1. Why did you start writing?
"Well, from an early age I have always loved reading non-fiction. I’ve always loved the development of language and how it flows or does not etc. However, it was more just a coincidence I suppose. I started writing properly around 15/16 and started to send in works to my school newspaper at 16/17. I never really saw it taking off, or being important or having some other unforeseen impact. But, in the end I believe that why I continue to write is very simple. Out of some enjoyment, but mainly so that others can find themselves in words they can’t quite write down. Most of my poems are very socially directed, so I believe my writing is almost exclusively targeted to dealing with inequality, sans a few more niche topics."

2. How do you know when a poem is done?
"Well, controversially I do not endlessly edit. I usually write poetry on a device and then copy it over to the computer and reread once. The main thing for me, is that I believe that poems should be written correctly the first-time round. As in, I would rather spend 30 minutes on 1 poem than edit it incessantly for ages. I think a poem is truly done once its written, if it has been written with focus. Otherwise, I would say, rather strangely too, that I believe a poem is done once it has been published." 

3. Your latest poetry book, Vultures, deals with nature and death. While writing these poems, when did you realize you had material for a book?
"In all honesty, I wrote this book with a concrete narrative in mind. What you’ll notice about ‘Vultures’ is that its narrative progresses through layers of decaying character, substance and life, until death consumes mortal struggle. I wrote this poem as a whole over about two weeks with the exclusion of 1 poem added in from elsewhere that worked very well. When I write collections or novels or any longer work. I take the time to either briefly plan, or usually just think about what impact I want it to have on readers. Death overtakes us all, nature too, so my aim with this collection is to present a narrative that is fiction based, but with layers of realism, postmodern truth and honesty. I see this as A.R.Salandy unfiltered in some ways as it is very reflective of some of my own personal musings."

4. You are the Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Fahmidan Journal & Publishing. Why did you decide to establish your own magazine and press? Has this experience affected your writing?
"Ranna & I always wanted to start something like Fahmidan and after talking for about two months we just said ‘why not!’ Our goal with the press is to publish & promote Women, POC & other minorities as presses often, continuously overlook these groups beyond tokenism. Our team wholeheartedly believes in our focus on equality and inclusion. We were very frustrated with seeing line ups of just all men or specific groups purely based on covert exclusion. Beyond this, we wanted our journal (open to all) to be a place of some form of social assistance and discourse as with our ‘Social Dilemmas & Triumphs’ Issue 4 and ‘Autoimmune & Mental Health Warriors’ Issue 6. I couldn’t say if Fahmidan has changed my writing as my writing has very few changes. I am not very experimental and prefer to write concise, directed writing, which makes me sound old LOL."

5. Where do you draw inspiration?
"Lived Experiences, Travel, Nature (in the desert and elsewhere). But also, from very mundane things like bird watching and walking."
 
6. You speak multiple languages. Do you write poetry in different languages?
"Sometimes! I have a few poems out that incorporate Latin & Italian and one coming out with a little Dutch. I would love to publish more with stronger foreign language usage, however, finding places to send them to is hard. I think writing poetry in other languages has taught me a lot as well. I use my dictionaries more and expand on the language lessons I do daily. Such application has given me a new outlook to language."

7. What do you hope people take away from your work?
"A sense of work ethic and honesty. But mainly a personalization of my words that gives some form of comfort through an honest and frank presentation. I also hope people become more aware of the heavy inequality that pervades all facets of society."

8. What other project(s) do you hope to take on someday?
"Well, I currently have quite a lot of work on, but I would definitely like to see more of my collections published. I think that a lot of getting writing out is really just getting to know the right way to explain your work and who to submit to, rather than solely the work itself. Thus, my current focus is on learning more about these areas. Perhaps a few new writing projects too, but time will tell!"

9. What writing advice do you find totally useless?
"Planning (somewhat) as it works for a lot of people, just not for me. I also believe that a lot of emphasis is placed on having an MFA or PHD rather than on the quality of writing itself. I used to hate how patronizing people could be regarding the gatekeeping of Poetry & Prose and really, the literary world as a whole. Age and qualification do not guarantee great work, dedication, continuous practice and 1000s of submissions do, I believe." 

10. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough. Tell me all about it!
"I do love my languages. I practice 2-4 a day using a daily rota and depending on what my goal is for that language. For example, on Sundays I do Dutch & Welsh. The latter of which I am starting to string more sentences together, but grammar is absolutely brutal! Aside from languages, I absolutely adore good House Music. I play a lot of Moon Boots, Prince Innocence, Anto & Lyle M etc while I write and just in general. I honestly think more poets should listen to house, it’s just such a versatile genre." 

​
 Hear A.R.Salandy​​ read his poem "Vultures​."
​

A.R.Salandy (he/him) is a mixed-race poet & writer whose work tends to focus on social inequality throughout late-modern society. Anthony travels frequently and has spent most of his life in Kuwait jostling between the UK & America. Anthony's work has been published 160 times. Anthony has 2 published chapbooks titled The Great Northern Journey 2020 (Lazy Adventurer Publishing ) & Vultures 2021 (Roaring Junior Press). Anthony is also the Co-Eic of Fahmidan Journal. ​He can be found on both Twitter and Instagram @anthony64120 and on his author page.

1. Why did you start writing? 
"For me, the answer starts with reading. Reading has always been one of my very favorite things in the world. The way a story or a poem gets inside my body, makes me feel, reminds me that I’m alive? Just amazing. And there’s this incredibly cool doubleness that you feel when something really transports you. You’re in Narnia or Oz or Earthsea or lost in the language of some remarkable poem, and you’re on this cool adventure with the characters in the book, grieving or loving or wondering and wandering alongside the speaker of the poem, but you’re also you, alive in the moment, in some physical actual place in the world. Both at once. At some point, I began to want to create something that might somehow make someone else feel what reading makes me feel. I always think of it as this ache in the back of the throat, this intense wistfulness. I think what it comes down to in the end: the beauty and possibility of human connection. I write and read for that connection. It’s a kind of touch. A kind of love."

2. How long did it take you to complete Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy? When did you realize that you had material to write a book about fatherhood and American machoism? 
"The earliest poem in the book was written in 2012; the most recent was written in 2020 and added during the final editing stage. Most were written between 2015 and 2017, and somewhere in that time period I realized many of my poems were exploring these themes so maybe there was a book in it. I tend to be a 'one poem at a time' kind of writer, rather than working in projects, so I have to write a lot of poems before I start seeing connections between them that might yield a collection." 

3. Do you find it is easier to write poetry books now that you’ve published several of them? 
"There’s a certain placidity that comes with experience, I guess, a bit less fear that no one will ever read anything you write. But easier? No, not really. Writing is hard, always, and the last thing I wrote doesn’t do any of the work on the next thing. No amount of publishing success will write the next poem for me. I still have to sit down and put words on the page. I still have to answer the questions: what is a poem? What is this poem? What does this poem love, what does it grieve? And those answers are new every time, even when they’re the same answers." 

4. You have this interesting series, One Poem at a Time, where you interview writers about one of their poems. How did you come up with this idea?
"It’s an excuse to get poets I admire talking about their work. I try to stay away from questions of interpretation, of 'what did you mean by this image, that metaphor.' I’m interested in questions of process, of choices we make as we write, of what we want our readers to experience in our poems, and in questions of what shapes a poet’s relationship with their own poems. I try to honor the poems by reading them deeply before coming up with the questions. I was inspired by Ruben Quesada’s Poetry Today interviews at the Kenyon Review blog, by the old First Book Interview series from Kate Greenstreet and Keith Montesano, and by a number of interview podcasts: David Naimon’s Between the Covers; Rachel Zucker’s Commonplace; Gabrielle Bates, Dujie Tuhat and Luther Hughes’ The Poet Salon, and Kevin Young on The New Yorker Poetry Podcast." 

5. You collaborated with W. Todd Kaneko to create a poetry chapbook, Slash / Slash, that is scheduled for publication in June. This is the second time you worked together. How did the experiences compare, and what did you learn from them? What advice do you have for collaborating authors? 
"Collaborating on the textbook and anthology we wrote for Bloomsbury made collaborating on the chapbook possible. We learned a lot about each other’s process and style, and we learned to set aside ego and work in service of the work, the words. That was, I think, easier and more natural when working in the academic or pedagogical mode. It’s normal for professional documents to be written by a team, right, and the product is more important than the particular voice or vision of any single author. But that’s not usually how we think about art, about making poems. So when we learned to collaborate, to work together, we were able to think about the Slash project differently — not as his or mine, but truly ours. It was a great experience, and I very much recommend working collaboratively to all poets. I guess my advice is just that: try it. Find someone you want to work with and make something together." 

