12 or 20 (second series) questions with Luisa Muradyan

Luisa Muradyan is originally from Odesa, Ukraine, and is the author of I Make Jokes When I'm Devastated (Bridwell Press, 2025), When the World Stopped Touching (YesYes Books, 2027), and American Radiance (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). She holds a Ph.D. in Poetry from the University of Houston and won the 2017 Raz/ Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize. Additionally, Muradyan is a member of the Cheburashka Collective, a group of women and nonbinary writers from the former Soviet Union.  Additional work can be found at Best American Poetry, the Threepenny Review, Ploughshares, and Only Poems, among others.

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 will always be a reminder to myself that what I have to say matters to someone out in the universe. When I started writing poetry, my wildest dream was that a press would actually take my ridiculous poems about sentient sexy potatoes, Prince, and Predator seriously. I am still amazed that my poems find readers and now that I have a second book out, I am constantly pinching myself that this is my reality. After I finished my first book, American Radiance, which is largely about my family, I promised myself I would move on and write about a new topic. My second book, I Make Jokes When I’m Devastated, is even more focused on my family. I realized that I’m essentially going to write the same book over and over again, because every poem about my grandmother is ultimately a poem about the moon, and everyone knows how poets feel about the moon.

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

I am drawn to poetry for the privacy. Most of the time, I feel naked writing in prose, and while I love reading novels and essays, I need the distance that the lyric provides, or to put it less poetically, I want to keep my top on.

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?

Writing is a long process for me. I think of my brain as a crock pot that I’m constantly shoving images into. Eventually, I pull images out after a few hours of staring at my computer screen. A final draft often looks nothing like the original version of that poem, and that’s typically because I don’t have a clear idea of where the poem needs to go. Occasionally, I’ll tell myself “I’m going to write a love poem that starts with prunes,” but that’s about as much direction as I tend to give myself.

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?

Poems often begin for me with images. I’ll see a bursting peony bush and immediately think, “obviously I’ll be writing about you later,” and continue on my day. I am rarely a writer who works on “projects” and mostly just assembles manuscripts slowly over time. I obsessively write about ten different things over and over again, and eventually those poems become a book.

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

I adore attending readings. I often think of them as a place of tremendous inspiration, and I often feel energized when they are over. For me, there is something magical about hearing poetry read out loud by friends or poets whose work I am not familiar with.

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 concerns are endless. I have a thousand answers for “what do poems actually do?” but none of them feel like the right one. As a poet who often writes about war in my birthplace, I think about this question often.

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 generally avoid prescribing what the role of a writer should be. As a teacher of young writers, I see firsthand the tremendous impact that poems have for helping people understand themselves, and also for understanding others. To me, empathy and poetry are connected in a way that is essential. I teach “Try to Praise the Mutilated World” by Adam Zagajewski every year because that poem saved my life; I don’t know what role that gives me as a writer. Mostly, I’m not that different than a person handing out pamphlets on the street. I’m giving you something that has transformed the way I see the world, Maybe you’ll remember a line from this poem when you need it, maybe you’ll immediately throw it into the recycling bin.

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

I have been lucky to work with some really generous editors throughout the years. For individual poems, I really only share them with a handful of friends and mostly as proof that I am still living. When I am struggling with a poem, I find that sharing drafts with a friend I trust is tremendously helpful. I worked with Katie Condon on my last book and she was essential in helping me iron out some poems that I had over-edited when I was putting my manuscript together. Since Katie understood my work, she was able to provide some suggestions for not only how to make the poems better but how to shape them towards what I wanted them to be.

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

The best way to learn about writing is by reading 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?

Admittedly, I am on the “parent of three young children” routine which means I’m often writing poems on my phone in between hockey practices, in a school pickup line, or during my lunch break between classes I teach.

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

Stanley Kunitz reading “Touch Me” will likely bring me back to earth for a few seconds after I’ve died. When he leans into the microphone and says “remind me who I am” at the end of the poem I gasp every single time.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Home is a complicated idea for me as I came to this country as a refugee when I was a child. What reminds me of Odesa? The smell of meat section in the Pryvoz market or the peonies that grew outside of our apartment building. What reminds me of Kansas City? The smell of bbq and the park after it rains. My current house smells like mint leaves from tea I make throughout the day, scented markers in my children’s playroom, or the absolutely horrific scent of unwashed adolescent hockey gear that lives in my garage.

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 am moved by visual art and often begin writing poems in my head as I walk through museums or galleries.

