12 or 20 (second series) questions with B.J. Soloy

BJ Soloy is the author of Birth Center in Corporate Woods (2025, Black Lawrence Press), Our Pornography & other disaster songs (2019, Slope Editions), and the chapbook Selected Letters (2016, New Michigan Press). With stuff recently in places like Painted Bride Quarterly, At Length, and Gigantic Sequins, he teaches at a community college and a women's prison near Des Moines, Iowa, home of The Whatever.

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, Our Pornography & other disaster songs, came out into the world in 2019 and didn't immediately blow open all the locked doors or give me a backstage pass to the scene, but it did feel real good. I got the email letting me know it won the Slope Editions Book Prize on my  classroom computer in between classes at the community college where I was teaching outside of Kansas City. I mostly swallowed my joy and taught some stuff, but it was a big deal to me. Ocean Vuong, who selected the manuscript, wrote a really generous introduction and I got to do my official book release reading at a Rodney Dangerfield-themed bar in Portland, OR with some badass writers. So, even though the world shut down within a year, I call it a win. This second book, Birth Center in Corporate Woods, feels like it's on the other side of a fat gulf. In between the two, COVID hit, I had a kid, my partner's been transitioning, we moved to Des Moines, and that's all bled in--at least in roundabout ways--to the more recent work. Though the first book was ostensibly a book-length poem and this one has discrete pieces, the new stuff feels more cohesive. They both blend personal, capital, pop cultural, but Birth Center seems to show more breadth and accidental daring. Recency bias exists, but it still seems more like an album to me.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I got my dead grandpa's old desk when I was, like, eleven, and it seemed wrong that it was empty. Its thin little skeletal drawers. I started writing little things on some notecards and keeping them in there, like newspaper people in movies with their papers and such. I mean, I have a desk. So I had this idea of being a writer early. I was mostly a sketcher, though, into high school, then it was almost a sort of synesthesia. I kept sketch diaries for years and years and image slowly gave way to words. My eyes retreated. A Shakespeare class in high school gave me the sonnets (at the time, I moved into our damp basement, acquired my best friend Josh's sister's yellow bed frame, and wrote Sonnet 60 on the side). When I started college as a visual artist, a class on attention introduced me to Schuyler. In my first poetry workshop at a now-extinct liberal arts school in St. Louis, I got Alan Dugan. Angie Estes and Kathy Fagan came and read at that school. The more I heard people writing about kicking rocks down the road or ducks walking into bars or trees as slo-mo explosions, the more my elliptical, faux song lyric, compulsive notes seemed like they might have family.

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?

3 (though I'm really answering 4 too). I try not to/can't successfully do projects™ very often. I've had a couple of exceptions with my first chapbook (a book of letters) and an elegy project for my dad, but mostly I can't compel myself to write to a theme or singular idea without boring myself into a torpor in an unpleasant way. I tried writing to Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, but it was shitty. I invented a form, the Birdy-Lou, and tried to write a bunch, but it went flat fast. I'll probably keep challenging myself with projects and then swiftly failing, but about all of my work that, well, works slowly congeals. Scraps accumulate and I edit toward one poem. Poems accumulate and I start to pair them off. I rewrite by hand, over and over, forcing myself to see if it sticks. Eighty lines will whittle themselves down to eight and repeat. The eights add up and echoes start to emerge and after the bunches of poems turn to bunches of bunches, I'll print the whole mess off, spread it on the floor, and start editing for a manuscript.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

Readings have become important to me. Maybe it's my experience as a musician and/or a teacher, but it feels more real, alive, fragile when received in person. My droll, boringly Midwestern voice is pretty close to my internalized narrator's, but the poems feel different. So, yes: I enjoy readings. And I enjoy reading with other people. Some folks I've read with many times; most I'm reading with for the first time. It's humbling and electric to be in a space and of a voice.

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 with subject matter, a lot of the theoretical concerns I surely use seep in without being explicitly invited. I've thought a lot about apostrophe and the construction of the mutable "I." The inherent postmodern distrust of clean meaning making is there. Werner Herzog's definition of poetry as "ecstatic truth" haunts them. As does a sense of the uncanny and the sublime, which I think can actually swallow the reflexive skepticism and turn it into something more generative. A cultural studies conflation of the high/low and the formal/informal (there all along in haiku, Eliot, Niedecker's amazing calendars) is a constant whisper.

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'm loath to make any broad proclamations about the role of anyone, but I'm tempted to think about comedians/fools and all that. Right now, though, especially in the Trump era and its clear goal of censorship through pre-compliance and the chilling effect aimed at media companies, law firms, institutions of higher education, etc., a writer's ability to tell it slant, (Write it!) like disaster, etc. can be a real call to action. Maybe we have less to lose (no one reads poetry), but there's a freedom in that. In teaching Danez Smith, Brenda Hillman's "Describing Tattoos to a Cop," Rankine's Just Us, or Valeria Lusielli's Lost Children Archive, I feel the writer's ability to both distill and complicate things (topics/events/humanity) that have become so watery and boringly, lucratively provocative in social media's sad realms.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

My editors have been blessedly hands-off, making sure the named people in my poems won't sue and going over consistency and sentence-level concerns, but they seem to trust that I've spent way too much time on every little phrase and punctuation choice to casually suggest reworking things to taste. I, honestly, love it when people come at my work, scalpels or flamethrowers in hand, but haven't had much wrasslin' from the presses.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Ed Roberson said lots of amazing things, but a throwaway line about finding good readers outside of school has turned out to be invaluable. I don't have the trading pages at a bar scene I did for years, but I find myself today with three pieces from friends awaiting some feedback and some pieces of my own to send away soon. I haven't been in a real workshop in—counts rings in trunk—thirteen years, but I know who I'll show my stuff to. Runner-up: "Never trust a man in a blue trench coat / Never drive a car when you're dead."

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?

This is where I'm old. My son wakes me up at 5:45 - 6:05, throwing Slothy the sloth and Fluffy the stingray onto our bed. My writing used to be done chronically, if never on schedule, but now it's purely opportunistic, running trickles of lines until they pool. I occasionally get a schedule (stop by GT in Des Moines on Monday nights after teaching my prison evening class and work on edits for an hour), or a habit (I started spreading out on the floor by the record player at night when everyone else went to sleep), but I'm feeling the need to get official (I have a new challenge/drawing restraint/party with my pal and great poet, Philip Schaefer: we're to write one new line each day, starting next week).

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

Honestly, sometimes it's so insultingly simple as just being, like, "It's poetry night."  I might need to bump sleep, grading, some plans, but I see it's been too long and just claim some time. Having a notebook handy after much driving and erring always on the side of "this is probably stupid, but..." help a lot too. For me, it's never about inspiration or intention but just dumb time management.

12 - What was your last Hallowe'en costume?

When our little dude was even littler, we went full Raising Arizona. I grew and then shaved down to a Nicolas Cage mustache. With a Holly Hunter nightgown and some alternative Huggies, we could turn to the left and get our pictures taken as one.

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?

Driving and being in unfamiliar "comfy" places (e.g. a Vrbo cabin or in someone's kitchen) can influence a tone. Subtitles on films--even silenced English-language stuff, minimally creepy eavesdropping, and, of course, music all do things.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

I've been affected by the difficult men I love (Denis Johnson, Jack Spicer) and have some constants (Alice Notley, Larry Levis, Jean Valentine) but tend to spend more time with a rotation of three of four books I'll take with me as a group, reading them together until trading them in for a new mix. Right now, it's Natalie Shapero, Bernadette Mayer, John Berger, and a book of historical film criticism I'm kind of reading for a class. Lots of fiction and lots of records end up being important as they stick with me on whatever I'm doing.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Maybe act.