6. You are writing a novel. How does that differ from creating poetry? 
"The scope of the project requires this kind of sustained attention over a long period of time that doesn’t come naturally to me. As I mentioned above, I tend to write poems as poems rather than as part of a project, so breaks in my writing life don’t hurt the process much. Write some poems, take some time away, then come back and write more poems. But with the novel, that time away makes getting back to the project really challenging. It’s hard. At least it is for me. It’s also super strange to be 90-some-thousand words into a project, working on a third draft of that project, and still have utterly no idea if it’s going to end up as a readable or publishable thing. That’s more words than all four of my books of poems combined." 

7. What do you hope people take away from your work? 
"I don’t get to decide what they take away, but I hope they take something. I have said before that I don’t think a poem is done until someone reads it. To be read is a gift." 

8. What other project(s) do you hope to take on someday? 
"So many projects. Too many, probably. I have to finish that dumb novel, I have a chapbook in progress that I want to make into a kind of hybrid prose/poetry thing, and I’ve begun working on a craft book about poetry and punctuation. The other thing on my mind right now is a cyberpunk-inspired role-playing game set in a near-future Michigan. That might be the one I’m most excited about, to be honest." 

9. What writing advice do you find totally useless?
"Any advice that purports to be one size fits all. There are no universal rules. Write every day? Show, don’t tell? Sure, sometimes, in some cases, for some people. But not always, not for every writer, and not at every point in your writing life." 

10. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough. Tell me all about it! 
"I think I probably talk about it plenty, at least if you’re around me in real life. but I love watching my son play goalkeeper. He’s 16, taller than I am, and he loves soccer. He’s been playing since he was 4. Watching his high school team play last fall was like this tiny oasis of normalcy in the middle of a pandemic and a truly challenging semester of online/hybrid teaching. We were masked and socially distanced in the stands, and the players were masked on the field, but for those 90 minutes, I was able to tune out the world and my problems and just watch soccer, entirely in the moment. It was a gift." 
​

Hear Amorak read his poem "Half-Life with Bumper Stickers."

Amorak Huey’s fourth book of poems is Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021). Co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2018) and the chapbook Slash/Slash (Diode, 2021), Huey teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. His previous books are Boom Box (Sundress, 2019), Seducing the Asparagus Queen (Cloudbank, 2018), and Ha Ha Ha Thump (Sundress, 2015), as well as two chapbooks.

1. Why did you start writing? 
"Honestly as long as I could hold a pencil I have been a writer. I have always had something to say. I have always had a cause to fight for. I have always felt that there are stories that need to be told. I think the question is more: Why would you not write? That would never happen willingly. I am always writing, thinking, creating, and learning. And a fun thing to add is that I am one of those old-school people. I write by hand and also by computer. Some of my favorite creations were originally scribbled down in notebooks by hand."

2. Your journey in three different genres: academic, theatrical, and poetry, is intriguing. How did you get involved?
"I have always been this way. I have always been a total nerd. I was the student who took extra classes in high school so I could learn a second foreign language. I was the student who never took a lunch break with friends, instead I did my homework in the library. My favorite classes were foreign languages (German and French) and history. Also I had to knock out as much school while physically at school, after that I always had theatre rehearsal – and a rich social life in the Durham, NC theatre community. As for theatre, I have been writing and putting on plays since childhood with my sister and our friends. I wrote my first real play at age 14. It was inspired by my artistic idol at the time Jim Morrison. Since then I have written 18 more, some of which have been performed in the US, UK, Romania, and Vanuatu. And a couple have been published as well. But when I describe myself I am careful to say 'theatre artist' rather than 'playwright.' Because I am one of those theatre people who can and loves doing everything: producing, acting, directing, sound design, lighting design, marketing, dramaturgy, dialect couching, etc. As for writing poems? That started at age 10 my first year studying German in school. I wrote poems in German because it was secret, it was my own. And if my parents ever opened up my journal, they wouldn’t be able to read what I wrote!  Since then, I have been writing poems here and there, whenever I was called to. I have been writing mostly in English, Romanian, and French. And those 'here and there' poems became my debut poetry book 'Green Horses on the Walls.' Now the moment I became a spoken word poet was in Washington DC in 2010 at the Busboys and Poets (former) 5th and K location. I rode my bike there to share a poem and I have never looked back. My stage name Lady Godiva was given to me by the chair of my Rhodes scholarship selection panel – which is a long story. From Busboys I got invited to other open mics – some known, some word-of-mouth. It was (and still is) a very supportive and safe community, and I am so grateful that I was welcomed as a member no questions asked."

