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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?
I had no idea about poetry publishing when I sent my first book, The Heart’s Traffic: a novel in poems, to Arktoi imprint editor, Eloise Klein Healy. I taught myself to write the book by following the story of the main protagonist and teaching myself to write in various poetic forms as prompts to move that story forward as well as creating my own forms that I made up along the way. When I heard Eloise talking at a conference about the Arktoi imprint and about her goal to make a seat at the publishing table for lesbians, I had an intuition that I should keep that slip of paper with her contact information. In my first quarter as an MFA student at the University of California Riverside, I was in a class called “The Writer’s Life,” where we had to send our work somewhere. It was free to send to Eloise so I sent it, not expecting anything to come of it. I was very surprised when I got an e-mail from Eloise on my 30th birthday, asking me if the manuscript was still available. Throughout the next year, I worked one-on-one with Eloise on the revisions on the book, learning along the way as she advocated for my artistic choices. My most recent book, Shiny City, is more experimental but still maintains that spirit of teaching myself about the project while I’m writing. I chose to send my book to Airlie Press because of its cooperative model – to learn more about the publishing process – so I do feel like I’m following in Eloise’s footsteps with my intention to contribute to the field.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I wouldn’t say I came to poetry first because I hated the poetry I was exposed to in high school. What we were asked to read in class felt very far from my life, but I was always interested in reading stories and wanted to be a writer. I wrote a few stories, but I don’t think I had the experience, dedication and community support at the time to grow my interest into a more sustained creative practice. So I will say that I came to poetry publication first. I came of age as a community organizer in the Bay area, learning equally about direct action and spoken word, and how they both contributed to the movements I became part of. At that time, writing poetry fit best in my life – I could write in short bursts on public transit going to my non-profit job, and there was a community of open mics where I could share my work.
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?
No project has been the same, but I often write in small flashes which slowly accumulate. The initial generating is quick, but the sequencing and order of the larger project – figuring out its shape and intention – is usually what takes the most time.
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’m an author of short pieces that accumulate. When I first start writing, I am often responding in the moment to daily life and don’t have an idea where it’s going, but I figure it out along the way.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Readings are an important part of my process. I enjoy hearing how an audience responds to the work. Some of the mentors I’ve worked with and have been influenced by, such as Sharon Bridgforth, work with improvisation and audience conduction. I started developing a process of multi-directional reading. If I am able to use projection so that the audience can see what the poem looks like on the page/screen, I often use that opportunity to choose a different direction or variation to read the poem, against the grain of audience expectation. In this way, I often discover new meanings and layers within my work.
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 always thinking about what our relationship to each other has been and could be, both on an interpersonal level, but also on an intra-community level as well as an intra-species level. Much of what I’m wondering about now is how to survive this current moment and how can we dream of more sustainable futures, especially for those of us who are targeted and deemed unworthy of care.
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?
There are so many different kinds of writers so I think, similar to organizing roles, there could be a multitude of roles for writers – writers who reflect the reality of what is currently going on in our society, writers whose work helps us dream and imagine into the future, writers who help us grapple with our past.
8 – Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
It’s been an important part of the process for me to consider editorial feedback, especially from an editor who understands what my work is trying to do. It was especially important for my first book because I hadn’t gotten a lot of feedback prior to submitting the manuscript. For my second book, I had two editors – Emgee Dufresne and Anna Morrison – who helped me shape the trajectory and journey of the manuscript, which was also very helpful.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
I completely changed my life after hearing Justin Chin on a panel about the writing life say, “Make your life fit around your writing, not your writing fit around your life.” After that, I made a commitment to my writing practice – of trying to figure out how to keep myself writing as much as possible.
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?
I try to do the morning pages (from The Artist’s Way) as a way to get the sludge out of the way before I delve in. When I have gone a long time without returning to the pages, I can usually tell something is off in my life, usually a time of deep stress and chaos. I tend to do better when I write in community so I often look for ways to plug into co-writing times if possible. Right now, I have a writing group I write with virtually in the mornings regularly. For years, I also have participated in the Daily Grind, an accountability group I was invited to by Matthew Olzmann, where I sign up every month and commit to sending a draft daily to the group by midnight every day. This year, in starting a new speculative prose project, I decided to adopt Jami Attenberg’s 1000 words a day prompt and attach it to writing exercises from Alice LaPlante’s Write Yourself Out of a Corner and am currently writing through a first draft.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I turn to reading or experiencing/listening/looking at art. Also, sometimes chopping vegetables helps.
12 – What fragrance reminds you of home?
The fragrance I associate with home is my family’s cooking, often meals which need to be made together – dumplings, hotpot, soup.
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?
I often write in response to visual art and other art forms such as film and music. More recently, I have also participated in a project called Writing the Land. Poets are matched with land from nature preserves and then write poems in response to the landscape there.
14 – What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Writers like Larissa Lai, Cathy Park Hong, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs who blend history and lineage with speculation have been cornerstones of my work. I also learn from writers who transform my understanding of what a book can do such as Salvador Plascencia in The People of Paper.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I would like to travel more to places I haven’t been – and to spend extended time in Asia.
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?
Adopting two dogs into the family during the pandemic really changed my life for the better – and helped my writing because it constantly pushed me to examine life from a different perspective. I find learning about the behavior of dogs so interesting that if my dogs had come into my life earlier in my education, I might have chosen something dog-related instead of writing-related as an occupation.
17 – What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Since I’ve been young, I’ve gotten lost in stories as a comfort and escape. Through that experience, I realized how much power I had to the ability to shape my own reality and future through being skilled with working with words. As I kept writing, this became a way for me to understand my own experiences and the world around me.
18 – What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I just read Rajiv Mohabir’s Cutlish for the Sealey Challenge. Much of the book is written in a form after Caribbean chutney music, which I found innovative and beautiful. The last great film I saw was Hamnet – I loved the way the actors used their bodies to embody these huge emotions of the characters and how that pushed me to experience this wide arc of emotions, from joy to grief.
19 - What are you currently working on?
For the last few years, I’ve been working on Breathing in a Time of Disaster, which is focused on community breath stories. I’ve also been writing poem-spells and inviting the audience to breathe with me when I share them. They have been slowly accumulating and I’m currently thinking about a larger thread and sequence to gather them into a book. In the last few months, I’ve also begun a speculative novel which wrestles with the question of what kind of self-determination is possible under a deep repression for trans families.
