Tanya Holtland, Requisite

 

Three winters ago I was commissioned to write a libretto addressing the emerging topic of spiritual ecology. Although at the time I hadn’t heard the term before, it felt fitting, evocative, and wholly necessarily. It is a call for us to look deeper at what is happening to our world, for a spiritual response to our present ecological crisis.
[…]
            As I read in preparation to write the libretto, I grew aware of how much more I needed to see. How long in the awakening are those of us born into western culture and industry, even amid the clear and collateral harms of late capitalism. Crucial to my understanding has been a namesake text, Spiritual Ecology, a collection of essays edited by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, that speaks of our enduring relationship to the earth in parallel to our unprecedented dilemma of ecological collapse. The tribal and spiritual leaders, activists, and ecologists behind these essays evidence our profound disconnect from the earth, the roots of this disconnect, and the ways we may begin to heal. Writing and exploring these works gave me an entrance, a way to understand what I have intuitively known for some time, and as we move toward a more connected existence, it dawns continually upon the conscious mind: We are not separate. Healing what is severed between the earth and us begins with a willingness to look. If we feel small in the mystery of things, then looking is our most significant step. The long poems that follow, the first of what is based on the original libretto text, are a reflection of that continued looking. (“Preface”)

Los Angeles poet Tanya Holtland’s stunning full-length poetry debut is Requisite (England: Platypus Press, 2020), a lyric suite constructed as a quartet on, as she writes in her preface, “spiritual ecology,” and the ways in which we are interconnected to the physical and natural world. There is a meditative precision to Holtland’s lyrics, finely-honed with the ease of a quick sketch, but one that also knows how to pull apart the minutae of an idea, to stretch it across an expansive canvas. There are elements of Holtland’s ability to accumulate poems into sections and sections into a full-length whole that provide comparisons to the work of her partner, the poet Hailey Higdon. In Holtland’s 2019 essay for “my (small press) writing day,” she hinted at such a cross-influence between the two, a pair of writers occupying similar physical and emotional space: “To say that we influence each other as writers is understated only by what we influence in the larger field of each other’s lives.” Whereas I’ve long understood Higdon’s poems to exist in groupings that slowly reveal their interconnectedness (such as through the publication of her 2019 debut full-length collection Hard Some [see my review of such here]), Holtland’s work through this collection, as well, exists as a detailed suite of individual poems that, together, pattern to reveal their larger coherence.

Requisite is structured into four extended lyric suites—“Fated,” “Inner River,” “Other Names for the Future” and “The Story”—the first of which, adapted from an earlier existence as a libretto, is also broken up into the quartets of “MOMVEMENTS,” “INTERLUDES,” “TRANSITIONS” and “CODA.” As part of the first section of the first section reads:

An archipelago is a place to practice

sending out and coming back in
and so is a country under siege

This place
                                    of leaping the distance
                                    between                       boundary
                                    between                       each                 other
 

the less visible
made whole

 
                                    made clear. (“Fated”)

Holtland’s ecopoetic exists in start contrast to many other examples I’ve seen in the same vein: there is a reverence, but her lyric exists simultaneously at the level of the sequence, the fragment, the word. Even the smallest unit contains the whole in a way that is reminiscent of, say, Fanny Howe or Sylvia Legris. Her poems fragment and fractal, and accumulate in a singular direction. “If the impulse to expand comes to fight a hard rain,” she writes, as part of “Fated,” “remember // the curve of the earth / comes to meet you, / to the smallest / portion of the soul.” 

There is such a wonderful, careful complexity to Holtland’s lyric meditations, setting pause against pause. She holds, she halts, she slowly pieces together. For Holtland, place is not simply being or landscape but an all-encompassing entity of which we are an important part, and even moreso, given the incredible amount of damage we have inflicted upon it. Holtland holds her distances against ours, and our distances against the ether. As the section-sequence “The Story,” opens:

From down here
every day shines

no matter the weight
of constant distance,

of not knowing personally the mountain
travelling with you against entropy.

Holy is the purest
comedy

and were I able, I would hedge
all of this sorrow

on joy:             make it so
there is             no place you can’t be kind.

 

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Sam V.H. Reese

Hailing from Aotearoa, Sam V.H. Reese is an insatiable traveller and self-confessed short story nerd. An award winning critic and story writer, his first collection of stories, Come the Tide, was published with Platypus Press this year. When not writing stories, he is usually writing about them; his critical work, The Short Story in Midcentury America, won the 2018 Arthur Miller Institute First Book Prize. Later this year, his second critical work, Blue Notes: Jazz,Literature, and Loneliness, will be published with LSU Press.

