12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jennifer May Newhook

Jennifer May Newhook’s first published short story was longlisted for the Writer’s Trust Journey Prize, and most recently her first novel, The Gulch, was longlisted for the NLCU Fresh Fish Award for Best Unpublished First Manuscript. Jennifer published her first poem at seventeen and in the years since has received recognition for her work in this genre by the Atlantic Writing Competition, the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Awards, the Gregory J. Power Poetry Award, and the Riddle Fence Poetry Prize. Her poetry and short stories have been anthologized and published nationally and internationally in literary journals and magazines including Riddle Fence, The Newfoundland Quarterly, and The Pottersfield Portfolio. She took an extended hiatus from writing to raise small children and has now risen blinking from the rubble, eager to embrace her status as a debut author. Jennifer’s first full-length poetry collection, Last Hours, was published by Riddle Fence in Spring 2024. Jennifer works as a writer and editor in downtown St. John’s, Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland) where she lives with her partner, three teens, one tween, and two cats. She can be found on social media under the handles @Jennifer May Newhook (Facebook) and @jennymayrunaway (Instagram).

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

Well, Last Hours is only a few days old, so I can’t say that much has changed, yet! I would say that my most recent work, in terms of poetry, is definitely looser than my early stuff.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I published my first piece of writing when I was seventeen; it was a poem. That first publication certainly gave me the motivation to pursue poetry. I had a book when I was quite young—a collection of writing by children that contained all kinds of funny and thoughtful verse—that made the idea of writing poetry and having it appear in a book or magazine quite real for me, very early on. I was always a voracious reader of fiction and certainly wrote lots of that as well, but in terms of completing a piece, poetry definitely seemed more realistic and achievable.

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 subscribe to the “clock of the long now” school of creative thought! I need to ruminate and mull on things a great deal before the various strata of whatever I am working on are revealed to me. I do tend to produce rough first drafts quite quickly when I am inspired, but they are messy. I am not a note taker or planner. Part of the joy of writing for me is the element of surprise—I love surprising myself!

4 - Where does a poem or 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?

A poem for me almost invariably starts in a flash: a moment where a number of feelings and thoughts and images suddenly coalesce into “a thing.” For the most part, I would have to say that my poetry generally gets whittled into something smaller and more defined from a larger amorphous mass. There are exceptions: one of the longest poems in Last Hours, “Atwood Machine,” came from a very emotional place that I greatly expanded on with some research, and there are a couple of others in there like that as well. My first novel, The Gulch, came from a series of short stories that I just couldn’t seem to stop writing.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I love going to public readings but am less a fan of doing them. I read my own work out loud to myself all the time, though!

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 have a very dark bent. I see the shadows in everything and in all my work (poetry, short fiction, long-form narrative) I am definitely trying to see into that grey space. What’s in there? How does it affect us? How do we affect it? In terms of technical concerns, I do struggle with the parameters of genre writing, in particular. It is a difficult balance to produce original work that still adheres to the word counts and plot movements that publishers and agents are looking for. Mostly, I want to write what excites me. If I am laughing diabolically at my desk, I feel that is a good sign.

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?

Oh my gosh. Well, the writer provides the seeds for all kinds of invention and creation. The writer is out there describing things and experiences from a very specific viewpoint that is so personal and therefore always novel, and the hope is (as a reader as well as from a writerly perspective) that a chime of understanding and emotional growth can come from that, that will connect us as a society. I do know that the role of writer should NOT be to simply provide data for machine learning.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I love working with an editor! It is so easy to get buried in your own work. A good editor can really help you see what’s going on in there and pull the guts of the work out to examine it. Between the two of you, it should go back together more neatly meshed, greased up, and ready to run smoothly. I work as an editor myself, so it has really been illuminating to see and experience both sides of that process. My skin is pretty thick when it comes to receiving editorial advice, but I am very tender hearted when it comes to delivering that advice to someone else!

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

Well, the first piece of advice that I received at large—and actually attempted to follow—was to write daily. You learn so much about your own process, and it’s good to maximize your productivity once you understand what the best writing times are for you … but it’s not always possible. That’s an ideal situation to aspire to.

The best piece of advice I’ve received recently came from the editor of this collection, poet, and novelist Sue Goyette. When we first met virtually, I was nervous about what was expected of me. She said: “Your orders are to prepare to do the work. Get yourself in the right headspace. Spend some time clearing your mind.” I don’t think anybody had ever given me permission to do that before! To just take some walks, dabble in reading, relax, and ponder. Very helpful advice.