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?

If I hadn't ended up wherever I'm at, there were some interesting paths pointing off in other directions. I've worked as a film projectionist, a line cook, a veterinary technician, and was in some bands that were having fun, but maybe I'd work for the USPS.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

I still play music and keep a pile of collage materials, but writing seemed to take over--maybe in part--because it's free and always there, my writing voice is better than my singing voice, and I, you know, like it.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

I just saw One Battle after Another and Train Dreams within a week of each other and like them both and, this last year, I finally read Rebecca Makkai's The Great Believers and it just overwhelmed me. Like, it has a physical effect on me six months after finishing it.

19 - What are you currently working on?

I've started gathering a bunch of the stray sections and finished short pieces I've been slowly popping out over the last year or two and looking at it all together. (Post-)COVID, Trump-era cultural context is probably obvious, but it's delightfully all over the place. After hacking away the clear nopes, it's at forty-ish pages, but half of those will probably go live with a nice family upstate, on a farm, with lots of room to run around and no such thing as death.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

 

Erin Hoover, No Spare People

It is tempting to want always to reduce the thing to its detail. To make it small.

That morning I wore heels, and because I had to walk forty blocks that way, I no longer wear them, I said for the first time a year after 9/11 at an event commemorating the cataclysm. I don’t remember the walk home at all, but I would say it again and again. (“Death parade”)

The latest from Tennessee-based poet Erin Hoover [see her ’12 or 20 questions’ interview here] is the full-length collection No Spare People (Black Lawrence Press, 2023), a follow-up to her full-length debut, Barnburner (Elixir Press, 2018). Hoover offers short, carved narratives in a sequence of compact lyric, articulating sharp images on and around domestic patters and patterns in the author’s American south, and the complexity of writing through experiences that often feel far away from the possibilities of writing. “I was trying to explain that transportation / between having thoughts and doing for others,” she writes, in the opening poem “On the metaphor, for women, of birthing to / creative activity,” “because in every household the metaphor is clear: / the caretaker is a woman, and so / when I began / writing, I listed out my mornings, the preparations / and cleaning up of spills and toys, taking down / and fetching, the driving and carrying of people / that no one wants to know about / if we believe in the reality of book contracts / and job offers.” She writes of income inequality, misogyny, motherhood and family, as the poems circle around the locus of home and family, and the conflict between a weight of domestic expectation set against the desire for something else, also, beyond (such as writing). “You’d have to understand the home / as a unified construct,” the poem “Homewrecker” begins, “as a guarded entity, / locked up like a bank vault, a virgin / or like a rarified set of collectable dolls / with no inherent value but worth agreed / upon.” The density of her lyrics are quite striking, moving through prose poems and more traditional lyric shapes, moving through frustration, love, motherhood, helplessness, politics and rage, offering cutting moments, phrases and lines I’m tempted to endlessly quote. That line from “Death parade,” for example—“It is tempting to want always to reduce the thing to its detail. To make it small.”—or further moments, thoughtfully carved. “I drove to the border // of my dry county and bought a handle of vodka,” she writes, as part of “My generation is not lost but we are losing,” “drank to blur my vision. I wanted to be as useless // as a governor.” She tells stories with lyric punches, where the mind can’t help but catch, consider.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jenny Irish

Jenny Irish is the author of the hybrid poetry collections Common Ancestor (Black Lawrence, 2017) and Tooth Box (Spuyten Duyvil, 2021), the short story collection I Am Faithful (Black Lawrence, 2019), the chapbook Lupine (Black Lawrence, 2023) and most recently Hatch (Northwestern University Press, 2024). She teaches creative writing at Arizona State University and facilitates free community workshops every summer.

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?
Truthfully, my first book didn't really change my life. All of my books have been small, and I've written them because I wanted to without any expectations. I don't want to lose the pleasure I have in writing, and I'm also realistic. The vast majority of poetry books don't create any kind of visible stir, though they have their dedicated readers.