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

There were two moments with Come the Tide that really stand out. The first was when I heard back from Platypus Press and learnt that they were interested in publishing my stories. By that point I had been writing short fiction for more than a decade, and had been seriously working towards a collection for about four years. Re-reading their email, I had the feeling that some invisible threads were coming together. I’m a very self-motivated person, but I remember the deep relief and validation—the sense that I was doing what I was meant to do.

The second was the day the finished book arrived in my hands and I could see it as an object—could touch it, hold it, and read it through for the first time without my editing brain working in the background. Suddenly, I saw connections between my stories that I had not always been conscious of; repeated motifs and themes, a shared sensibility. I felt I understood my priorities as a writer much more clearly then; it gave me a stronger sense of what I wanted to do next.

This has meant that my most recent work feels much more focused and developed than my earlier stories. The initial writing of Come the Tide involved a lot of experimentation—and I was not always happy with what I produced. Even after I submitted the collection to Platypus, there was a process of cutting out stories that didn’t quite work, and adding. New pieces that would build on the existing architecture. I’d like to think I am more consistent now. Understanding my priorities and ambitions helps with this—but I also think that there’s a danger there in being too repetitive, or failing to take risks—so I’m always in dialogue with myself, searching for ways to push myself stylistically,.

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

In fact, I came to short fiction by way of poetry; my first published pieces were poems, and for a long time I didn’t particularly like short stories. Then I was introduced to the work of Katherine Mansfield, whose stories have the lyrical expressiveness and elusiveness of poetry, but are driven by this brilliant pulse of narrative and astute observation. From there, I started to devour short story collections. I found myself coming back to two particular pools: midcentury American short fiction, with its masterful storytelling and insight into the connection between place, action, and character; and Japanese short fiction, which tends to be minimalist, or deceptively simple, honing in and sharpening a single dominant feeling or emotion.

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?

Once I sit down to write a story, it normally comes very quickly to me. I always plan at least half the story out in a notebook first, bullet pointing the steps of the action, and I still draft most of my stories longhand first. Perhaps half of my finished stories are very similar to their initial drafts, but there are some pieces that change quite dramatically. When I started, I had a tendency to under-write my first drafts, and then expand scenes or add extra details.

Now, though, I am more likely to over-write, and then pare back the story when I come to edit—sometimes cutting it down to a third or quarter of its original length. While I don’t use extensive notes for my stories, I do keep track, obsessively, of all the stories that I am unhappy with, or that feel unfinished. Several times I have come back to a story that doesn’t work as a whole, but has a scene that turns out to be the perfect anchor for a completely different story, or else I’ve found an image that brings a new story to an interesting conclusion.

4 - Where does a 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 have always loved the short story collection as an object, and the biggest turning point across the writing of Come the Tide came when the moment I was able to start visualising the stories as part of a coherent whole. From that point onwards, every time I started a new story, I had a sense of where I wanted it to fit within the collection, writing quite deliberately to fill in gaps or to complement themes or images in existing stories.

From the outset, then, my next collection has been guided by a clear sense of shared themes and narrative architecture—although as I hinted before, I think there is also a danger, in such a closely conceptualised collection, of the stories becoming repetitive, or falling into predictable patterns.

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

I’m a very aural writer; I read my stories back to myself as I write them, and my most important editing criteria is whether I think the sentence rhythm sounds right. I haven’t had many opportunities to read my work so far—the launches for a couple of magazines, and a pre-launch event for Come the Tide—but I enjoy coming back to my work more those times where I get to sound it aloud.

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?

Currently, I’m particularly interested in the question of mistakes and secrets, small decisions from the past or errant memories that shape character’s presence. But at the heart of my writing is the question of place. In part, I owe this to growing up in Aotearoa, with a close connection to the natural landscape—rivers, beaches, forests—and always in contact with te reo Maori, which often describes identity in terms of place (tangata whenua: people of the land; Tūrangawaewae: a place to stand). But I am also an expat—an immigrant, and part of several communities of migrants who often have fractious relationships with where they are.

But dislocation, alienation, and the question of how we build meaningful relationships with the world around us—whether in the shape of human communities or the natural world—is not just personal—in an age of increasing climate change and rising xenophobia, these are also political and ecological crises, and they sit underneath a lot of the contemporary literature I admire.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

Humans are irrepressible meaning-makers; every day we shape ourselves through stories and language. Writers help us make sense of ourselves and our connection to the world around us by giving us new stories, new ways of understanding.

Writing can be comforting, and there are definitely books I turn to when I need some solace, but I think that the writer’s most important role in the world today is to shake us up, to make us look at things around us differently—to see ourselves afresh.

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

Working with a sensitive editor has made an enormous difference to my writing—not only sharpening the finished stories, but changing my process for the better. Like lots of the young writers I teach, I used to be quite resistant to external critique. To a certain extent, I actually think that can be really helpful—it gives you the space to discover what’s important to you as a writer, what you like and dislike, what you want to achieve.