And my own advice is: Keep those scraps! Every bit of writing that actually makes it onto paper or into the screen has some value. You wrote it down for a reason! Last Hours was very much conjured from literal scraps of paper, accumulated during a hectic time of raising young children. I tried so hard to “write,” but the time just wasn’t there. Those scraps and fragments ended up holding so much beauty and meaning, and I feel very proud that I fought to get them recorded, whatever way I could—I think there were even some words written in eyeliner on a band aid wrapper!

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to form narrative fiction to dramatic script)? What do you see as the appeal?

I find artistic genres to be quite fluid and mutually informative. One of my favorite projects I’ve worked on was writing a short film script based solely on an already-composed musical score. I would love to see that script animated some day! For me, poetry is the ultimate doorway to all writing. The way I think when I am writing poetry is simultaneously expansive and extremely focused. It benefits my short fiction and my long-form narrative. Whenever I get stuck, I return to poetry. I feel like if I can’t write poetry, I can’t write anything!

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?

Unless I am lucky enough to having funding for a specific project, my workday is usually spent trying to balance my paid work with my current writing projects, which at the moment are a collection of speculative short fiction and a new novel. I have a twenty-year-old, two teens, and tween who need transporting to school every morning, so by the time all that is done, it’s usually 9:30 or 10 a.m. If I’m really organized, I’ll do a bit of housework, go for my walk, and aim to be sitting at my desk by 11 a.m., where I’ll usually work until 2:30 or so when my youngest gets out of elementary school. If they have after school plans, I might head back to the studio and continue working until supper time. I have had periods of time where I was motivated enough to get up early and get an hour or two in before morning routines start at 7:30 a.m., but that is not the norm for me.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

Well, during a time when I was fortunate to receive funding to pursue a project as well as a daily writing practice, I learned very quickly that my episodes of writer’s block—which used to frustrate me terribly and scare me away from my desk for weeks—actually only last a few days. If I’m really stuck, I’ll head out to the vegetable garden behind my studio and do some garden work. If my mind drifts in the right way while I’m occupied by a physical task, often the solution will just present itself! A walk will sometimes create the same opportunity. And moving into the headspace to write poems and getting some of that type of writing on the page will often unlock a narrative block for me.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

In the larger sense of “home,” as in my region of the world, I would have to say wild rose, spruce forest, salt water, and wet bog. As in “my own personal home,” I would say wood smoke, cooking, and bath products. I take a lot of baths!

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?

Well, obviously dreams. Dream imagery sneaks its way into almost all of my projects. Research of any type can certainly send me off on different tangents and will inform my work, whether I intend it to or not. My short fiction skews toward the speculative, so science and politics often sneak in there. I’ve also written several ekphrastic poems based on visual art by David Blackwood and John Hartman—one of those, a series called “After Viewing” actually won some component of the Atlantic Poetry Prize a zillion years ago.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

I am very much an omnivorous consumer of writing—I am intrigued by anything that can sweep me away regardless of genre, subject matter, story structure, or expertise. I am definitely drawn by the dark side, so I do enjoy contemporary horror and ghost stories. I am just finishing up my first novel, The Gulch, which is a ghost story and definitely horror adjacent, so I am always on the look out for the creep factor. I’m not into guts and gore at all, but I live for ideas, images, and experiences that really raise the hairs on the back of my neck. If I’m writing prose, I’ll often gravitate towards short stories and literary fiction. If I’m looking to just tap out and relax, my go to is always historical fiction—I love Tudor-era and medieval settings.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

I would love to take a family vacation somewhere warm in the dead of winter. For our twentieth anniversary my husband and I took a “honeymoon” in Montreal this past year—it was the first time we had ever been on a plane together! I would love to expand on that sometime with a trip to the Mediterranean with him.

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 have always joked that I didn’t care what I got paid to do and that I’d be happy to get paid to sort colored pieces of string. Then I started working as an editor, and I realized … that kind of is my job now—except with words! Whether or not I pursued writing, I would have ended up somewhere in the literary world for sure. I’ve spent many an hour working in independent bookstores which is a fabulous gig, except the pay is absolute shite.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

I couldn’t not do it. According to my mother, my first word was “book,” and I’ve been obsessed with writing and reading my entire life.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

I really enjoyed Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth and Lindsay Wong’s book of short stories, Tell Me Pleasant Things About Immortality. They were both off the hook in completely different ways, which is something I aspire to!

20 - What are you currently working on?

