Christian Gullette’s debut poetry collection Coachella Elegy (July 1, 2024) won the Trio House Press Trio Award, and his poems have appeared or will appear in The New Republic, The American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, the Poem-a-Day (Academy of American Poets), and The Yale Review. He has received financial support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops. Christian completed his Ph.D. in Scandinavian Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley, and when not serving as the editor-in-chief of The Cortland Review, he works as a lecturer and translator from the Swedish. He lives in San Francisco.
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first book just came out officially on July 1, 2024, so it’s still very much a moment-to-moment experience. The first thing I noticed was how different it felt to stand at a microphone and read poems from a bound collection rather than printer paper. That really hit home.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Several high school English teachers assigned readings from an anthology of poetry, and I was hooked. As a kid just starting to recognize my sexuality, something about the lyrical gesture – the things unsaid as much as said, the compression, the emphasis on feeling and image – really appealed to me.
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 tend to write poems in bursts after several weeks or even months. And even then, it might just be a few poems. I need to live life. Travel. Go to the ballet or go hiking or watch a classic film. Stay out all night partying. A line might occur to me. I usually write it down in my phone and leave it there for a while. What the poems discover can take drafts to emerge, if it does.
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?
Usually with that line I abandoned in my phone. If it keeps calling out to me in my head, I’ll come back later. I don’t usually set out to write into a project. I wait for an obsession.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Readings are definitely a part of my poetry experience – especially attending as many readings by other poets as I can. I enjoy reading my own poems, as well.
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’m interested in the tensions between pleasure and pain, joy and loss, beauty and destruction. Those complex, conflicting emotions are also part of an attempt to move through grief, which, in my poems, often finds expression seething beneath the surface, an intimacy and deep pain between the lines and in acute images rather than bold declarations. I’m interested in notions of place, particularly California and notions of queer utopias, and the narratives and destructive myths than inform them. Considering environmental precarity, drought, fire, land displacement are all part of that questioning. Another form of precarity is that of the body. There’s a lot of erotic desire in the book, and I love to write love poems, but there’s a sense that the body is never far from dissolution.
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 hope my poems make a reader feel something.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I find it was an essential part of editing my book. But I also received the gift of editors who felt connected to my work and invited me to participate in a collaborative process, while also not being afraid to suggest a few major suggestions that in the end, really sharpened my book.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
A mentor poet always tells me to “keep going.”
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to translation to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
I also work as a Swedish-to-English translator, so switching genres feels natural to me. In addition to translating fiction and non-fiction, I devote as much time as I can to translating poetry. I’ve learned so much about my own poems, especially regarding word choice and tone and music.
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 tend to write in the afternoons. It’s not constant or according to any schedule. I’m not a great café writer; I like to be at my desk with my music and a tree or view out the window. Individual lines can come to me wherever and whenever, especially when traveling.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Travel, nature, and especially museums. Movies. Hotels really spark memories. Cocktails on a rooftop. Books can sometimes help, but I find them to be more helpful when I’m in the mood to write.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Chlorine.
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?
Art is very important to my work. As is music. Nature for sure. Food.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
There are so many writers and artists I return to, and it would be impossible to do that list justice, but here’s a brief attempt: C.P. Cavafy, Elizabeth Bishop, Tomas Tranströmer, Louise Glück, Henri Cole, David Hockney, Lana Del Rey, Ada Limón, Diane Seuss, Reginald Shepherd, Joan Didion, Randall Mann, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Thom Gunn, Christopher Isherwood.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Publish a translation of a poet’s full-length collection. Learn Italian.
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?
Cinematographer would be cool. I’d love to live in Sweden and work for a Swedish television show. I’d work at a dog sanctuary helping dogs splash in a pool.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
It insisted no matter what I did, as if it were the only way I could know something about how to feel about my experience.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Book: Modern Poetry by Diane Seuss
Film: La Piscine
20 - What are you currently working on?
Hopefully some new poems after a few months, but I’ll have to see.
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