But once I opened myself up to a strong external editor (and I’ve been very lucky; Michelle, my editor at Platypus, is superb—as attentive to each line of a story as she is to the lines of a poem) my writing took on a new clarity and, as a writer, I found a vulnerability that

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

To try and keep a ‘beginner’s mind.’. This is the idea that you should try to approach whatever  you do with the openness, flexibility, and enthusiasm of a beginner. Sometimes I think about this as ‘child’s brain,’ too—a playfulness and willingness to make mistakes.

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

Sometimes I think that, in the anglophone world, we make too much of the difference between fiction and non-fiction. At the same time, I also know that I find it really helpful working both worlds, so there must be some difference! When I’m stuck with my criticism, I can always work on fiction, and in the same way, I find that when my stories are starting to get repetitive or predictable, switching to non-fiction allows me some big picture thinking—a kind of critical distance from my own work. That ability to look at similar subjects from two different standpoints—I think that’s the biggest appeal.

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?

At the moment I spend half my time in York (in the UK) and half my time in a semi-nomadic itinerancy. When I’m migratory like that, I write in extreme spaces: very early in the morning, before the sun has risen, or late at night. But when I’m settled I follow a steady pattern: I’ll wake, go for a walk, make coffee, and then write for four hours, often in a café. If I’m continuing a story that I’m partway through, I always read the first few paragraphs to myself, to get into the story’s rhythm.

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

Sometimes, I’ll turn to a writer with a strong style or voice—Yoko Ogawa, Laura van den Berg, Paul Bowles, or Diane Williams normally—to remind myself of the clarity and intensity I love in short fiction.

But normally, when I’m feeling stalled, I go for a long walk, near trees or water if I can. My wiring has always been fuelled by a close connection to the bush and the ocean; returning to green and blue always helps me feel anchored and alive. But even walking through a city helps. I get most of my ideas for stories when I’m moving.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

The smell of the ocean.

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?

My stories always come from places—scratch the surface, and you’ll find the smell and taste of the natural world (and a little further down, always the sea). I draw inspiration from music, too, particularly jazz. I normally have jazz playing in the background while I write, and there are certain artists—Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, Charles Mingus—who do things with sound I long to realise in words.

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

There are some incredible contemporary short story writers who have really shaped my sense of how to tell a story: Ogawa and van den Berg, but also Prabda Yoon, Margarita Garcia Robayo, and May Lan Tan. I also have a shelf of mid-century US writers—Paul and Jane Bowles, Mary McCarthy, James Baldwin, Richard Yates, Eudora Welty—to whom I go back again and again.

Outside of my work, I find books that I connect to a specific place or time exert the strongest hold on me. I can recall exactly where I was and how I felt the first time I read Julio Cortázar’s short stories; what was happening in my life when I read Jose Saramago’s History of the Siege of Lisbon, or Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Great writing has the ability to sharpen your real life, to bring emotions and experiences into clearer focus, or to shade them with another meaning.

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

I would love to write an intricately interwoven series of short stories that feature overlapping characters and settings. Something like Olive Kitteridge or Eudora Welty’s The Golden Apples.

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?

When I started university, it was to train as a lawyer, and the first job I had was as a researcher at a commercial law firm. I was good at it, too, and by the end of my first year had built up enough momentum that it felt difficult making the choice to stop. If I hadn’t taken some time to really assess what I wanted to do, that’s where I would have ended up. I still love legal dramas—The Good Wife and its successor, The Good Fight, especially—so something about that world must still appeal to me! But if I were to retrain now, it would probably be as a psychologist or counsellor. I love teaching and working closely with my students, and I can easily imagine helping others grow outside of a university setting.

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

From a young age I have felt a deep desire to tell stories, and I know that I am at my happiest and most sure of myself when I am working closely with language. There is an immense satisfaction in taking the time to make something good—something that has beauty or integrity.

19 - What was the last great book you read?

I thought Alia Trabucco Zerán’s The Remainder (translate by Sophie Hughes) was astonishing; I also really loved Norman Erikson Pasaribu’s deeply moving collection of poetry Sergius Seeks Bacchus (translated by Tiffany Tsao) and, having owned a copy for years, have finally been reading Yasnuari Kawabata’s Palm-of-the-Hand Stories—the most beautiful, precise, expansive little pieces of prose.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’m working on a second collection of short stories that all focus on past secrets, inheritance, and dislocation from the world, tentatively titled I Go Astray.

I am also working on a co-authored literary biography of Paul and Jane Bowles—a hybrid book bringing together literary history, biography, and travel writing.