Publishing with Black Lawrence Press--more so than having a book in the world--was the biggest change, because I suddenly had a supportive group of people rallying behind me as a writer. This includes both the staff at Black Lawrence and my incredibly dear pressmates. Having a second book opened more professional opportunitys because it gave me the qualifications to apply to teaching positions. It's also been true that the more I've published, the more interest there's been in my writing.

Change is natural, I think. Writing changes over time--broadens or narrows--as a person figures out what it is that they want to do and can do with their own work. I'm all for experimenting and trying new things, but I'm at a point where I've figured out how I'm most comfortable writing. In the past--back in school and when I was first teaching--when someone said that they didn't understand my work or that they couldn't connect with it, it would make me doubt what I was doing. Now, I don't feel that. There're readers for every book, and books for every reader.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
True story! When I was little, one of my greatest entertainments was listening to a recording of Robert Frost reciting "The Witch of Coös," and in the town library there was an elaborate tableau of "The Death and Burial of Cock Robin" that I loved desperately. I feel like I had an excellent introduction to poetry. I knew those beautiful haunted pieces before anything else.

I think those early loves have contributed to why my writing often falls into hybrid space. Some people have described my most recent book, Hatch, as a novella in linked flash fiction pieces and others have described it as prose poetry. (It was published as a poetry collection.)
 
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'm so much faster at writing than revising! Initial writing comes quickly--I scribble things everywhere on everything when I have an idea--but getting to a final draft is much slower. I don't plan projects. I just write and that often means I find out that there are important pieces missing when I start to put the pieces I have together. I'm also dyslexic and that contributes to a lot of necessary editing. It's a slow process, because I have to listen to my work read back to me by the computer. My eyes will just skip right over my errors on the page.

I'm so happy for those writers who just love revision, because it's so important.

4 - Where does a poem or work of prose 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 know, very loosely, the story of the book that I'm working on, but I don't know any specifics until I write them. My books come together piece by piece. My writing is associative so writing one piece often activates another. Usually, a piece starts because of something fascinating (or awful) that I've heard or seen.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I haven't had an awful lot of opportunities to read publicly. I don't really enjoy being focused on, but it's always very nice to be asked to share your work! I was invited  to be part of a reading and discussion with Eileen Myles that was held in the living room of Virginia G. Piper Center (a space where I feel very at home), and that was such a positive experience. Public reading is something that I'd like to get better at. I do enjoy going to readings. It's always really interesting to hear authors reading (or performing) their own work. I heard Venita Blackburn read from How to a Wrestle a Girl, and it was so unexpected and totally captivating. The creative writing students there were all in a swoon.
 
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?
My writing asks a lot more questions than it answers.

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?
Writers have a lot of roles, I think. Writing is entertainment, it's educational, it's political, it's documentation. Different writers' work has different goals and meets different needs. Living in our very precarious and too often disengaged world, I do hope that Hatch encourages readers to consider the complex relationships between cause and lasting effect. I hope it makes people think.

Hatch is more explicitly political than my other books, but I'd be happy if a reader was initially interested because it's a speculative collection. People will come to the book for different reasons, and once they're there,  I hope they'll engage with it, think, and ask their own questions.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I'm always grateful to have others give my writing their time and attention. I think if an editor is invested in your work and you're appropriately open, it can only be a positive and productive relationship. I've heard occasional horror stories where an editor wants to make changes to such an extent that they are basically re-writing the work in their vision and preferences, and that isn't right. The relationship between writer and editor should be grounded in mutual respect, and I've been fortunate to work with supportive, generous, smart people at both Black Lawrence and Northwestern University Press.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Oh goodness: knowing when to stop. I think this is really challenging for a lot of writers! There's a point where you're no longer improving a piece, just changing it, and that can go on forever.  I think all writers need to learn when they've done all they can with a piece and how to let it go.

