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 made my first chapbook, which was handstitched at Flying Object, an artist space that existed in Hadley, MA from 2012-2015. I was so proud of this chap, and now I am bashful of its poems, which are pretty bad. But the design is beautiful, I think. Here is a picture:
At the time of my writing the empty season, my first full-length book, my father was dying quickly and prematurely, a long-term relationship ended, and I was coming out as queer. So in a way, it feels like my life was changing in very dramatic ways and the book was a culmination of a lot of different forms which I was playing around with at the time. Mainly, poetry comics, which I don’t really do anymore.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I came to poetry when I was really young. My middle school best friend, the poet Katie Fowley, and I would go into Cambridge on a Wednesday night to hear poetry in the basement of the Cantab Lounge in Central Square, MA. This was during the days when Patricia Smith was reading a lot. We were two twelve-year-old kids and the poets there took us under their wing and treated us like adults. It all felt very glamorous, especially for me, because I was raised by a strict father who wouldn’t even let me watch TV during the week, and in a moment of clarity, made this one exception, so I treasured these trips.
The first poem I remember reading over and over again was Ginsburg’s “Sunflower Sutra” in HOWL, trying to memorize it just so that I could listen to it all day in my head. Also, I have a middle school memory of a performer named Odds Bodkin who came into my school to perform, over the course of three days, The Odyssey in bard.
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 comes when it comes, which is always a surprise to me. I don’t start projects as much as I get language earworms that need to wriggle their way out or I get obsessed with a subject and then naturally I start writing into it. A poem might start with a line, which may not even be its first line. Sometimes it is not a line but just one word that needs some investigating. I write most days, and I am not very disciplined. Over the years, my poetry practice has not been as much about daily writing as much as it is an act of attention in the day.
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 changes with each poem. If I am paying attention, there is nothing ‘usual’ about the beginning of a poem at all. It is a surprise and a calling most of the time. For example, Can We Anything We See, my most recent book, is a long poem concerned with A.I. and personhood. For this book, it would seem like a “project book,” and in some ways, my writing constrictions made it a project. But I didn’t set out to write a book. I followed the language that became a long poem, which happens to be book-length. It is important in my practice to make that distinction, as my poems aren’t very good when they come from a place of knowing or planning instead of coming from a place of curiosity. For CWAWS I started writing language – about a line or two a day – in response to various randomly selected AI photojournalism pictures that I found through keyword searches. The line was usually written on a typewriter so that I would need to pull my attention away from the screen to write. I think I might have even started our writing in pen, but then handwriting seemed too lyrical for the poem, and the language demanded a serif font. I wrote pages and pages of these lines, most of which did not end up into the slim manuscript. So by starting from a place of ekphrasis but omitting the photographs, I created a sort of reverse ekphrastic for the reader. Human beings are always doing this – filling in the gaps with our own narratives, and this poem lays that bare.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love giving readings, but I hate to go last and I don’t like Q&A’s. My first experiences of poetry were aloud. Sometimes reading aloud is a way I can edit my poems, and I’ve been known to edit a poem extemporaneously during a reading. And more than reading my own poems, I love listening to other people’s poems, which why I typically request to read first, even at my own book launches. Although I’ve given many readings, I always get really nervous, and I am relieved to sit down and relax and give all of my attention to the poets around me afterwards. Also, talking is perhaps my least favorite form of communication, which is why I get shy at live Q&A’s. I’d rather just folks come up to me after a reading and engage me in conversation.
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?
This is such a beautifully impossible question for me to answer, as the theoretical questions I have change book-to-book and poem-to-poem. For CWAWS, I was really curious (and yes, concerned) with the ways in which AI technologies can not only shape an individual’s sense of personhood but also shape an individual’s sense of collective identity in relation to that personhood. What keywords drive daily browser searches? What do these searches say about our fears and obsessions? How can we believe anything we see? In what ways do we rely on photos, specifically photojournalistic ones, for evidence and why? How do captions shape our meaning-making?
As I write this, I am rethinking about a lot of these questions not only because I just read today that AI’s leading developer, Nvidia, is worth 3 trillion dollars, a staggering number that could feed countries and end wars. Instead, the U.S. is spending billions of dollars investing in the “Lavender,” an “A.I. targeting system used to bomb Gazans with little human oversight and permissive policy for casualties.” When I wrote this poem, however, I remember that I was thinking about my own gender identity a lot in relation to AI, and in my digging around., I came across “The Gender Panopticon: AI, Gender, and Design Justice” by Sonia K. Katyal and Jessica Y.Young,” which is cited in my notes,. This article started to shape a framework for my thinking around the many ways AI shapes a collective sense of personhood, for better or worse (and as the authors argue, more often the latter).
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 think that depends on the writer, the specific culture, and the current moment. Which is to say, I don’t think there is a singular answer. For me, my role is only to write.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I find it to be both. I do get pleasure and a thrill sharing my work with a trusted reader/editor for the first time. I have an intimate list of poets who challenge and inspire me, and whom I often share early versions of my work.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
“Don’t pay for an MFA.”—Peter Gizzi given to me directly at my undergraduate thesis dissertation.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between text to visual work? What do you see as the appeal?
I take photographs for the same reason I write poems. I am curious about the result. And it is very easy to move between the two mediums for me, as photography seems very externally focused, and poetry seems grounded in interiority. I like to think of each act as a kind of breath, poetry an inhale and photography an exhale, and I breathe throughout the day.
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 am not a disciplined writer, but I do write daily. I keep a notebook with me everywhere I go. A typical day for me begins with making my daughter her lunch while slugging coffee. I am always writing in my head until it is on the page.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I would say that I am lucky in that I don’t really get stalled, not in the ‘writer’s block’ sense. But the truth is I do get stalled… by my chronic clinical depression. I have a history of outpatient and inpatient care in psychiatric hospitals, and I have also struggled throughout the years with alcoholism and self-harm. As I get older, I try to share about this as candidly as possible when appropriate, as my experience is very common within writer communities, but often not discussed. So where do I return for inspiration? In a way, I could say medication and therapy, as these things restore inspiration to me.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
mothballs and pipe tobacco
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, all of the above and more.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
The writers who were specifically on my mind and on my nightside table in the creating of Can We Anything We See were Renee Gladman’s Plans for Sentences, Rosmarie Waldrop’s Lawn of the Excluded Middle, Radi Os by Ronald Johnson.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Make pottery. Learn to crotchet. Speak Spanish fluently. Start a children’s book imprint. Write a review for the film HOME starring Isabelle Huppert and directed by Ursula Meier.
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 don’t think it is an either/or situation, but I do have dreams of becoming a beekeeper someday.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
20 - What are you currently working on?
I just started finishing a long lyric poem called Some Say Break / Others Say Do which I started in October 2024. The first thirty-five pages were published in a chap from Press Brake.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