12 or20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Shuly Xóchitl Cawood

Shuly Xóchitl Cawood is the author of the memoir, The Going and Goodbye (Platypus Press, 2017) and a forthcoming chapbook, None of Them Home (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2018). She has an MFA from Queens University, and her writing has been published in Fiction Southeast, wildness, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Zone 3, and Cider Press Review,among others. Her website is www.shulycawood.com. 

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 made me an author, and that was very important to me—for many years, my goal was to have a book. I never would have guessed my first book would be a memoir.

My most recent work hasn’t been memoir: I’ve been focused on fiction and poetry, though at times the genres mix with each other.

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

I actually came to fiction first—bad fiction: I started writing short stories in sixth grade, quite terrible little short stories that I thought for many years were quite good. In high school I started writing poetry and have been writing it ever since. I came to memoir in the last decade when I realized I had stories from my life I wanted to tell.

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?

This all depends on the project. Some are easy and flow, and I do very little editing. Other pieces I labor over and revise so many times I lose track. Some poems take me less than an hour to write. Some stories I write for years.

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 never know where the writing will take me, so I never have a book-length idea from the start. (I also never know where a poem will go. I just start writing the first words that come into my head or start with a particular idea of what the poem might be about, but that can change as I write.) I don’t plot out my stories or even have any idea where the characters will take me. I start with some people and a conflict, and I write from there. The surprise of where it goes is one of my favorite parts of writing.

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 and any kind of public speaking. When I published my memoir last year, I created an author talk that covers my journey as a writer, and I included a very short reading in there. Some people like readings, but other people don’t and prefer to learn more about the author. My aim was to cover both.

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?

Sometimes when I write, I am trying to figure out a question I have about life, and that is very particular to the piece of work.

My only general questions that apply to nearly all my writing are: “Is this relevant?” and “Is it good enough?”

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I don’t have a prescription for writers’ roles, mine or anyone else’s. I hope that writers write about what they are compelled to say, and if this leads them to a role, especially a role they want, then I am glad for them. I think roles often come to us without trying—to inspire, to entertain, to make someone laugh, to help people understand.

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

That completely depends on the editor. I love working with an editor who understands my work and sees how I can better attain my vision. Working with an editor is only essential if my piece has missed the mark.

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

To never give up.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to non-fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?

I find this very easy. I often move between genres when I get stuck in one. I hop over to another. It shakes things loose.

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 try to start most days writing, even if just a little, when my mind is still relaxed enough to be open to anything. I scribble in a notebook, writing down any weird, random thought that comes into my head. Later in the day, I move to my computer and write with more intent and purpose.

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

I love to read people’s poems. I’m not a big social media fan, but one of things I have gotten out of it is being exposed and introduced to other people’s poems. My recent favorites have come from Ariel Francisco and Whitney Roberts Hill, and during National Poetry Month I will feature some of their work on my blog.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

The smell of wood.

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?
I spend a lot of time outside walking, and often when I come across a problem in my writing, I find taking a walk helps me access a solution. I’m guessing that being outside has influenced my work, but it would be without my knowing it. It certainly has influenced my problem-solving.

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

I like to read widely. I’m not a reader who gets every book of a particular writer. I tend to like individual pieces of other writers. Lately, I’ve been reading a ton of poetry. Some of my all-time favorite poems are Richard Wilbur’s “The Writer” (I used the last lines of this poem as the epigraph in my memoir), Dan Masterson’s “For a Child Going Blind,” and Jane Kenyon’s “Let Evening Come.” I just started Neil Hilborn’s poetry collection, Our Numbered Days, and so far, my favorite poem is, “Ballad of the Bruised Lung.” I love a clever poem that makes me laugh out loud.

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

I’d like to travel to places I have never been, and return to a few I have, such as England. I’d like to publish a book of poetry, a book of short stories, and, one day, a really good novel. I’d like to take life more easily. I’d like to become closer to God.

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 spent some of my career in college administration, and for reasons that are stories in and of themselves, I ended up not staying in that field, but I always missed it.

My favorite job was at my alma mater, working in admissions recruiting high school students—a great age and a momentous time in their lives, when they are finishing up one chapter and looking at the next big chapter. In my admissions job, I also got to put my writing and editing skills to use. It was the perfect combination for me.

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

I was almost always doing something else while writing, not just solely writing—admissions, career counseling, financial counseling, communications work—so I don’t feel as if I have had to exclude other things in order to write. I think doing other things helps the writing, although writing is the constant companion. I don’t know what life would be like without it because I have been writing my whole adult life and most of my youth.

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

I just read Sarah Manguso’s 300 Arguments, and I loved it for the writing, for how it didn’t fit neatly into a genre, and for its astute observations. The last film I loved was Lady Bird, which was a coming-of-age film that made me laugh and made me cry and made me think about my own youth.

20 - What are you currently working on?

A poetry collection and a short story collection.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;