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, Field Trip to My Mother and Other Exotic Locations, consisted of very short, lyrical poems that played a lot with language, sound, and repetition. It was a project book focused on interrogating how my mother had come to live in poverty. The length and style of the poems in my first full-length book of poems, Once Upon a Riot, varies a great deal, though it’s another project book, this one focused on the importance of resisting forms of oppression such as fascism and economic exploitation while also examining what it’s like to raise a child in our political moment.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I suspect that I came to poetry first because I’m not a storyteller. I prefer parataxis, ellipsis, juxtaposition, dreaminess, etc. over linear narrative. I prefer suggestion over directness in writing. I enjoy poetry because it’s a way of speaking that isn’t normally provided much space in life. It’s a way of saying that is, when done well, always pushing at the borders of language, of what is sayable or knowable. I think of it as being akin to theory in that it challenges the reader to co-author the piece by filling in the gaps.
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 used to spend a great deal of time revising poems, and I used to draw a lot on notes. Now that I’ve been writing for so many years, it comes more quickly and requires less revision. It always involves a certain amount of recursivity throughout the writing process, experimenting and changing things as I go, but the final revisions take less time now. Having said that, I recently revisited a poem I wrote twenty-three years ago after moving to Seattle. It’s stylistically different from what I write now, but I realized I still liked it. I decided the end lines were in the way of the poem, so revised those, submitted it for publication and a few days later received word from LUNA LUNA Magazine, which publishes poems I love, that they were publishing it. It’s up now in their December 2025 issue. Sometimes you have to work on something for decades to get it just right.
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?
It depends. Both/and.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love public readings. Although I prefer poems on the page over poems read aloud, I love the way that reading a poem out loud changes the poem and draws out different elements of it. It’s kind of like how if you use light to examine a particle, it causes the particle to move, so you can’t ever know the original location of the particle exactly since looking at it makes it move. Once you read a poem out loud, the original poem on the page has been transformed into a different poem.
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?
As I said in an earlier response, I think of poetry as being akin to theory in that it challenges the reader to co-author the piece by filling in the gaps. So my concerns would be not to state anything too directly, because I want the reader to be challenged, I want them to find many different things in the poem, I want reading the poem to be generative of a reader’s own creative processes. When I’m writing, I rarely have specific things in mind that I want to say; I know it’s a cliché, but I write to discover, to play, to unearth things from my own mind and from the possibilities inherent in language, rather than to say “X.” However, when writing as well as when revising, I do have a sense of what’s emerging for me as a reader, and I will lean into that, clarify certain things, etc. So it’s not that there aren’t things I’m aiming for at times, there definitely are, but those things become evident through writing.
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 think writers bring beauty to a world in need of beauty. Most of my favorite writing deals with painful or ugly subjects, but the writing itself sings. It can also bring insight, foster empathy, and help us feel connected to each other and the larger world. Art enriches the world, makes the world livable and even enjoyable at times for me.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I find working with an outside editor to be an easy process that strengthens my work. Also, an editor is an audience, and it’s always helpful to know how an audience outside of yourself reacts to your work.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
I don’t know if I’ve heard it as advice, but I think it’s important to write for both yourself and for an outside audience. I always have my own pleasure and the pleasure of others in mind. If I just focus on one or the other, I think the work tends to be less interesting. I guess it’s important to balance your relationship with yourself, with others, with the larger world, with literary communities, and with language as a historical construct. Not that you should constantly be aware of that balance, but you should resurface from time to time and dive back in with it in mind.
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?
My routine varies. Sometimes I write when I feel compelled to write. Other times, I make myself write. I definitely don’t write creatively every day, though, and am pretty strongly opposed to the notion that one needs to write every day, which seems like it was probably more doable for more people back when the middle class was more robust.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Other people’s writing, visual art, film, TV, the world around me.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Incense, candles made with essential oils, my child’s sweat.
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?
Yes, I love film, especially slow cinema. Think Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev. And now that there is finally a lot of what I consider literary-quality TV, I love that, too. I think Severance is top notch. I can’t fully grasp what’s going on in the surreal world of that show, and I love its elusive nature, though there is so much in the show that is of course familiar and grounds me in the world that they’ve created and which is, to an extent, a commentary on our working lives. I love visual art and art that defies genres or is cross-genre. I recently saw the Yoko Ono exhibit at the MCA in Chicago. I’ve written some ekphrastic poems or poems just generally influenced by, or referencing, art. It’s all part of the swirl that I’m moving through that is the context for my own writing. And I think that both “high” art and pop culture make for great conversation partners.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Some works that I consider important: Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, Snow Part by Paul Celan, shattered sonnets love cards and other off and back handed importunities by Olena Kalytiak Davis, Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward. The Neapolitan Series by Elena Ferrante (starting with My Brilliant Friend) is hands-down the best work of literature I’ve encountered; it’s brilliant on both the micro- and macro-levels. It’s just as attentive to nuances of emotional exchanges between friends and the inner workings of the mind as it is to global and regional politics and socio-economic systems. And I’m loving the work put out by Match Factory Editions, the press that published my new book of poems.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
There are so many different project books that I’d work on if I had time enough. I wish I could have hyper focuses for each book and work on them simultaneously.
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?
Well, I work as a union representative, and I used to be a college instructor. I enjoy both of those occupations. I’ve found that being a writer made me better at each of them.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I write because I’m compelled to write. Because it’s both a need and a desire. I like the intellectual and creative challenges it offers. I like it as a form of expression, of exploration, of cognition. I like how it problematizes the world as much as, or more than, it clarifies it.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I recently read the following books, all of which I enjoyed: Crocosmia by Miranda Mellis, All Fours by Miranda July, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, Hood Witch by Faylita Hicks, Domestic Corpse by Paul Paul Martínez Pompa, and Concrete is More Beautiful Disfigured and Stained by Snežana Žabić.
19 - What are you currently working on?
Individual poems that come to me as they do. Not sure what shape the larger projects will take yet, but I have a couple things in mind. Currently considering writing a book of some very boxy prose poems and a book of some very airy lyric poems with lots of gaps to be filled in by the reader. I want them to be very different projects. I think most poets find a style and stick to it. But I like to play around a lot. I want to do all the things.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
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