Many things that I liken to pushing a boulder up a hill are coming to pass—myself and my partner are entering the end stages of a massive home renovation that has taken place over the past decade on a shoestring budget, engineered with blood, sweat, and tears. All four kids are now in the double digits and require less hands-on daily care—one of them even has a driver’s license, which has been great. I’ve just released my first poetry collection, Last Hours. I am finishing the final draft of my first novel, The Gulch and hopefully finding a home for that manuscript, as well. I am gathering the internal fortitude to begin my second novel, Maggot Beach, which I am in the process of researching. It is partially inspired by the journals and writings of my great aunt who was hearing impaired and spent a great deal of time unjustly incarcerated in psychiatric institutions. I am eager to dig into that project, but I think I need to recharge a bit—I should probably take a minute and clean my house!

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

 

ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part one : Cameron Anstee + John Levy,

[see last fall’s similar notes here]

Ottawa ON/Kentville NS: It is good to see a new publication by Ottawa poet Cameron Anstee, who is famously working at his own pace, in his own time [see my review of his second collection here], and good to see a chapbook of his produced through Gaspereau Press: Sky Every Day (2024), produced as Devil’s Whim Chapbook No. 53. It is almost a surprise to think that Anstee hadn’t published with Gaspereau prior to this, as there does seem a similar aesthetic of tone, of production, between the two (remember Anstee’s work through his own Apt. 9 Press, for example). Across seventeen poems in this very lovely chapbook, Anstee extends his exploration of poems that take up the smallest space possible, yet each one packed with enormous resonance and scale. One can point to the work of the late Nelson Ball, titles by Mark Truscott or certain works by the late Toronto poet bpNichol, but Anstee is working something entirely evolving into his own direction with these pieces. There are echoes of Ball’s attentions to nature, but one that blends Nichol’s own attentions to pure language, somehow meeting in the middle, establishing the stretch of his own, ongoing space. Anstee’s poems are aware of physical space, of physical place and of a space of attention that wraps itself around all the above. There are enormous amounts that go into these poems, and one could spent hours, not lost, but comfortably settled into a suite of curiosities, within them.

AUBADE

sun
spilt

 

Jay MillAr of Bookhug Press, hiding underneath his table,

Cobourg ON/Tucson AZ: It is very nice to see a new chapbook by Arizona poet John Levy [see my review of his recent selected here] through Stuart Ross’ Proper Tales Press, Guest Book for People in my Dreams (2024). It is interesting in how Levy returns to composition-as-response, directly riffing off or responding to particular poets or particular lines, sentences or phrases, allowing for a wider opening of where it is his own lines might extend. “That’s something to look forward to,” the sprawling opening sentence of the prose poem “Sisyphus at Noon” begins, “no shadows, though it was marvellous before noon and afterwards, finding all sorts of colours in even the smallest shadows he rolled the boulder past—a pebble’s oblong shadow with blues and greys (a little yellow at one edge), or a dead bird’s longer wider shadow with a greenish-grey stroke close to the feathered rise of folded wings.” Each meditative poem begins with a line or a thought or a moment and then furthers, the poet working one step and then a further step, curious to see, it seems, where it all might end up, as eager to discover as the reader. Produced in an edition of 150 copies, you should certainly try to pick one up from Stuart Ross when next you see him.

Poem Beginning with a Sentence
by Elizabeth Robinson

The essence of nature is to be always borrowing.

I borrow my thoughts and rarely repay anyone or
anything, it’s part of my nature, is second nature

and third, and so on. Always, so on. There’s no Polonius

telling me what to do—or instructing nature
to stop lending nature more nature. Dust

lends dust to the dust

that is always borrowing and returning the dust.
Bats chase bugs at dusk, what isn’t

dust at the moment

is taking its time.

newly posted at periodicities : a journal of poetry and poetics: folio : Barry McKinnon (1944-2023)

folio : Barry McKinnon (1944-2023)
, edited by Jeremy Stewart and Donna Kane

Jeremy Stewart : Introduction : Something – for Barry McKinnon ;

Hope Anderson : Tribute ; Elizabeth Bachinsky : Three poems ; bill bissett : ths xcelent prson  k.darcy taylor  was driving me away ; Marilyn Bowering : Barry McKinnon ; Lary Bremner : heart in place  out of time for barry mckinnon ; Brian Hiram Coulter : There was this kid in band ; Pierre Coupey : a few words for barry ; Justin Foster : Caledonia ; Solomon Goudsward : On the Death of Barry McKinnon ; Donna Kane : Barry here ; GP Lainsbury : Phenomenology put to work in the Poetry of Barry McKinnon ; rob mclennan : I wanted to say something ; Matt Partyka : Out of the Blind World ; Graham Pearce : No Distance – Three Poems ; Al Rempel : Anecdotes ; Clea Roberts : What can be done, as if an answer/ is possible? ; George Sipos : Tribute ; Jeremy Stewart : something (postscript for Barry McKinnon ; Paul Strickland : Tribute Red Shuttleworth : Tribute ; Sharon Thesen : A FEW WORDS FOR BARRY MCKINNON ; Simon Thompson : Tribute ; Michael Turner : Tribute ; Fred Wah : Bundling Barry ; Tom Wayman : Tribute ; Gillian Wigmore : Tribute ;

extras: John Harris : Barry McKinnon -- We Remember ; Paul E. Nelson: Barry McKinnon in ICU ; obituary by rob mclennan ; obituary by Paul E. Nelson ; obituary by Andrew Kurjata, CBC ; from the archives -- Remembering Barry McKinnon (1944-2023) by Cecil Giscombe, The Capilano Review ; Barry McKinnon's 2022 Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] interview ; Barry McKinnon's website ; other tributes (from Barry's website ;

photos of Barry McKinnon throughout provided by Joy McKinnon ;
[except for photos provided by Simon Thompson + rob mclennan,

See the full folio [with links] here

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Ken Taylor

Ken Taylor is the author of six books of poetry, three plays, and a collaboration with Ed Roberson titled found poem(s), a book of photography (Ken's) and poetry (Ed's) forthcoming from Corbett vs. Dempsey.  He is the founder of selva oscura press, which he edits with Fred Moten.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
self-portrait of joseph cornell was the result of reconnecting to poetry after about a 25-30 year hiatus and into a community that welcomed me (in Durham, NC). It was published when I was in my 50's by Pressed Wafer, which was run by the late Bill Corbett. Being published by Bill also connected me to a larger poetry community that revolved around New York City and New England. variations in the dream of X (just released by Black Square Editions) was actually started before my first book. It's the result of two different projects that had floundered over a couple of decades that seemed to find a way to work once I combined them.  When I wasn't writing poetry all those years, I was writing plays and even a couple of screenplays. This book borrows elements from both. The writing feels the same to me. The first was using a sonnet structure without having to think about form. The last was organizing different voices.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or nonfiction?
From what I can remember, I missed the bus one day in highschool and had to walk. I started to make up a song about being alone on a highway based on the rhythm of my breathing and strides.  I didn't start out to compose something. It just happened.

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'm constantly taking notes which I eventually collage. I seem to have many false starts, but something sparks and then I see where I'd like to head. Some first drafts don't change much , but most do, some much more than others, or get put in a folder I've labeled "scrap exchange."

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?
My poems start with a spark. I've written three chapbooks and three books. The first two chapbooks were more or less individual pieces that eventually were corralled under a title. The last chapbook and the full-length books have all been thought of as books from the beginning. That final form of what that book becomes has invariably changed from my initial take on the project.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I don't do a lot of readings, but I like doing them. It also helps me edit the poems. If I can't speak them easily, then something needs adjusting.
 
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 can't really think in those terms without writing something that's crap.  I am however fascinated with some theoretical and scientific writing  as well as with philosophy.  And while I may not have the capacity to fully grasp what I'm reading, I find language that is useful to or excites me.

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?
Perspective? Presence? Articulating Questions?

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
It depends on the editor. I'm open to going with the best idea.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
"Never let a day go by." Jerry Jeff Walker

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (solo work to collaboration, poetry to photography)? What do you see as the appeal?
I gravitate to things I like. And that feels easy. And this is certainly not an original idea, but I think all work is collaborative.

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 support myself with what I write, so I find time around work. Sometimes that's just taking notes all during the day. The weekends are typically more focused on writing. I feel I am at my writing best in the mornings.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
My writing doesn't seem to ever get stalled for too long, so I don't worry about it. I'm constantly reading other poets as well as other kinds of writing. Watching movies. Going to see art. To the theatre. Going on long walks that typically spark something.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
I was an Air Force brat. So my physical home changed. Both sides of my family are from Alabama (where I was born) and so I'd say honeysuckle and scuppernong conjure Alabama for me .

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?
Books, art, music, science, movies, theatre, menus, signs, overheard conversations, the Voyager spacecrafts, cooking instructions, repair manuals, powerpoint presentations—you name it.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Too many to list. Ready go tos are folks from the Durham, NC community —Fred Moten, Nate Mackey, Joe Donahue, Pete Moore, Maggie Zurawski. Maggie Nelson always inspires me and her writing points me to many other writers. I also find inspiration from Susan Howe, Fanny Howe, Alice Notley, Ed Roberson, John Yau, Robert Duncan, Gertrude Stein, Eileen Myles, Robert Creeley, Amiri Baraka, John Ashbery, Anne Carson, and a bunch more folks.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Win Wimbledon. Act in a Coen Brothers' movie. Bowl 300. Play washboard in a zydeco band.

