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 don’t really think of having had a first book, but a first series of books or new ways of distributing text. Rather than thinking of publishing a discrete book, my earlier work was part of reimaging what publishing and writing are as activities. With Troll Thread – a Print-on-Demand/Tumblr press I helped start in 2010 – we were interested in testing the boundaries of printability and the book as a container for information or knowledge. My most recent book, A Feeling Called Heaven (Nightboat),is a book length poem on extinction and intimacy loosely following the form of guided meditations. In a way, the new work extends these ideas of immediacy and direct communication on a more local level.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
My dad’s a writer and was always working on a novel, so I was surrounded by books growing up. I liked stories, but there was something about poetry that made more sense to me. It’s wasn’t an intellectual proposition, we’re drawn to what we are drawn to, but I suppose poetry made a kind of intuitive sense. I remember loving the mystery behind hearing Stephen Crane’s poems, say, and wanting to make something that felt like having them read to 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?
Mostly, it’s ideas for a project that morph over time. I’ll write something out, edit it later and then build on that from the notes I take as I’m turning the idea over and over in my head.
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?
With Troll Thread, we could publish a book with as little as three pages or as many as multiple thousands. After that the difference between a single poem or book stopped making a lot of sense.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I don’t normally write something for a given reading, but A Feeling Called Heaven got its start when Shiv Kotecha asked me to read for a series he was running in Codex Books in Manhattan. I’d just finished my dissertation and hadn’t really written anything else that year, so I had to write something new for it. Also, something had changed for me as a writer. I felt this urgent need to talk to people, at least those closest to me, to address them directly. For that reading, I wrote the guided meditation that became the closing of the book.
More generally, I like to read because it’s a way of sharing the things that I’ve made with others. It can be an act of great pleasure and permission to read out loud to a room of people. Also, one thing I learned over the last year is that there’s no substitute for the experience of sitting in a room with a group of people, everyone engaged in a mutual act of attention.
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 new book explores climate collapse, extinction and intimacy, asking what remains if we divest ourselves of the hope of a future. Rather than constructing a series of possible futures in a world-to-come, I wanted to write in a way that paid attention to the present moment as it sits under the shadow of extinction. While I was finishing the book, I was diagnosed with a very manageable kind of lymphoma. So, there’s also a question of what it means to manage and live with disease and the physical knowledge of mortality.
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?
No, probably not.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
A Feeling Called Heaven was my first time working with outside editors and I was extremely lucky to have Kim Calder and Evan Kleekamp as my editors. They helped me distill this work from a somewhat sprawling manuscript, stripping it down to its essential parts.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Someone I met on the bus in Wisconsin where I grew up told me a story that is a kind of advice. The story takes place in a small town during a plague. Amongst so much death, the people of this town came to the conclusion that god had forsaken them and had stopped attending church. That was until a group of flagellants marched through the town, whipping themselves as they walked. When they got to the center of the city, one of them spoke to the people who had come out to see the parade. This flagellant told the townspeople they were wrong, they hadn’t been forsaken, but that the plague was in fact what god’s love looked like. He told them that they had to go back to worshipping god, performing their familiar rituals, even though it wouldn’t do them any good, it was too late for them to be saved. After his speech, he fell back in line and the line of flagellants walked out of town. But something in the air had changed and the next Sunday, the church was full again.
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?
No real routine, writing’s a constant preoccupation that I do when I can.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I love open world video games like Breath of the Wild. I learned more from Breath of the Wild about how the conscious mind embeds itself in a simulated environment than anywhere else besides maybe New Age music.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Honestly, I’ve mostly just been home since Covid started, so I haven’t had a chance to be reminded. Maybe Holly’s deodorant? She says it’s the catbox but I’m not sure I can really smell that anymore.
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?
New Age music taught me a way of understanding how time moves in a poem. Poetry is a time-based art, meaning that it occurs over time, and in slowing down the pace of the poem, you can feel time move in it almost independent of its language. In those moments, you can feel it taking place with something like the noise of the world.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I’m lucky to count some of my favorite writers as my dear friends and I don’t want to randomly forget anyone here as I’m typing this, so I’ll leave it at that.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Run around with my nephew, who’s started walking since everyone stopped going anywhere.
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?
Writing’s not my occupation. I’m an adjunct professor, working at 3 different schools in and around New York City throughout the year. I love teaching, but American higher education is structured so that I both am and am not a teacher at the same time. So, instead of an imaginary other job, I’d just like a real version of the one I have.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be the kind of person who made books.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I re-read Alli Warren’s Little Hill this week and its low key a masterpiece. I just watched Ivan’s Childhood and the scene is the birch trees is one of the most beautiful shots I’ve ever seen.
19 - What are you currently working on?
I’ve got some ideas, but nothing worth talking about yet.