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

Gerald Stern is a poet that will always pull me out of whatever writing hole I find myself in. I also have a deep love for Marina Tsvetaeva, Wisława Szymborska, Robin Coste Lewis, Kathleen Peirce, Mahmoud Darwish, Ross Gay, Stanley Kunitz, Adam Zagajewski, Anna Akhmatova, Ada Limon, Tiana Clark, Ilya Kaminsky, Ruth Stone, Matthew Olzmann, Li-Young Lee, Safiya Sinclair, and so many others.

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

I’d love to write a children’s book length poem. I promised my oldest child that this would be our summer project.

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?

This might be too close to the same wheelhouse as writing but I think I would be a very good namer of things. I want to be whoever is in charge of naming nail polish colors, newly invented cheeses, flavors of candy, or recently discovered insects. Are you a beverage company who doesn’t know what to call your strangely hued newest creation? Allow me to be drunk with power and name that juice.

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

For a long time writing was the thing that I saved for myself as a reward for doing all of the other things I had to do throughout the day. Eventually, I got tired of putting my joy Last.

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

I just finished Traci Brimhall’s Love Prodigal and I recommend everyone with a beating heart buy this incredible book. I also saw Sinners last night and it was brilliant.

19 - What are you currently working on?

I typically allow myself to go through a quiet phase after I have a book come out. I am currently working on getting back to writing poems more frequently.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) interview with Sophie Klahr

Sophie Klahr is the author of the poetry collections Two Open Doors in a Field, Meet Me Here at Dawn, and the collaborative prose work There Is Only One Ghost in the World, written alongside Corey Zeller. Her writing may be found in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Poetry London, and elsewhere. She teaches poetry courses online, and lives in Los Angeles.

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 chapbook  _____ Versus Recovery was published in 2007 by from Pilot Books, a small press (now defunct, alas) that hand-sewed gorgeous limited editions. I was 23, and it was the first time I’d had work out in the world that addressed my experiences with addiction and (at the time, very new) recovery. Previous to that, I hadn’t published very much at all, and the warm reception the chapbook received was surprising; suddenly, the most difficult things in my life drew people towards me, not away.

My very recently published book There Is Only One Ghost in the World (Fiction Collective 2) is wildly different from my previous two books, in that not only is it a collaborative work but that it is all prose, where my other books have been entirely verse. I’ve been writing in prose mostly for a year or so – it’s been interesting to take a breath from line breaks. At the moment, I don’t miss them. 

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

My childhood was thick with an appreciation of sound. When he was home, no matter where my father was in the house, one could nearly always hear him singing to himself. At simple everyday questions ( Q: Dad, where are my ballet shoes?) he would often answer with some sort of poetic line ( A: Whose woods these are, I think I know…), and at some point, I realized many of the verses he said to us (annoyingly, I thought back then) were inscribed in me—I came to know early what it meant to know something by heart. In this way, my becoming a poet became inevitable.

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?

What I end up revising the most heavily are my formal poems – some of my sonnets have taken 3 years to write. But there are exceptions – a sonnet of mine which went viral a few years ago took about two weeks of tinkering until it expressed that it was complete. I think it was Yeats who said (I may be paraphrasing?) “a poem comes right with a click like a closing box.” I just listen for that click.

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?

It seems to me that a poem comes either from a memory like a toothache or from a moment of music in passing. Formally, I do fall into patterns -- most of the verse I’ve written for the past 6 years turns towards the sonnet, and in my last book of verse poems, Two Open Doors in a Field, most of them were sonnets that had the framework of driving and listening to the radio. When something feels good, I tend to want more of it, and because of that, I’ll stay in a single vein of form and subject until some natural conclusion feels reached, or, i.e. I feel a type of satiation. 

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

I prefer not to read my work in front of others; I think my body gets in the way of my words.

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?

The questions in the prose book I’m currently working surround the nature of honesty and center on an investigation of voice: what / who do we trust when we read? Where is the line between “fiction” and “nonfiction”? What does it mean to be an “unreliable” or “reliable” narrator? What stories are “worth” telling?

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?

All writers do really in some ways is point to a moment or thing or idea and say Look! I’d hope that we all point to things that feel important, but “important” is defined differently for everyone.

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

These days, I tend to only ask for feedback from a friend or two when a piece feels too close to me, and the questions I put forth to them are usually broad. On a book level, I haven’t had much trouble, but that’s likely only because the publishers I’ve had have offered very few edits. 

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

Dorothy Parker once said “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” I am not a person who ever gets bored, but it seems like a good piece of thought to pass along.