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?
Like I said, I don't support myself as a writer. Even at my age, I feel like there are still opportunities open to me. I'm learning more about photography. Would like to collaborate with musicians. Painters. Filmmakers.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
It's a compelling way for me to express myself.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I read a bunch of things at the same time. But what's been exciting to me lately is Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, by Timothy Morton (an author/book I learned about from Maggie Nelson's On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint.) Collected Works by Lorine Niedecker.  Movies: Dogtooth, directed by Yorgos Lanithoms. Written by Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou. Stalker, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. Written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.

20 - What are you currently working on?
Collage prose poems that all have the title wyoming.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Jennifer May Newhook, Last Hours

my review of St. John’s, Newfoundland writer Jennifer May Newhook’s Last Hours (St. John’s NL: Riddle Fence Publishing, 2024) is now up at The Woodlot.

Tracy Fuad, Portal

 

HYPOSUBJECT

In life, I imbued things with a great deal of meaning and purpose.

At times, as if possessed.

I wanted to understand reason, but it seemed to gather speed and breadth without
me, as if reason itself, once seeded, began to breathe and grow on its own.

But officials have said the hole is perfect.

So now I focus on the practical use of the past.

The light of day. A blue chair standing before the mirror.

It occurred to me after the end, the fifth of that week, arriving when the doors
were closed: I may have died.

How do you feel when the world is big inside your head?

Another common moment.

I am very much appreciating the echoes, repetitions and folds in the latest poetry collection from Berlin-based American poet Tracy Fuad, following about:blank (Pittsburgh PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021) [see my review of such here], her collection Portal (The University of Chicago Press, 2024). There are such fascinating strands of narrative that swirl and meet across these poems; the way rhythm presents itself across her accumulated, self-contained phrases. Fuad’s poems are expansive, threading a myriad of articulations on language, translation, history and culture in poems that stretch out across landscapes far beyond the scope of the page. “At dawn I could make endlessness. And love all night.” she writes, as part of one of the “HYPOSUBJECT” poems, “However, when I stood to go, I couldn’t break into living.”

Set in a quartet of sections—“mortal,” “torpor,” “mortar, pestle” and “portal,” titles that bounce off each other in an effect echoing homolinguistic translation—Fuad utilizes the shape and scope of the poem to articulate something so intimately large as to be difficult to name. “I was slushing around in my slush. / Who could understand such a thing?” she writes, as part of “THE SIXTH PLANETARY BOUNDARY,” “I had been trained my whole life / for this wanting.” At but one hundred pages, there is such an enormous sense of scale to this collection, one that feels akin to the wide canvas of the work of Anne Carson, offering the collection as holding everything her writing has learned and contained and continued up to that point in a single offering. The poems are exploratory, examining how one unfolds and unfurls consciousness and human thought, engagement and responsibility. This is a remarkably complex, dense and thoughtful collection, one that requires and rewards both time and attention. As she writes as part of the long poem “BUSINESS”:

It was in the gouging of the valley that a trio of human remains was uncovered

Though upon examination, it was determined that the skeletons were not human

Belonging instead to a distinct and extinct species of archaic humans

The species was named after the valley

The valley named after Neader, a man descended from a man who’d changed his
name from Neumann to Neander

Out of reverence, possibly misdirected, for the ancient Greeks

Both names meaning “new man”

I find, at times, the taste of my own mouth to be abhorrent.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Cynthia Marie Hoffman

Cynthia Marie Hoffman is the author of four collections of poetry: Exploding Head, Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones, Paper Doll Fetus, and Sightseer, all from Persea Books. Essays in TIME, The Sun, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Poems in Electric Literature, The Believer, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere. Cynthia lives in Madison, WI. www.cynthiamariehoffman.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?

When Sightseer won Persea’s Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize, it fulfilled my lifelong dream of publishing a book. In that sense, my life was changed. I joined a catalogue of truly wonderful authors, and publishing opened the door to meaningful connections with readers and poets.

But I had a one-year old at home and was fully settled in a non-academic job that had no expectations of me to publish. So my day-to-day remained unchanged. Isn’t that how it is for so many writers, especially poets? Yes, I felt different. This incredible thing I’d worked so hard for over so many years was finally happening! But to my coworkers, and to many of my friends and family, I was the same.

Exploding Head, my newest book, is a memoir in prose poems about my lifelong journey with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), though it doesn’t say “OCD” anywhere in the poems themselves. All four of my full-length collections form cohesive full-length “projects” (if people are still using that word). But Exploding Head is the first book that isn’t heavily based on research, spoken through persona poems, or influenced by historical figures, medicine, or architecture. It’s not only about me, but it’s about a part of me I never talked about before. It’s the most interior, vulnerable thing I’ve ever written.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I loved writing little poems with my mother when I was little. Sometimes we wrote down familiar nursery rhymes and drew pictures to accompany them on the page. Poetry has always been in my life.

