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 life has become more confusing in a way I can better understand. No book will save you, but the right few words, in the right order, change everything. Have you ever talked your way out of an ass-kicking? This is the bottom-line value of poetry. The ass-kicking can come from a person or a thing; most often it is yourself you’re dealing with. Strangers have written to say how much they like my book. I have also heard from people in the poetry business who aren’t asking anything from me. I never thought I would accomplish anything with my writing, so any praise is strange and most-welcome.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
If I were a liar, I would say it was thanks to the mentorship of [INSERT IMPRESSIVE NAME] and [INSERT PRESTIGIOUS SCHOOL]. The truth is that I squeezed between Jim Morrison lyrics and the skips on Dylan Thomas records I took out of the library. How else does someone like me discover poetry? I’m from the Bronx. Nobody had books in the house.
3 - How long does it take to start a 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?
Writing is slow for me. Until it speeds up. Until I have something I have something to stretch across the room. Each project is intended as a new experiment unto itself. For /face, I started sampling images and language from Google Patents on facial surveillance technology. My first ten or twenty pieces were nothing anyone cosplaying mid-century Confessionalism would recognize as poetry. That’s the standard I set for myself. That’s how I view “experimentalism.” I was confused but also encouraged when I heard right back from editors who wanted to publish the material. Of course, unlike in the movies, any acceptance was followed by ten more rejections. Anything I achieved with this book came after this 1-in-10 ratio, which, for me, became a game of how weird I could make the work and which snob magazine I could freak out. That was my “journey,” as the kids say. That and a lot of reading and research. Boris Groys, Hito Steyerl, Shoshana Zuboff. They all rode along in the back seat. In the front was Nancy Spero squeezed alongside Don Mee Choi and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha.
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?
All poems begin at the bottom of the esophagus, where gastric acids begin breaking down anything I’ve ingested. Nutrients become energy; the rest, the materials that cannot benefit the body; they become poems. Everything starts with a few lines, then a few more. I cannot work without an idea for a “project.” Everything has to be an attack on a larger order, or why am I even bothering?
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love doing readings. Feeling the words in the mouth, aiming them at the chest of the audience. I know of no better way to see if the work is working, if a word doesn’t taste right or lands too heavy.
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 don’t know what questions I want answered until afterwards. For /face, the concerns were how to make poetry in the age of Surveillance Capitalism and the monetization of selfhood. The Romantic Age is over. With the algorithm interrupting everything we do, even if it is autocomplete or spellcheck, makes all writing a post-self form of expression. Poets who work on laptops like they are pinching a quill by candlelight are not getting the job done, no matter how many placements in prestigious magazines they can drop in their bio.
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?
This is a question I would answer differently, depending on the day. Today, February 15, 2026 at 3:59 P.M. EST, I declare the role of the writer is to be the ice cream truck playing Christmas songs in July.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I don’t have editors, I only have friends. Susan, Matthew. I message them bits at all hours. They tell me if something is working or I am full of shit.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
‘Worry about them as much as they worry about you.’ For me, this is the Chicken Soup for the Soul, Neurotic Poet Edition.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to visual art to creative non-fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
I love switching. It helps me stop focusing on the how and more on the what. Poetry can hang you up on form. Non-Fiction can open a path. There is a looseness about it, like playing acoustic guitar. Visual art is great, too, especially when you want to do something fun that is beyond words.
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 always start writing at the same time every day. Sometimes I skip a day or two. But this is the habit. Writing is a habit, not a practice. I’m not a fucking chiropractor. It’s a nasty, filthy habit, like any addiction or weird compulsion like checking the stove twenty times before leaving the house.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I read Marguerite Duras. I am always reading Marguerite Duras, even when I’m not reading her. She’s like Bill Evans. There is no cleverness in her work. Reading her you see her taking a risk saying something that hurts. You see that risk and you root for her. She reminds you that it is beautiful to put yourself in harm’s way.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
I’m from NYC, so any time I smell stale piss in a tunnel, it’s always 1984 and the Bronx.
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?
The news feed. That rush of crap that comes at us every day. That is the form. It’s the only form we have in the 21st century. Everything we do is part of that, or a response to it. Even the most traditional poem about a barn, written by the biggest poetic Luddite, gets screen shot and added to the unending scroll.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I love music bios and crime fiction. They are fun things to read when I want something outside literature.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I would like to go one week without beating myself up. At my age, I have managed a few hours here and there, but I would love to string those moments together into a life I don’t recognize.
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?
Making money, real money, would be interesting. I’m not one of these people who say money is bad. That’s middle-class grad school nonsense. I’d love to have enough money to make real choices between a good doctor who could help me and another I’m forced to accept because they are “in network.”
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I’m lousy at math.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I read Mrs. Dalloway last year. That book hit me the way hearing A Love Supreme hit me when I was 22. It’s a book that invents a new way to be itself. The same goes for The Mirror by Tarkovsky.
20 - What are you currently working on?
I’m making something out of blood. It’s the low-tech opposite of /face. My goal is to write a specific experience, so the reader feels like it’s happening to them.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
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