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

I don’t sit down to write having any expectation for the form that words will become. Maybe the words will call for verse, maybe it will want to be prose. I’d like to collaborate more with people who work in visual mediums – a filmmaker friend recently invited me to collaborate on some pitches for a documentary that won’t have anything to do with literature. I think it might end up being about Komodo dragons. Collaboration is energizing in part because it exercises the muscle of listening, and leans away from ego.

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 have no routine whatsoever really. Each day begins with my cat being hungry – his hunger is the most consistent thing in my life.

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

I don’t relate to the idea of being stalled with writing, but I think I turn to physical activity when I get into psychic tangles of any kind. Walking or dancing or swimming always feels clarifying, whether I’m in a moment of writing or not.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Roasted chicken and dust.

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 think books come from questions. Of the suggestions above, I would say that nature influences my writing most deeply–I read more nonfiction about the natural world than any fiction or poetry. As far as visual art, I’ve held kept Edward Hopper’s work as a touchstone for decades years – his spaces and light and sense of pause. I come from a fairly musical & music-loving family, so references to songs actually do seem to often show up in my work naturally. About 10 years ago I lived sporadically with the musician Cass McCombs, and living in a space that was really saturated with his music meant that while writing, I was also often pausing to listen to the muffled sounds of what he was creating and playing, far off in some other part of the house, and I think some of that atmosphere was knit into what I was writing at the time—I actually drew the title of my first book Meet Me Here At Dawn from the name of one of his songs.

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

I am consistently return to Rilke’s Duino Elegies. They feel like a touchstone for spiritual inquiry.

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

I would like to write a musical with someone! Musical theater is the most collaborative art form, and can be profoundly moving. I have been simmering around two specific ideas for musicals for many years – the key now is finding my own time that might align with a composer who has time. I’d love to work with my dear friend Daniel Heath, whose work you’re familiar with if you’ve ever heard the lush strings beneath some of Lana Del Rey’s most popular songs, but he’s endlessly busy, so if you are a composer reading this, write to me!

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 would have loved to be a paleontologist. It’s a bit late for that I think, but I’ve had a fascination with dinosaurs since I was little, and I’m fascinated by how our understanding of them continues to evolve. I recently read Steve Brusatte’s book The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World – highly recommend.

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

I’m not even sure I can answer the question! Writing has never seemed like much of a choice.

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

I will offer the two most recent collections of poetry I’ve read by peers: K. Iver’s Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco and Eugenia Leigh’s Bianca – both are brilliant and incisive.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’m working on a chapbook of poems about an angel (which is also about addiction and the penal system) and a book of prose tentatively titled that is in some ways a hall of mirrors to my collaborative book There Is Only One Ghost in the World, though this one is a solo venture. We’ll see what happens.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jill Mceldowney

Jill Mceldowney is the author of the full length collection Otherlight (YesYes Books) and the chapbook Airs Above Ground (Finishing Line Press). She is a founder and editor of Madhouse Press. Her previously published work can be found in journals such as Prairie Schooner, Fugue, Vinyl, Muzzle, and other notable publications.

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?

Otherlight is my first full length collection! I’m super excited about it–publishing a full length collection is something I’ve been chasing for almost 10 years so it feels amazing to have it out in the world. I’m incredibly lucky to have been able to bring this book out with YesYes Books–working with them has been nothing short of absolutely amazing.

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

I actually started out as a fiction writer! I took an Intro to Poetry class in undergrad to fill my required credits. The class was taught by Josh Young who, about half-way through the semester, was like “You need to be a poet.” That kind of decided it for me honestly.

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 wrote Otherlight very quickly. It took me about 3 months to write the first full draft and then I spent about two years revising it and rewriting it. I used to be able to write so fast–I wrote 2 full length manuscripts while in grad school. Now, my process is much slower which I actually think is more in line with the material that I’m writing about and thinking about.

I usually start out with a plan for a chapbook and then see how things go. I love really concise, straight to the point books so that process really makes sense for me.

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 definitely a “book poet.” I don’t know if that’s an actual “thing” or not but I’m always writing toward a book or a full length manuscript. I’m not the poet who can write a singular stand out poem. I love the challenge of working on a manuscript and the way verse lends itself to world building and creating an atmosphere. Building a world for the poems to live in is one of the most fun parts of the whole process.

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

X

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?

Otherlight as a whole is particularly interested in interrogating grief–what it means to individual and what it means to live with unresolved grief. I really wanted this book to–as closely as possible–depict grief and the processing of loss. It bothers me when the end of a book wraps up grief so neatly at the end and gives the impression that everything is okay. It doesn’t really work like. In the last few poems of Otherlight I wanted my reader to get the sense that the speaker was working through their loss, their grief–but wasn’t necessary working their way out of it.