3. Before writing theatre, did you act? Did you always have the confidence to write spoken word poetry that requires acting, confidence, presence, and movement?
"I am a trained Shakespearean actress and that was my professional plan until 2001, my second semester of college at Northwestern University. That is when I discovered that I was interested in more than learning about theatre. Luckily at Northwestern you can study everything so I quickly became a double-major with Philosophy. I succumbed to my inner nerd and from there earned a scholarship to graduate school. That said I have been performing onstage since childhood, and I have acted in shows since 2001. Once an actor I will always be an actor and that experience has 100% made me a better spoken word poet and educator. Spoken word absolutely requires acting, confidence, presence, and movement. I never wanted to be a spoken word poet growing up because I simply did not know that that existed. But I did listen to a lot of rap in English, Romanian, and French before I moved to DC in 2010 and I think that laid a great groundwork in my mind. Spoken word became the magically synthesis of everything artistic I cared about: poetry, my languages, performance, activism, my family history, community, and catharsis."

4. How do you draft spoken word poems? Do you distinguish spoken word versus a regular poem?
"First I should clarify that I am a spoken word poet who has been lucky enough to have her poems published in print form. So I do not claim to know that much about “regular” poems. When I write poetry, I don’t draft my poems. I get an impulse. I sit down and the poem flows onto the paper. Some might say that spoken word is not as sophisticated as regular poetry – because often it is free-flow, stream of conscious – instead of drafted or crafted. I didn’t realize how hard it would be to break into the regular poetry world. Poetry Twitter is only a few people talking about each other and posting about the same poets’ names over and over. As a spoken word poet my poetry life in the online universe is Instagram where people share videos of themselves delivering their poems. During the pandemic we have also had a lot of Instagram Live open mics, and it was that way that I was able to launch my poetry book at my spoken word home at Pure Poetry DC. I am not sure that answers your question. Suffice to say, I am a spoken word poet in a print poetry world. I feel very fortunate that poems that have lived onstage are also available in print form, thus making them more accessible. But I am not leaving spoken word for regular poetry now that I have dipped my toe into the regular poetry publishing world. Spoken word is my first love and the way I write poetry. It has also been an important artistic and activist community for me since 2010."

5. What compels you to write stories about your ancestors? How can you ensure that the information is true to your family’s history?
"Story-telling and oral history were the first modes of documenting history since the dawn of humankind. Of course we can never know if all the information is 100% true as history is passed down by humans and humans are flawed. Another thing to consider is that each person has their own perspective, their own 'version' of the story, so what might be true for one is the opposite for another. What I have done as a poet is share both what I know from oral history of my family and also my own expertise as a trained historian in 20th Century Romanian history. My poems are true to me, as someone who suffers the inherited trauma of the crimes of communism. Both of my dad’s parents were arrested by the communists and disappeared for periods of time. My father and his family were severely punished by the Romanian Secret Police because my dad stayed in the US illegally (meaning he refused to return to Romania). I am sure there are many things that I do not know, and in a sense my adult life has been an effort to understand my father, his family, and Romania itself, as so much was forbidden to me and my sister growing up during the Cold War. This quest has included many magical things such as learning the Romanian language, making Romanian friends for life in Bucharest, and also providing me a beautiful community here in the US as a member of the Romanian-American diaspora. I also wrote an Oxford PhD (turned book) along the way for which I studied Romanian culture and political extremism, that investigation (though not related specifically to my family) has been a journey of self-discovery as well. And I think that it is wonderful for anybody to want to know more about their ancestors and to reconnect with a perhaps lost identity. In the USA we are forced to assimilate, and I think it is beautiful to see so many people now investigating their roots, and yes – I believe – finding themselves."

6. What do you hope people take away from your work? 
"That it is possible to turn grief into good, to heal yourself with creativity. That creativity is also a vehicle to preserve history and memory. Once you write the stories down – whatever the form they take – they will be there for the future generations. I hope that my work can show that creativity (poetry, theatre, etc.) can be a platform to address difficult issues and advocate for social justice and societal change. A lot of my work is about mental health and sexual assault – I am an advocate for both NAMI and RAINN – and in my creative work I have been free to tackle those often “taboo” topics, and in doing so hopefully reduce the stigma surrounding them. Something I learned from my artistic collaborators in Romania is to be risk-taking and fearless in my art, I hope that I am and that it shows. Artists should never hold back punches – we should always be pushing the envelope – calling for the better world that we envision. Many people have told me over the years that I am brave and courageous for even writing about such topics as inherited trauma, the crimes of communist Romania, colonialism in the South Pacific, and the difficult issues I mentioned above. I don’t view it as bravery but as two things: 1) for me it is catharsis to write about these topics; and 2) in doing so I hope my creative work can be a vehicle for education about topics that we – as a society – are so reluctant to talk about. Through my work I hope that I can combat ignorance."

7. What inspires you?
"My parents inspire me. They both pursued education (both earned PhDs) and instilled the value of education in me and my siblings. We were always talking about everything in our house – politics, history, global affairs, the world map. We were always told that if we did well in school, we could achieve our dreams – no matter our gender. It is my education that has opened all the doors for me so far in my life. Of course, earning my degrees (in Philosophy and History) took a lot of hard work but I also had a blast doing it. I am very lucky to teach at a university where the students truly value going to college and the opportunities their degree will offer. My students do not take their studies for granted and I learn so much by being in dialogue with them. I consider myself a life-long student. Nelson Mandela said that 'Education is the most powerful weapon, which you can use to change the world.' And I genuinely, passionately, believe that."

8. What other writing project(s) do you hope to take on someday?
"My next book publication is a collection of four of my 19 plays entitled 'Finally Quiet….4 Plays from Washington DC.' My next academic book will be the first comprehensive biography in English of Romania’s famous historian of religions (who had fascist ties in his youth) Mircea Eliade. And as for poems and articles, I am always writing here and there (as I said!). One of my poems was just accepted by the Poetry Society of Colorado for publication in their Centennial Anthology. I was asked to submit my most recent poems to a literary journal recently. Before that I published a couple of poems in Romanian in Opt Motiv online journal. And I just published an advocacy piece I wrote about mental health in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month for the ARCHER blog. And – as of yesterday – I want to research and write about my Denver roots. My mom sent me the PDF of her mom’s family archive and it turns out I am a 4th generation Denverite!"

9. What writing advice do you find totally useless?
"I don’t believe there are any rules to be a writer. I write creatively whenever I feel like it and always meet the deadline. I have never experienced 'writer’s block' because I don’t force myself to write. I also don’t think you need training to be a writer – I don’t believe in MFAs (though I have close friends who have them). I understand getting the higher degree for writing if you want to teach and/or make professional connections, but not to become a better writer. I feel that either you are a writer or you are not. A diploma in writing does not make you a writer. And studying something else (a different subject than writing) will make you a more well-rounded person and that knowledge can enhance and inspire your creative work. Also the something-else you study could lead to the day-job you enjoy while you keep writing when you feel like it."

10. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough. Tell me all about it!
"I enjoy spending time with the older generations in my family. I was my grandmother’s roommate and caretaker for her final three years of life. Now I am plotting to get my parents to move to Denver. And when I am in Romania, the most important person for me to hang out with is my mătuşa Veronica in my dad’s hometown Galați. I also enjoy spending time with my fur-daughter Pickles, who is a rescue mix of everything and the reigning Queen of Denver."

Hear Cristina read her poem "Bucharest."