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?

Forever. It takes, seemingly, forever. I think I’ve been relatively prolific (compared to what? I don’t know), but each poem I’ve finished has been hard-won. I often start with an idea of the structure of the argument I want to make (first this, then that) or a clear visual like a scene from a movie. Then I have the frustrating task of putting it into words. Words are the hardest (and last) part of the poem to appear. By the time I have a “draft” on the page in a form others can actually read, it’s already in a very late stage of development. All the strands have been combed through, and I’ve just finally braided them together.

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’m working on a book from the very beginning. For a while, poet Nick Lantz and I were curating an interview site on poetry project books called The Cloudy House. It’s still a great resource (with more than 60 interviews!) for anyone who’s thinking about crafting a book-length collection.

I’m more interested in books than I am single poems. I don’t know if that’s been good or bad for my poems that have to go out in the world on their own, but there is always an interdependency at play. I do often revise quite a bit as the final book is coming together. There’s no reason to keep re-establishing setting or identity if you’re building a memoir out of poems—so all those redundancies must be cut if the book is to be successful.

I spent a couple years researching and building a book of poems about tuberculosis, but in the end, I abandoned that project entirely. That’s a risk when you think “book first, poem second.” Those poems about my grandfather in the tuberculosis sanatorium in the early 1940s couldn’t have been easily shuffled into a memoir about OCD. 

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 readings. I don’t know that they’re a part of my creative process. It’s rare that I’ll “test” a new poem on a crowd these days. But I used to. I learned how to read in 2-minute open mic slots during my time in London in the late 90s when I was living there on a work visa with another poet, Sarah Kain Gutowski. Then, we read at open mic series in northern Virginia, and I even hosted a reading series in Arlington and later in my MFA program. That early experience shaped my ability to present my work confidently and to use the public space as an arena of experimentation. I’ve learned where certain poems work better off the page: in a quiet library, in a noisy bar, in a big crowd or a small crowd.

The best thing about readings is the immediate connection with the listener. We so rarely have the opportunity to be in the room when our poems are experienced in real-time. I love attending readings, as well. I go to as many as I can (onscreen and off). Writing is such an isolating endeavor. Attending poetry reading is so important for community-building. I love to hear poets read.

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 first three collections explored my relationship to history: as a tourist confronting the history of other countries (Sightseer), as a pregnant woman benefitting from our current day understanding of medicine (Paper Doll Fetus), and as an inheritor of my family history during the genealogical research craze (Call Me When You Want to Talk About the Tombstones).

But Exploding Head is the first book to explore the history of own mind—growing up with undiagnosed OCD and anxiety and finding my way as an adult.

My current work continues this line of questioning about the self. If I’m not writing from research or about others, how can I position the self in my work? It’s a new thing for me to be writing about myself.

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?

To document the experience of being alive during our time, in whatever big or small ways suit the poet’s skill. Even if we write about past events or speculate about the future, we cannot escape filtering it through the lens of our time. So even if we don’t know it, we’re always doing this work. 

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

Poets have a very different relationship with editors than prose writers. I experienced this firsthand having worked with several editors on essays I published last year. The process made my writing better, and I’ve been thinking about what poets are potentially missing out on by holding our work so close and by editors largely treating it as finished.

I do, however, depend on the feedback from poetry groups assembled from my peers, and to whom I’m indebted for my development as a poet and for rescuing me from writer’s block with the looming force of communal deadlines without which, at some points, I might not have been writing at all.

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

Advice from my time in gymnastics transfers well to general life and poetry: don’t overthink it; just go for it; let go.

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?

Most of my day has nothing to do with writing. But I try to keep a burner warm. Having a project that extends beyond one-poem-at-a-time really helps me dip in and out. I have a hard time getting started if I have to come up with a new idea each time I sit down to write.

But the fact is, I’m always sitting. I sit to work, I sit to write, I sit to relax. I hope to get back into adult gymnastics again, or at least some more walking. As I’ve worked from home, the lines between work and writing have blurred. I write where I work. Sometimes I write on my work computer. Sometimes I check work emails during my writing time. But mostly, my writing time and work hours don’t conflict; my mind is clearest and most alive late at night, when everything is dark and quiet. That’s when I’m most creative.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I love reading poetry, but if I’m too immersed in the voices of other poets, I tend to lose my own voice. I find inspiration in history, research, interesting science facts. Sometimes, when I feel lost, re-reading my own manuscript helps me remember myself. 

