Ronk has published eleven books of poetry, most recently with Omnidawn Press: CLAY bodies + matter 2025, The Place One Is 2022, Silences 2019, Ocular Proof 2016 on photographs, and Transfer of Qualities 2013 (the title a quotation from Henry James), long-listed for the National Book Award. Also in 2022 Parlor Press issued A Myth of Ariadne. Her book, Partially Kept, published with Nightboat Books, is in dialogue with Sir Thomas Browne’s Garden of Cyrus; Vertigo, a National Poetry Series selection with Coffee House Press pays homage to W.G. Sebald, and why/why not, UC Press, plays off to be or not to be and is indebted to the play, Hamlet. In a landscape of having to repeat, influenced by Freud’s essay on “Screen Memory,” won the PEN USA best poetry book of 2005.
Often in dialogue with other authors, Ronk sees her work taking shape in the spaces between various forms, vocabularies, and genres, each volume operating as a coherent whole rather than a series of individual poems. Besides the profound influences of other authors, Ronk has also focused her poems on paintings, photographs, ceramics, and photograms, and many of her books include ekphrastic poems. Her collection of short stories, Glass Grapes and other stories, utilizes a variety of obsessive, unreliable narrators; and her book on food, Displeasures of the Table—semi-autobiographical, satiric, appreciative of all cooks—recommends reading over eating.
She has received a NEA award, had residencies at MacDowell Colony and Djerassi. She received the Sterling Award for scholarly excellence at Occidental College. Ronk has had readings at numerous bookstores and other venues, was a visiting writer at the University of Montana and at George Mason University. She was an editor of poetry books published by Littoral Press, and has had work included in eight anthologies, most recently North American Women Poets of the 21st Century, Wesleyan 2021.
1 - How did your first book change your
life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel
different?
I wrote CLAY
bodies+matter when I returned to the potter's wheel after a long
academic career at Occidental College. It is the practice of making pots on the
wheel that is the change in my life. The Clay book is different since it
focuses on a specific practice, on the merging of hands and clay, on the
emptiness inside a bowl, and on another form of practicing as writing poetry is
a practice. I found myself working at both, revising in both arenas, doing
research, and thinking about the ways in which they reflect one another. Clay
is far messier. I so much enjoyed reading about Japanese practices, their
long tradition in clay.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as
opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I
taught 16th and 17th century poetry, wrote a dissertation on Milton, taught
Shakespeare. I love John Donne. I was always drawn to poetry even as a child. I
wrote one book of short fiction, Glass Grapes, because I wanted to
create an obsessive narrator. I am not sure why this seemed to me to be
fiction, but it did. I also find that poetry, for me, has to wrestle more with
my interest in the visual. Although many poets don't like to use imagery,
I do; I also like to write about photography and paintings: ekphrastic poems
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 has depended on
the particular project. Some come quickly or in tandem with an experience.
Right now I am writing poems that seem distinct from one another,, but it is
early days. A book usually takes 4 years and I mean for each project to be a
unified book.
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 write drafts and individual
poems until I have a fairly firm sense of what "book" I am working
on; most of my books have been in dialogue with other authors: W.G. Sebalf,
Henry James, Shakespeare's Hamlet, or specific places. I like having a partner,
another to influence my narrow views.
5 - Are public readings part of or
counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing
readings?
As I've gotten older I've been less and
less interested and able to travel to give readings. I always enjoyed them, but
recently not so much.I always liked listening to the others I was reading with.
I'm reading for Omnidawn on Zoom on July 13 with others published in the fall.
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?
It seems to me that many
recent books concern gender, immigration, grief & war, and displacements of
various sorts. There are so many gifted young writers from other countries. It
is important for poetry to address these issues. I have written an unpublished
manuscript on climate change; I will continue to write more about trees, birds,
drought, and the environment. (A few poems to be published by The Colorado
Review.) As a past teacher, I find myself interested in my relationship to past
authors. I am interested in fragility (bodies, clay pots, cultures), in poetry
that manages to include conceptual as well as linguistic work: that is, work
that asks for deep engagement and thinking. Work that I want to re-read.
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?
See #6
8 - Do you find the process of working
with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I wish I
had an editor. I do have a poetry group that meets every few weeks and I get
good critical readings from the other poets. It helps enormously to have other
poets respond to one's work before it goes public.
9 - What is the best piece of advice
you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
"To be a good
poet you have to have a good seat." That is, show up. Practice. Show up
again. Etc. It is also good to wait some
time to review one’s work.
10 - How easy has it been for you to
move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
As an academic I wrote academic articles on Shakespeare's
plays; I also got up early to write poetry before leaving to take my son to school and me to class. I like
that both require precision, research, reading, revision etc. I do less
academic work now.
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 write something most days; I
prefer early morning. Other poets often provide inspiration. Also form itself
can inspire: choosing to write prose poems or epigrams or dialogues or long
poems. Recently, I found myself inspired by memories of paintings ,
memories of people I've lost track of or lost. I also like walking:
sometimes, if I’m lucky, a word or stairway or song will fall out as I’m
walking: also there are all the things one sees: clouds, trash, a window ledge,
leaf.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
13 - What was your last Hallowe'en
costume?
none. I watched a
child put on heavy make-up to be a cat.
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?
Yes, paintings and especially black and white photographs: I wrote an entire
book on photographs: “Ocular Proof.” My first husband was a photographer. I now
look at pictures by great potters; I love the paintings of Giorgio Morandi. I
like photographs of reflections in water, the idea of correspondences. New to
CA I wrote a book about the desert (and HIV): “Desert Geometries,” and another
called “State of Mind.” The paintings of Ariadne by De Chirico influenced my book
on A Myth of Ariadne from Parlor
Press: focused on the vulnerability of women, women’s bodies.
15 - What other writers or writings are
important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
W.G. Sebald. Edmund De Waal. most
recently. Many poets. The Autobiography of Red. Shakespeare
most especially because his plays were central to my teaching for
so long. I was moved by the writer Claire Keegan’s new novels.
16 - What would you like to do that you
haven't yet done?
I wish I had
traveled more. Scenes fill up the brain: I went to Sicily most recently and
keep seeing temples in my mind’s eye. And
mosaics. And the view to Africa.
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 think that moving from the east
coast to LA had a profound effect on me as I found it strange, “familiar/unfamiliar’ as
I’ve written in The Place One Is.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to
doing something else?
I couldn’t seem to help it. I think I
needed to say things I believed I couldn’t say in any other way.
19 - What was the last great book you
read? What was the last great film?
I liked the films on tv: Wolf Hall,
The Fall. I listened on Audible to Little Dorrit and have
come to appreciate Dickens and his skewering of the wealthy as I didn't in
graduate school. I'll never tire of re-reading Hamlet.
20 - What are you currently working on?
I'm trying to write about "the
specious present" (William James) and time. Trying the operative word.
Failing. Etc. Don't all beginnings feel like tripping and falling and feeling
as awkward as possible? I keep asking “what is a moment?” How might I define it or live it or imagine
the ends of my own time? Reading his words on time stick with me, pushed me to
try to find other ways of expressing the way a
moment contains both past and future as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment