What are you reading these days? Do you love/hate/feel neutral about it, and why?

 

Planet Drill by Jessica Laser

Hívado by Andrew Colarusso

Suede Mantis by Jenn Soong

F: Poems by Franz Wright

John Adams by David McCullough

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

Cinema Speculation by Quentin Tarantino 

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Have you read a passage of writing that deeply shifts something inside you, if so, please share it with us? 

 

It might be an odd thing to say but I tend to be drawn to writing that compels me to stop reading and start writing. It’s like the feeling of being in your seat during a theater performance and immediately desiring to get up and leave the theater and get somewhere – anywhere– and just work it out. Rae Armantrout’s work has this effect for me. 

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When you are working on a piece, what inspirations do you draw from?

 

When I’m writing, I like to work in series – like a painter might or photographer might shape ideas around a subject. It’s the hope to kind of leave the subject open to different views or shifting perspective with a rhyming of feelings. 

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What craft elements are you most interested in/attached to within your writing?

 

Craft-wise, I feel like my ear is tuned to a type of music that grinds against itself, then stops. Maybe that’s in my head. When I read or perform, the air between words and between thoughts is important. I guess that’s music. Telling a singular, linear story is not as important to me, because there isn’t one story to tell.

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What are some ways in which you remain productive/find time to be a writer? 

  

I carry a notebook around, but lately, I’ll just text myself words or phrases to remember or remind myself of a “subject” or a place to begin. 

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Tell us what your writing space looks like.

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I don’t really have a dedicated space but I supposed my writing space looks like a laptop. I rarely write out poems in their entirety in a notebook; the writing works itself out in an open, live document. I don’t often save drafts. I’ll just overwrite or cut and paste the poem into a new page and edit it until I don’t recognize it – feel like we’ve been somewhere together.  

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What are some ways in which you get through a block in your creative work?

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Doing something else creative like drawing or playing music. I especially love that chance to get out and take a walk in the woods and work through whatever I’m thinking.

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How do you navigate the experience of submissions/rejections/acceptances?

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Just keep going. Your writing could be great but maybe not great in the context of the editorial vision of an editor or publication. And ultimately, the process is what’s satisfying. Everything else is para-experiential to the joy of working.  ​

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Do you have a recent publication/project you would like us to highlight? 

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I’m proud that my most recent collection of poems, Beautiful, Safe & Free (New Books) finally made its way into the world after a long interval of submissions. 

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What is something you would like to share with other writers out there? 

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Take your own advice. It’s hard to write with rejection for ten years. It’s easy to say, write the poem you’d like to read, it’s much more difficult to ignore what’s out there and still write the poem you’d like to read, rather than what poems are being published and where.