And: be kind. There's no need for hierarchies, cliques, and bullying.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to hybrid works to short stories)? What do you see as the appeal?
I don't really think about genre when I'm writing. I'm interested in prose poetry and genre hybridity, and I teach courses primarily in fiction, but I don't write with the idea this is a short story or these are poems. It happens sometimes that I'll submit a piece as one genre and a journal will ask to publish it as another.

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 don't have a writing routine. Personally, I think that having the time and means for a daily writing routine is a luxury that is completely unrealistic for many  people. While I admire those with a daily routine who find it productive, I resist the idea that it's necessary for a writer. The majority of students that I work with have jobs, and a number of them have children. As an undergraduate, I was working part-time jobs around my classes. I wrote on scraps of paper when I could, and I was publishing my work in literary journals. It's not that I don't think a daily writing routine can be a helpful structure for some, but I also think we need to recognize how disconnected that possibility is (without significant sacrifice of sleep, family time, or necessary income) from the lives of many people.  

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
When I don't feel like writing I don't write. I usually have multiple book projects underway at once, so if I'm having trouble with one, I can switch to the other, but I don't force work. Back in school, that was sometimes necessary, but it was frustrating with disappointing outcomes. Writing is something that I enjoy, and I don't want to lose that by making it too much into "work." Publishing isn't the source of my income, even though it's tied to my career. By not over-investing in production,  I hope that for students I'm modeling one of many possible relationships to writing.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Oh, I love this question. Seaweed and frozen pond, if I'm thinking of childhood. I grew up in Maine, but now I live in the desert. When it rains here, it rains hard, and there is the distinct smell of creosote. Last, and this is not place specific: Nellie, my dog. There is nothing as soothing and home to me as how she smells.  

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?
PBS is essential to my work! That may sound silly, but I often have it on in the background, and I'm always half-hearing something that I want to confirm or learn more about. I think PBS is always exposing me to things I wouldn't think to seek out on my own.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Julia Leigh, Nin Andrews, Han Kang, Stephen King, Lily Hoang, Allison Benis White, Hanne Ørstavik (translated by Martin Aitken), Amy Hempel, Barbara Comyns, Susan Steinberg, The Dead of the House, The Turn of the Screw, White is for Witching, Dyke, geology, "The Witch of Coös"

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I wish I knew how to make cheese.

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 love being a teacher, but I used to want to be a book conservator or restorer. In my imagination, being a park ranger seems like an excellent job.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I'm one of those people who used to narrate everything I did. When I'm alone or doing something tedious (folding laundry, scrubbing the tub) I still sometimes do. Before I could write, I was telling myself stories. No matter what, I'm pretty confident I would write, just for myself if no one else. I'm lucky that I've worked my way in a position where writing is part of my job.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I just read Strike Your Heart and Soldiers, Hunters, Not Cowboys and appreciated them both. I haven't seen a "good" movie in so long! I don't watch a lot of movies. I thought Blade Runner 2049 was beautiful and sad, and the stress of Uncut Gems nearly killed me. Hell or High Water, which is a little older, was a great neo-Western.

20 - What are you currently working on?
Thank you for asking. I'm trying to finish a novella-ish thing, and I'm working on a collection of linked prose poetry about filicide, werewolves, and history. I--obviously!--haven't quite figured out how to explain it, but it's coming along.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Caleb Curtiss

Caleb Curtiss is the author of Age of Forgiveness, forthcoming from Sundress in September. His poems appear in Gettysburg Review, Witch Craft Magazine, Image, New England Review, and TriQuarterly.

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 published a chapbook before Age of Forgiveness that probably changed my life, though it’s hard for me to say exactly how. I’m probably more anxious now.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Growing up, I had a little bit of contempt for poetry. Protesting too much. Eventually, in my late twenties, I took a poetry class at my community college and was, for the first time, able to imagine why someone might choose to read, write, and think about poems. The syllabus was more or less Dickinson to Whitman to Frost to Stevens to Frost to Brooks to Frost to Sharon Olds. Ended the semester with some “two roads diverged in a yellow wood.”