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?

X

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

I definitely have my “first readers” who I send everything to. Caroline Chavatel, who works with me on Madhouse Press, is a brilliant editor. Katherine Sullivan was the editor for Otherlight. Working with her was so amazing–her attention to detail made the book that much stronger. It was a gift to have an editor who saw what the book could be from the start.

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

X

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 definitely don’t have a strict writing routine–I have to write when I can now. I'm a lawyer and that is a job that can definitely be all consuming. I have to be kind of crafty with my time and how I work in poems. If I have a 5-10 min break between meetings or research or drafting a legal brief, I’ll try and draft something–anything–even if its just a line. I take a lot of voice memos now while I'm driving and craft poems out of them later.

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

Interestingly enough whenever I feel stuck or like I can’t write–I go read a novel. Reading prose really helps me when I get stuck. I also I have books that I just keep returning to and rereading that just make me want to write poems. Just to name a few, some of those books are Ampersand Revisited by Simeon Berry, Carolina Ghost Woods by Judy Jordan, Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love by Keith S. Wilson, A Hunger by Lucie Brock-Broido.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Lavender.

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?

X

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

Having a life outside of being a “poet” is definitely important for me and my work. Even just having a job that is not academia or poetry related is really healthy I think. It works for me. I spend time riding my horse, doing other types of art.

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

X

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?

It would certainly be nice to be a full time writer. :) Right now I’m working in tax and immigration law full time but I love poetry

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

X

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

I’m working my way through all the books I bought while I was in law school and didn’t have the time to read. I just finished Yellow Rain by Mai Der Vang and thought it was absolutely brilliant.

19 - What are you currently working on?

I’m currently working on a manuscript that is investigating adult friendships, childhood, nostalgia. I’m also heavy into the revision process on a manuscript that continues my study with grief, trauma, violence.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, 40 Weeks

 

Nature must be a mother

to pour : thunder : punch

through potholes : hoping this

will make something : anything

: grow : she must be moths : mouth

wide : wings panting for lightning :

who else would strike herself : flame

veining the air? who else would bear

children to rise in spring : only to feel them

cut months later? the moth’s

charred outline on a log : the double

wound : her children’s head sinking

: left to dry on another mother’s

windowsill : who else would ask

for such a violence?

Granville, Ohio-based poet Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach’s third full-length poetry title, following The Many Names for Mother (Kent State University Press, 2019) and Don’t Touch the Bones (Lost Horse Press, 2020), is 40 Weeks (Portland OR: YesYes Books, 2023), a book-length poem on pregnancy and the difficulties of waiting, wanting, catching and becoming. 40 Weeks follows pregnancy, a loss, and a further pregnancy, offering her poem-titles as individual and consecutive weeks, each named and sized after a corresponding vegetable-to-fetus size, from “Week 4: Poppy Seed” and “Week 9: Grape” to “Week 14: Lemon” and “Week 28: Eggplant.” Across this book-length suite, Dasbach composes a mapping of an intimate space, and the emotional and physical complexities and interruptions of everything that pregnancy, mothering and motherhood involves and surrounds. She writes violence and loss, swirls of surrender and survival. As the short single-sentence of the poem “Week 21: Carrot” ends: “into the street with your sun / still inside his laughter / brought icicles down / from a neighbor’s gutter / they shattered / irreparable / far from his body / unprotected and wholly / outside of you / inside / her fingerprints / became / permanent [.]”

Set in a sequence of weeks, Dasbach articulates poems about and around pregnancy and motherhood that ripple out into poems about how precarious and wonderful it is to live, and live deeply, allowing every part of her to surrender to an experience that overtakes every cell. “Four times they drew,” she offers, to open “Week 31: Coconut,” “checking blood / for sweetness—how quickly / the body can dissolve / what feeds it.” There is such a delicate precision to these poems, simultaneously hard-set and tender, as Dasbach composes poems of becoming and becoming more; of being and the slow difficulty and clear beauty of pregnancy and motherhood, along with all the confusion, insecurity, heartbreak and all else that can’t help but come. “You’ve been leaking / for weeks now,” the poem “Week 38: Leek” begins, “secreting, sieving, / seeping, sweating even / in the absence / of heat. You’ve been / leaving yourself / on every fabric, / spending more time / surrounded / by water / so what escapes / comes home.” Dasbach’s 40 Weeks really is a breathtaking collection of documented moments in set lyric, even through the rush of attempting to document each moment as it occurs, before it moves on to the next, and remains in no other form but through memory, or here.