1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first book came out in 2014. I had the sense that something else should happen then, so I did a variety of things that now seem unbelievable to me—danced it, chanted it, etc. I haven’t pursued such activities with recent books, but the experience relaxed my relation to ideas about “the work” generally. I’d say it helped me welcome contingency, accident, potential embarrassment. Otherwise, there’s a general kind of vibe that persists across the books, sort of earthy and philosophical (I hope).
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
As a reader, I came first to novels. My family took many cross-country drives when I was a kid. I read for the days it took us to get somewhere. Non-stop, fully immersed—that’s my dream. Poetry arrived in the form of my much older sister, who was a poet then (now she’s a forensic pathologist); her 90s poet life seemed impossibly glamorous. She let me hang out in bars with her and her writer friends when I was a teen.
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 write a lot in notebooks, accruing language and concerns. At some point the feeling mysteriously arrives that a poem should result. The poems undulate across the many days or weeks of gathering and jots. I sort of find them there, lead them out.
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 wrote one book “project,” involving the essays of Michel de Montaigne. Mainly now I let reading, practice, life be my guide.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I like readings, sometimes very much. Sometimes a poetry reading will manifest and crystallize the happy, nervy, hopeful energy of people together, yearning 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?
One concern is with poetry’s rescue of discourse, where the poem, or the kind of thinking a poem is, can be a true statement, albeit one that we only very briefly inhabit or are allowed. Recently, I’m invested—to my surprise—in rehabilitating the old quarrel between Shelley and Wordsworth, via Mill, poems of the head vs poems of the heart, to ask: why choose? As in, why is that the choice we are asked to make again and again? There’s (always) questions of what reading is good for; in what ways does poetry do a kind of (moral) philosophizing; interest in humans, their behaviors and reasons (actual, believed), and the lives of creatures.
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 and artists and thinkers I admire tend to believe in some different or other reality, the pursuit and discovery of which language, image, aesthetic expression uniquely allow. Art is a bridge one walks on and toward—an earthy, clumsy substance and a spiritual, extravagant one. It often encodes a personal longing but it’s also social, environmental, historical, political. Who but writers and artists will honor these stubborn, modest, generous dreams?
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I am a scholarly editor—I mean I edit monographs, edited collections, journal articles. I was an acquisitions editor for a university press full-time for years, now I do free-lance developmental editing. I have lots to say about editing and its importance, but yes, I think working with editors is essential.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
I have a poem in my latest book that includes the line “Keep going + believe = ‘advice.’” It’s a joke but not a joke.
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?
Most days I get up very early to write. People used to sleep differently—a first sleep, an interlude around 3:00 am, a second sleep. This historic interlude is where a lot of my work’s language arrives.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Philosophy. Biography. Walks in the woods.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Cut grass, violet skies with a thunderstorm somewhere, slight farm.
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?
Working and being with animals. Listening to the anecdotes of others.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Iris Murdoch, Marguerite Young, Lorine Niedecker, Paul Valéry, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Ernst Bloch, Paul Goodman, Wong May, Dan Bevacqua, Peter Gizzi, Emily Hunt, Sara Nicholson, Ben Estes, Alan Felsenthal, Kai Ihns, Hai-dang Phan, Patrick Morrissey.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Hike the AT. Live in France. Write a play with my husband and stage it in our house.
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 frequently wish I had been an ethologist. It’s the science of, someone has said, interviewing animals in their own language.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
My other artistic talents were minimal. Other forms of more regular or professionally legible work leave me feeling half-alive.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Last great book was Unclay by TF Powys; last great film was a rewatching of The Souvenir by Joanna Hogg.
19 - What are you currently working on?
More poems and a novel about a self-taught artist in rural Illinois.