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

In college, majoring in photography and taking a color printing lab course, I was alone in a small, single-unit darkroom. I opened the drawer of the wooden desk beneath the enlarger, and a familiar scent wafted up to me. It was the fragrance of my grandparents’ home in California, a place I’d visited only a handful of times in my childhood.

I’m not saying, necessarily, that my grandparents’ home smelled like a musty, dusty old wooden drawer in a room of photo paper and chemicals, but all of a sudden, so unexpectedly, there it was—the exact smell. Good thing I was alone in the dark, because the nostalgia came over me so powerfully, I stood there and sobbed.

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 often inspired by the musicality of natural speech, though I have a tendency to get stuck on repeating certain phrases (as a symptom of OCD) that feels troublesome and not conducive to creativity. I’m always inspired by science, the animal world, our understanding of (and the mysteries of) the universe. Watching documentaries.    

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

The community of writers that form my poetry and essay groups are so important to me. The more recently beloved books on my shelves include Eugenia Leigh’s Bianca and James Davis May’s Unusually Grand Ideas for the way they explore mental health. Though I had finished writing Exploding Head before I discovered these gems, I feel my work has a kinship with these collections, and as I walked the vulnerable road toward publication, I felt their presence farther ahead, having laid the path.

I was heavily shaped by my early learning under Carolyn Forché, both by her own work and by her teaching. She opened her graduate courses to undergraduates, and I was lucky enough to be taking her classes as an undergrad and again, years later, as a graduate student at George Mason University. She introduced me to work in translation and poets I wouldn’t have stumbled upon by myself. And she is the reason I came to love history, a subject I had famously despised for all my schooling years as I was forced to simply memorize dates and names. But Carolyn made history come alive; she made it magical. And suddenly everything made sense—the very reason we view the world as we do today. I feel so, so lucky to have been able to sit in her classrooms.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

See the aurora borealis in its fullest form directly overhead. Sleep overnight in a treehouse. Get my full-twisting back layout all the way around.

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?

Gymnastics coach. Or photographer. In the fourth grade, we each wrote a book of poems and bound them with tape and cardboard and fabric. I still have mine. The “About the Author” page says I wanted to be a photographer. (No mention of being a poet, but I think that was something I didn’t comprehend “being”—it’s just something I was.)

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

I became a writer in addition to doing something else (i.e., a paying career). But day-to-day, what makes me write instead of sitting back in the red chair in the corner of the living room with a movie on tv and a cat in my lap? Having a deadline to write something for poetry group, having a community of peers who check in on me (and I on them), and being in the midst of a project that feels obsessive and urgent. 

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

I’m working through a giant stack of books I brought home from AWP and posting about them on Instagram (@cynthiamariehoffman). I’m calling it the “Book Fair Book Haul Crawl” because, let’s be real, it takes time to read all those new books we get so excited about, and there’s no reason to rush through. A few standouts so far have been Lisa Fey Coutley’s Host, Jubi Arriola-Headley’s Bound, and Jenny Irish’s Hatch, but there are so many more, and more that I have yet to read that will certainly be the next great book.

As far as films, I can’t name one. I love movies, and I have a bit of an addiction to movies and tv. I’ll devour almost any movie. But they all kind of meld into a blob in my mind. Probably the result of too much tv.

19 - What are you currently working on?

Essays! In 2023, I made a point of rekindling my first love for the personal essay. I’ve recently published essays on OCD; one in Time Magazine online called My OCD Can’t Keep Me Safe From America’s Gun Violence—But It Tries, and another in The Sun called The Beast in Your Head. And I’d like to keep up my exploration of this form.

I’m also writing poems, but, for the first time, they’re not part of a pre-defined “project.” This has left me feeling lost at sea. But still, I write, hoping one of these poems will become an oar.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

new from above/ground press: mclennan, Bartczak (trans. Mark Tardi), Norris, Pakdel, Anderson, Archer, Myers, Polyck-O'Neill, Houbolt + Tracy,

I wanted to say something, : an elegy, for Barry McKinnon (1944-2023), by rob mclennan $5 See link here for more information ; Unsovereign, by Kacper Bartczak, translated from the Polish by Mark Tardi $5 See link here for more information ; Broken River, by Ken Norris $5 See link here for more information ; Un-Composed, Poetry by Saba Pakdel $5 See link here for more information ; Family Chronicles from Muffin Land, by Hope Anderson $5 See link here for more information ; Perverse Density, by Sacha Archer $5 See link here for more information ; BRADE LANDS, by Peter Myers $5 See link here for more information ; Process, by Julia Polyck-O’Neill $5 See link here for more information ; DAWN’S FOOL, by Kyla Houbolt $5 See link here for more information ; Gnomics, by Dale Tracy $5 See link here for more information

keep an eye on the above/ground press blog for author interviews, new writing, reviews, upcoming readings and tons of other material;