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’m kind of a slow learner and my process tends to reflect that. It feels like I’ve been working on Age of Forgiveness for the last ten years or so. Probably I have been, in some ways. A few of the poems in the book are from early on in my writing life, but I didn’t start working on it as a book until 2019, and it won’t become one until September 2023.

So, between 4 and ten years.  

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?
Oh, I’m definitely a combiner of shorter pieces. Notes or ideas I’ve been rolling with with start to take shape, etc. Eventually, those shapes start to fit together…or they don’t and they end up buried on a hard drive somewhere.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
There’s plenty to like and dislike. I look at readings as an opportunity to tune my audience’s ears to the frequency my work is on. As a teacher I feel pretty comfortable in front of a crowd, and I put a good amount of thought into what I read and how I read it. Can it be stressful, to stand in front of strangers and share your precious art? It can be, but it doesn’t have to be.

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?
Probably not? I think I’m mostly interested in all the first-year-poetry-student stuff still. I think a lot about form and voice, repetition, order, metaphor. Other stuff, too, but those are the main ones. My main question always seems to be, how am I supposed to write this poem that my brain is trying to make me write?

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?
Writers think and create artifacts of their thoughts. There’s plenty of evidence that the current role of writers in our larger culture is to create marketable artifacts. I’m sure there’s more to it than that, but maybe there isn’t. I don’t know what a writer ought to be in our larger culture, and that’s the truth. I just know writers should definitely be in the larger culture.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I think it’s essential. It can be difficult, but it doesn’t have to be. I was lucky to work with Tennison Black at Sundress who was a constant source of creative energy for this project. Kit Frick edited my chapbook at Black Lawrence, and that experience was equally generative for me as a poet. Caitlin Rae Taylor helped me solve a really formally and emotionally difficult problem in a poem she published at Southern Humanities Review. I’m forever grateful to these editors and all the others out there like them.

Of course, I’ve also had ~not great editorial experiences~, but this isn’t a Taco Bell, so I take what I get and do what I can to learn from it.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
I’m paraphrasing an old friend here who advised me to not die and to keep writing at whatever pace I could: “eventually enough people will start to like your work.”

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 parent and adjunct, so my writing routine works best in summertime when the children are at camp. I’ll drop them off and go to the gym where I write for about an hour, play basketball, stretch, and then return to what I’ve written until it’s time for pickup. The day is always short, the writing often sparse.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I play pickup basketball and then stretch for six hours afterwards. That usually gets me to where I need to be. Sometimes pickle ball helps.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
School library.

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’m inspired by visual art. I seek it out, hang it on my walls, think about it, and write about it, too. A few years back I became a little bit obsessed with this visual essay called First Adventures in Beauty by Lia Purpura. Technically a book, I guess. Books that are art interest me a lot. I’m thinking of Book of No Ledge by Nance Van Winckel, Mary Reufle’s erasure books, both of Karen Green’s books and a handful of other Siglio titles.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Nance Van Winckel’s oeuvre inspired a lot of what you’ll see in Age of Forgiveness.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I’d really like to visit Mérida.

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?
I don’t really see myself primarily as a writer. I’m a parent, a teacher, a family member, a displaced midwesterner, etc. I’m a writer, too, though. Sometimes I’m more of one, other times I’m less of one.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Writing has always felt special to me. I have great memories of learning how to do it.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Heat 2 by Michael Mann & Meg Gardiner and Heat (1995).

19 - What are you currently working on?
Right now I’m preparing for the Lewes Creative Writers’ Conference where I get to present next month. I’m also starting to think about the coming semester and all the changes I’ll make to my syllabus. Promoting the book, of course. Some writing is making its way in, too, but I wouldn’t want to overstate that at all.  

