I’ve filtered a lot of everything I was dealing with leading up to giving birth and into those first weeks through poetry—especially because of where NaPoWriMo falls each year—but I find myself coming back to the details when I hear of others’ birth experiences outside of my very strange one. I have trouble with sustaining anything longer than a poem, though, as a mother to a now-three-year-old with my very first salaried job in academia plus as the editor in chief of a long-running literary journal, amongst other many hats I wear. So I feel lucky to be a poet, and unlucky not to have the time to put in good work on anything longer.
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 don’t write every day, and I am fine with that.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Okay, so it’s less that my writing ever gets stalled, and more like there are 2,752 other things I need to be doing, and it’s hard to prioritize my poetry when I know that to be the case. BUT, aside from editing my poems and shuffling them around in the manuscript I’ve been building now since 2020, I make decoupage (or decoupe) poems. I have a lot of strict rules I set for myself—for example, I only clip lines from one magazine for each poem, and I try to keep the poem’s progression grammatical, etc.—and doing this really relaxes me and reunites me with some of the things I love about both language and specifically poetry.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Which home are we talking? I have too many homes. Honeysuckle reminds me of my youth.
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?
When my first chapbook was published, I remember reading through it and being like, “oh man, that’s from a song—that’s from a song—that’s from a song too!” I had sort of unconsciously picked up these allusions and images from the music that I had been listening to.
Also, I don’t think I can watch a David Attenborough documentary without writing a poem afterwards. I will tell anyone who listens, too, about how when I don’t know what to do with a poem, a sea creature usually makes its way into it to help me figure that out.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
The two poets I likely draw the most inspiration from are Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath, which is the most canonical answer possible, I am well aware. But they are the skyscrapers, you know? And I’ve read so much by and about them.
Recently I asked on twitter which musical artists/bands made poets think the most about poetry. It was probably my most popular tweet. But I listen to a ton of music, and so often I wind up loving a song because it makes me think about poetry. Usually it’s more the lyrics than anything else, but also how the music of the song itself makes the lyrics work. Jenny Lewis/Rilo Kiley, The National, and Fiona Apple are probably my top three answers to my own question and serve well as an answer here, too.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I would love to visit Japan.
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 really loved to be the person who makes montages for live sports games and like throws together graphics to illustrate statistics and stuff. I know that seems so random, but I always think about how much fun that would be!
I think I would have made a decent lawyer if I didn’t have so many feelings. (I cry at TV commercials, for example.) If I didn’t spend the first 20 or so years of my life being so very shy, I think I would have had fun as an actress. Not one who ever has to sing though.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
People kept telling me I was good at it. I feel like so many of the paths I chose come from people suggesting I do something because I was good at it or would be good at it—teachers and classmates, mostly.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I am really obsessed with Martha Wells’ Murderbot series. My colleagues and I have a sci-fi/spec fic book club, and I read the first novella for that and then devoured the rest of the series.
I really loved the 2022 documentary film Fire of Love—it felt like poetry.
20 - What are you currently working on?
I’ve been starting to think about my decoupage works as a part to a whole rather than individual stand-alone pieces, though thinking of them that way doesn’t much change them or my process, it just makes working on them feel more like a “project.” I started them because my daughter would sit beside me and decorate envelopes, letting me cut lines from magazines and put them together—whereas, when I would try to write or edit on my laptop, she would insist on banging on the keys from my lap. She is less interested in decorating envelopes these days, but still interested in my laptop, but now the project has become more than a replacement for writing and editing my poetry at home.
The more traditional poetry I’ve been working on is coming together as my “second full-length collection” now, and even has been sent out to some contests/open periods in earlier drafts, to no success. I think the draft of the manuscript I am working on now is more complete and might get some different attention. I hope, though, that poetry about covid and motherhood isn’t rejected simply because of its subject matters, as I know poetry about motherhood isn’t always met well, and I can imagine poetry that forefronts covid may begin to feel old or dated as we move away from the virus’s arrival and lockdown. Though, I don’t think either subject is too much or should be shied away from for any writer or publisher, and I don’t just say that as a mother who gave birth in March 2020, but as an editor as well. The collection has had a few different titles, but even before covid, it tackled the ideas of loss and what we lose personally and how we might connect those smaller losses to the larger loss of climate change, in order to give over the best possible planet to our children and theirs.
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