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?
Writing poetry changed my life, but I’m not sure publishing poetry has. My first chapbook came out about 15 years ago and I’ve since published four more. Soon after the last chapbook I got into visual poetry. It was a complete refresh for me, and at first seemed a diversion. But I got attached to bringing a visual element to my work, it adds layers, associations and new possibilities. After I published a number of poems using the novel Misery, Sarabande approached me with the idea of a collection, which became Hotel Almighty. I’m grateful and still astounded. I’ll publish a second book with Sarabande next year, sourced from William Roughead’s Classic Crimes, one of the first books of true crime.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Suffering delivered me directly to poetry.
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?
Not until I started erasure poetry did I ever start out with a larger project in mind. It was always poem by poem with me. Even now when I focus on a particular source text for erasure I like to approach every poem as its own entity and put the others out of my head. How many moods and tenses and forms and attitudes can spring from one source? Thousands. I don’t go in with a hammer.
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?
Can I be both? If not, I’m more a writer of short pieces that either begin to cohere with others, or don’t.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
This is a hard one because I live in two countries, neither of which has English as a native language, so I can count my public readings on two hands even if you include Zoom. As a visual poet, I am trepidatious about readings mostly because of technology — I need a beamer/projector and screen or surface, etc. I fret about slides not working, batteries dying. This clobbers me with worry, but takes my focus off my person, which is what most public readers worry about!
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 work has a lot to do with making the most of restrictions. My poems are sometimes trying to sort out a problem, if not explicitly. I want my poems to be beautiful and/or fun and/or haunting but also to be pragmatic in a way, since in each case I am trying to work myself out of a box that puts constraints on what I can do.
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?
Different writers can have different roles, but we all reflect the times we live in. Each writer passes along a way of looking at the world, of being within it.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I’ve never really experienced a meddlesome editor. At Sarabande, I love(d) my editor, Kristen Miller. She is so smart and insightful and she helps me make better decisions.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
As a woman, it’s to make yourself a priority.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to visual work)? What do you see as the appeal?
With text I am able to focus on words without visual considerations butting in. If I am doing collage alone it’s usually just to help me get away from myself.
In terms of having moved from writing poetry of words & white space to poetry that is text+visual, I travelled over in the blink of an eye.
I had been writing poetry for years when it struck me to combine found poetry with collage and multimedia. I love the associations the visual elements conjure, even without being deliberately connected to the text. I also love collage in and of itself. Being confined to the small canvas of the page, with the arrangement of text I’ve wound up with, is a deeply pleasurable challenge.
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?
My day job and travel obligations mean I don’t have a routine. I snatch at time in the evening when I can, and on the weekends or a day off. There’s no daily plan.
But in terms of the overarching routine of how I work, I spend time with the text first and foremost, and the visuals follow. Very rarely do I have any visual image in mind at the outset, even if collages I’ve done independently of any poem wheedle their way into a piece.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I go to my favorite poets: Charles Wright, Vasko Popa, Emily Kendal Frey, Lesle Lewis, Mary Ann Samyn, Alfred Starr Hamilton, Victoria Chang. Too many to name.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
My husband’s cologne.
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?
Visual art is a big influence, of course. There are so many great collage artists, but I also love painting and textile work. I wish life were longer and I could find time to learn to paint and to become better at sewing.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Let me go with non-poetry here: Edouard Leve’s Autoportrait, Proust’s Swann’s Way, Lydia Davis, David Markson, Fleur Jaeggy, Lichtenberg’s The Waste Books, Kathryn Scanlan’s Aug 9 - Fog. I love short, enigmatic writing. I also love the rhapsodic.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Not get sick on a boat on
the sea.
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’d love to design book covers. But I don’t think I would have taken that path as a younger person because I wasn’t in an environment where such a possibility would have occurred to me. I’ve been a reporter, a NOW canvasser, a professor, a temp secretary, a dog sitter and cold caller. If I could become something else it might be an ecoterrorist or the space shuttle or a bottle of scotch.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Writing was the highest good in my childhood household. My parents read and talked about books, my father was a writer. If I’d grown up among shepherds or glass blowers it might have been different.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
If I may, I’ll bundle the books I’ve read over the past four years by Annie Ernaux into one — The Years, I Remain in Darkness, Happening, A Woman’s Story, A Man’s Place, Shame, Simple Passion. Ernaux’s recollections are close yet distant, scant on outright emotion. She tells the human story plain, without the attitude and posing that plague so much memoir.
As for film, I feel I see movies a lot less frequently now than before the pandemic. Whether it was great or not I don’t know but I loved Toni Erdmann. I loved Sandra Hüller’s performance, how she captured something about the German personality. It was funny and sad. I’ve watched it a number of times.
20 - What are you currently working on?
I’ve got a new project going with an American classic that suffuses me with secret pleasure! It’s erasure/collage like my previous work, but feels different, simpler.
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