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Rebecca Hart Olander

Rebecca Hart Olander’s poetry has appeared recently in Jet Fuel Review, The Massachusetts Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and elsewhere, and her collaborative visual and written work has been published in multiple venues online and in They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing (Black Lawrence Press, 2018). Her books include a chapbook, Dressing the Wounds (dancing girl press, 2019), and her debut full-length collection, Uncertain Acrobats (CavanKerry Press, 2021). Rebecca teaches writing at Westfield State University and Amherst College, and works with poets in the Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Wilkes University. She is the editor/director of Perugia Press. Find her online at rebeccahartolander.com or @rholanderpoet.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

Publishing my first full-length collection Uncertain Acrobats in November, 2021 has led to some great opportunities for me, such as being interviewed by you, for one, and getting to read with some folks I really admire at places at which I’ve been honored to read. For example, last year, the month the book came out, I was lucky enough to read with poets Doug Anderson, Tina Cane, and Rachel Eliza Griffiths at McNally Jackson Seaport Bookstore in NYC. Without a book, that would never have happened.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I’ve been told in the past that I should try writing fiction, but I’m entirely not interested in writing fiction, even though I love to read fiction. I wrote my first poem at seven, so I feel more like I’ve always been doing it than I “came to it.” My stepmother is the poet Christopher Jane Corkery, and so poetry was around me from a young age in a way that unquestionably influenced 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?

It really varies. There are those odd duck poems that arrive fully-fledged and almost ready to fly, but that’s only happened to me a handful of times. But my work also doesn’t come out of copious notes. I’ll either write when inspiration hits me over the head and forces the issue, or I’ll generate a draft through a prompt.

4 - Where does a poem or work of fiction 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 don’t generally have “projects” that would lead to a book from conception to birth. My first book was actually a project book, but it happened by osmosis vs. setting out to accomplish said project. I sort of pine for projects because I think they are cool, but for me I tend to write individual poems over a long period of time and then try to locate their confluences and relationships and work the project shape out of the material at hand vs. starting with a project concept.

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! It’s such a gift to have people come out to receive words I’ve written, and it’s really affirming to be able to interact with readers and also to listen to other writers read their work (so, I’d have to say my favorite readings are group readings). I love the surprise of an open mic, too, when you don’t know who’s going to read or what they’ll offer on a given night. Surprise is so important to good writing, and open mics kind of introduce that element to readings, I think.

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?

One of my main concerns is the passage of time and what that does to legacy, and memory, and even to living in the present moment. An awareness of transience is important to me, as is a desire to memorialize people and places and moments that have been important to me and that I think will have, or do have, some resonance for readers as well. So, I’m concerned with the tension between things passing and wanting to hold on to them. Hmm – for the last bit, do you mean what are the questions of the day, or what are MY current questions? I guess, either way, I believe in trying to be kind to others and affirming and inclusive when writing. So, good questions to ask ourselves when writing/publishing/performing would be who is being heard and who is being silenced? Who is being celebrated and what is being revered? What is being diminished or seen only partially or misunderstood? Generally I like playing with rhetorical questions when I write, and I do employ a lot of questions in my poems, but these are not rhetorical questions. These seem more necessary to ask and to answer when striving to be an ethical writer.

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?

Writers can ask those hard questions, and others, and model doing so through how they share their work. Writers can encourage empathy, by expressing stories that widen perspective and understanding. Writers can bring joy by reminding us to feel joy and gratitude, or by distracting us from the mundane. Writers help inspire imagination and creativity. They can foster community by inviting dialogue and voicing what is necessary and hard to say in other ways/spaces.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

Essential, absolutely. Sometimes I have to sit with edits before embracing them, and sometimes I don’t take editorial advice, but for the most part I only feel deep appreciation when someone reads my work on a cellular level and wants to help me make it the strongest manifestation it can be.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Persist! Uncertain Acrobats was submitted something like 60 times before it was accepted. If I’d let rejection get to me, I wouldn’t have published this book, which is all the stronger for having been revised and reshaped over the course of those many rejections, and many years.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to short stories to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?