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
April-June 2024
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Forthcoming chapbooks by Carter Mckenzie, Maxwell Gontarek, Carlos A. Pittella, Conal Smiley, Ian FitzGerald, Nate Logan, Peter Jaeger, Noah Berlatsky, ryan fitzpatrick, russell carisse, JoAnna Novak, Chris Banks, Julia Cohen, Andrew Brenza, Mckenzie Strath, John Levy, alex benedict, Helen Hajnoczky, Ryan Skrabalak, MAC Farrant, Terri Witek, David Phillips and Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] #42! And there’s totally still time to subscribe for 2024, by the way (backdating to January 1st, obviously).

Raisa Tolchinsky, Glass Jaw: Poems

 

Esther
[Some Things You Can’t Understand by Punching Harder]

I blushed like I had already been hit when she slipped that cotton baton
into my pocket between bells, though why was I ashamed our bodies emptied

without breaking? I rinsed blood from my hands and Coach parted the ropes.
Make him forget what you are. we never sparred the boys yet

he looked at me like the rib we had stolen was between my eyes.
Then hit so hard I heard a sound like fishing hooks in a drawstring bag

(no one really sees stars glittering above them, the dark begins at the ankles, then
zips up)—he waited to say I can’t hit a girl until I was already on the ground.

What ails you, that you flee? O Jordan, that you turn back?

Most of the boys had seen a body bleed almost everywhere a body could
and never did I see them wince: not at the tooth wedged into the mat,

or the face shifted into a Picasso painting, or a pupil pummeled red.
Still, the fight stopped quick as the moment

God returned the Red Sea only to part it again.
What are the rules for that?

A former resident of Chicago, Bologna (Italy) and New York City, where she trained as an amateur boxer, poet and current Harvard Divinity School student Raisa Tolchinsky’s full-length debut is Glass Jaw: Poems (New York NY: Persea Books, 2024), winner of the 2023 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize. Through the form and language of boxing, Tolchinsky’s Glass Jaw takes a very different approach and exploration than, say, Toronto poet Michael Holmes’ exploration through the performative language of professional wrestling in his poetry collection Parts Unknown (Toronto ON: Insomniac Press, 2004) [see my review of such here]. Tolchinsky frames her collection around amateur boxing, but utilizing language and character studies as a way through and across a journey of deep faith, attempting to find both answers, as well as the proper questions. The book opens with a reference to prayer: “I’m not sure why I still pray,” she writes, to open the first section, “or how I do it anymore. it’s like knocking on the sky: can a girl come in? I knock with my whole body: which woman is made of engine grease and hot hands?”

There is such a liveliness to the language in this collection, and the book is organized in two sections of lyrics—“DIATRIBE ON WOMEN GLADIATORS” and “HERE THIS HOLLOW SPACE”—the first of which offers a suite of poem-scenes and asides, and the second of which is structured across thirty-nine “CANTOS,” numbering down from thirty-four (with repetitions) as a way not to expand, but to return to foundations. There are echoes of Old Testament across the pieces throughout the collection, and the first section focuses on individual boxers, an array of short scenes named for and about specific women gladiators. As the poem “Delia” ends: “comparing mascaras // all clump from the sweat / and would we still do this, / if we were millionaires?” Around sly conversations around faith, these poems seek a proper foundation, perhaps, or a footing. “I hit her hard / because he said that’s how you win,” she writes, to close out “Canto 14,” a poem subtitled “I Traveled in a Spiral, I Never / Finished the Whole Permieter,” “and I hit her until I remembered / it was him who was afraid—[.]”

Tolchinsky composes short scenes that circle themselves around a central question of purpose and belief, outcome and possibly penance, writing on power structures within the self, through and between women. “Before the ring I made a life out of language,” she writes, to open “Canto 26,” a poem subtitled “Within Those Fires, There Are Souls,” “but there were places it would not reach— [.]” There is something curious about the way that these poems do write themselves around a central question that is never asked aloud, but perpetually present, as a kind of ongoingness; pushing the body to a physical limit to seek out, not a single, end-goal, but a deeper sense of being and connection. This is an utterly fascinating collection, and one that requires further study.

Purgatory

We’re trying to say
we’ve watched our
bodies without us
in them. Called ourselves
orphan, coiling
through the world.
In the field we played
with pebbles like
children and made
bargains with a bold
God. We thought if
we built what haunted us
a cage we could touch it
and survive