I really love the idea of hybrid texts, so I think experimenting with writing different genres helps breed that eventual hybridized result. I no longer write book reviews because I don’t have the time—and I would write them with a LOT of care and time—BUT, writing them and getting inside the books of others in that critical way helped my own poetry writing without a doubt. When I have moved between creative genres, it has been less traditional genres. For example, I like to create collages with visuals and text, and I like writing in epistolary form and exchanging that writing. If I ever do shift genres, it feels fun and fruitful all at once. And I love collaboration as a method of creating. The appeal of that is the emphasis on play, community, and surprise, and it’s an avenue to openness.

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 don’t have a daily routine. My routine is more dictated by the seasons. Since I teach, I tend to have more time between semesters and in the summer. That’s when I make a point of creating routines so that I can milk every moment out of the possible time I have available to me.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

Reading poets I admire is one steadfast answer. I also love traveling to new places, even local places I haven’t seen. Something about seeing new things tends to inspire me. Prompts also really work for me – I don’t tend to get stalled as a stop to my writing as much as I can’t find the time because I am otherwise over-committed. But when I have the time and want to write, I make it happen by going out in nature, reading, or responding to a generative prompt.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

My original home is Gloucester, a small coastal city north of Boston, MA. So, when I smell salt water, especially the ocean, it always reminds me of home and also relaxes me and brings me joy, two feelings that, if we are lucky enough, are associated closely with home.

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, this brings me back to my other answer about inspiration. I also love going to museums and writing ekphrastically, and sometimes science inspires me if I hear an interesting radio piece and learn something that blows my mind and makes me think about the world in a different way.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

Even though I don’t write fiction, I think I get the most pleasure out of reading fiction vs. any other genre. I love the feeling of getting lost in a great novel and never wanting it to end and being totally absorbed in it. I can’t really read that way during the academic year while I am both teaching and running a small press, so those moments are saved for summertime and January. The writers that are most important to me are the ones I share writing communities with – the Perugia poets I publish, and the poets I am blessed to share writing groups and friendships with. It’s the sharing of work, but also the sharing of the writing life, that sustains me.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

My first thought is travel to places I'd like to see that I haven’t: Greece, Turkey, British Columbia, and some of the states and places I haven’t seen here in the US, like Hawaii, Montana, New Mexico. I’d love to walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain/France/Portugal. It would be cool to snorkel, and ride on a glass-bottomed boat. I’d like to be a grandparent. I’d like to publish another book.

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 have two jobs besides being a writer now – being an editor and a teacher. I don’t usually think of writing as my occupation, but I also don’t think of it as a hobby. It’s my life, the way I breathe. I’ve always loved libraries and bookstores, and I dig organizing things, so maybe owning a bookstore or directing a library. Or something to do with travel.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

There’s not an option – it’s how I navigate the world.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

The last great book was Anthony Doerr’s latest: Cloud Cuckoo Land. I loved it in a deep, abiding way and it felt necessary, enjoyable, enriching, surprising, and sustaining all at once. I watched some pretty great films online in the “virtual cinema” hosted by my local movie theater during the pandemic. I really enjoyed Karen Dalton: In My Own Time, Beans, and Hive. Based on those picks, I guess I prefer protagonists who are women and girls, stories that are based on true events, and films that teach me something new.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’ve just launched the annual contest for Perugia Press, which invites submissions of first and second full-length manuscripts from women-identified poets. We’re also about to release this year’s book, American Sycamore by Lisbeth White, so that’s exciting! I’m prepping my fall courses as I’ll be back teaching in a couple of weeks. For my own poetic work, I’m looking forward to going back at revising my second full-length collection, which I hope to submit for publication this fall.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;