Cristina A. Bejan (she/her/hers) is an award-winning Romanian-American historian, theatre artist and spoken word poet living and creating in Denver, Colorado. She grew up in Durham, North Carolina, and received her BA in Philosophy (Honors) from Northwestern University, where she also studied theatre. An Oxford DPhil and a recipient of the (Rhodes) Scholarship and a Fulbright, she has held fellowships at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Georgetown University, and the (Woodrow Wilson) Center, and has taught history at Georgetown and Duke Universities, among others. She currently teaches history at Metropolitan State University of Denver where she was selected as a Finalist for the 2021 Faculty Senate Teaching Award. A playwright, Bejan has written nineteen plays, many of which have been produced in the United States, Romania, the United Kingdom and Vanuatu. She writes creatively in five languages and has been published internationally in every genre she writes in: academic, theatrical, and poetry. She is founding executive director of the arts and culture collective Bucharest Inside the Beltway. Under the stage name “Lady Godiva,” she performs her poetry across the United States and Romania. She has written "Intellectuals and Fascism in Interwar Romania: The Criterion Association" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) and "Green Horses on the Walls" (Finishing Line Press, 2020) and is also a contributing author for "The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos Vol. 3" (University of Indiana, 2018). She has appeared on C-SPAN, and her work has been featured in the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, American Prospect, Evenimentul Zilei and Observator Cultural. Bejan is on the Board of Directors for Immigrant Research Forum (Washington DC) and ARCHER (the American Romanian Coalition for Human and Equal Rights, Chicago), and the Advisory Board of Alianța (Washington DC). She is an advocate for NAMI and RAINN and volunteers for Colorado's Romanian philanthropy organization RAFA (the Romanian-American Freedom Alliance). She is a proud member of the Colorado Authors League, the International Center for Women Playwrights, and the Dramatists Guild of America. Find her on Twitter ​@CristinaABejan.

1. Why did you start writing? 
"I started writing poetry because I needed a new creative outlet. I found myself wanting to express who I was, but I didn’t have an avenue. So, I took my love of writing short stories and fan fiction and started researching poetry. I always liked poetry but I didn't understand it, or the ways in which poetry communicated ideas that I couldn’t communicate in other ways." 

2. I am fascinated that you wrote a whole book about phobias. Would you mind sharing the origin stories of some of those fears?
"Of course! Some of my fears are more personal than others, mainly 'on Drury Lane' and 'iron balloons.' 

My poem 'on Drury Lane' is about dementophobia, or the fear of going insane. This fear was derived from a panic attack I had in a grocery store. It felt like I was disconnected from reality and everyone’s eyes were on me, watching me as if they were waiting for me to erupt. It scarred me and left me with this concern that I could lose my sanity. 

In 'iron balloons,' the phobia I write about is casadastraphobia, which is the irrational fear that gravity will suddenly stop working and I’ll float into the sky. I’ve had this phobia since I was a child and nobody ever understood that fear, so I put it into words. I ended up discovering that I had two strokes before I was born and this led me to having moments as a baby in which I lacked proprioception, meaning I couldn’t 'feel' where I was in relation to the space around me. As a baby, I would start splaying my hands and legs out and screaming in terror as if I was falling, even though I wasn’t. My neurologist explained it to my parents that it’s as if I was 'lost in space.' I believe this is exactly where this phobia stems from." 

3. How did you realize that you could best communicate fear through poetry? 
"I found I could only really communicate these fears through poetry following a few failed attempts at getting short stories published. I kept trying to write flash fiction and short stories centered on my fears, but never had any luck publishing them, so I turned to poetry and quickly found out that I could paint a better picture in a shorter form. Poetry also helped me to constrict my language and forced me to find more specific imagery which led me to better work."

4. Now tell me the story behind ir /rational. When did you realize you had material for a book in your hands?
"It wasn’t until I learned that chapbooks were even a thing in the poetry world that I dreamed up ir / rational. Sure, I wanted to write about my fears, but it wasn’t until I learned about chapbooks through Twitter that I’d finally found my medium. I wrote down a giant list of 40+ fears and phobias. Some of these fears and phobias are ones I personally deal with, such as dolls and outer space. Others, like parasites and hospitals, aren’t fears I personally deal with but I still wanted to communicate in ir / rational.

Then, I started narrowing down the most specific ones and the ones I felt most personally connected to. I kept shaving down my list until I came to my list of 19 phobias. It was a thrilling experience because I learned so much about myself during the process."

5. You grew up in Louisiana and moved to an island off Rhode Island. Do you mind telling me about your life in the South, and your life now in New England. Has the move affected your writing?
"Yes! That’s a great question. I never felt like I “belonged” in Louisiana, even though I was born and raised down there. I just always felt like an outsider - like an alien, almost. In a way, this question made me realize that my writing tended to reflect that. In my very first published poem, White Dwarf, I write about a star who was observed but never noticed. In a separate poem, Speak Upon the Ashes, I wrote from the perspective of an elderly woman who was betrayed and left alone by the ones who were meant to take care of her. 

Now that I live in New England, I find myself writing more positive poetry, such as thermodynamic equilibrium, in which I write the importance of allowing your pain to make you stronger. I also write more fun, experimental pieces, like Policy on Research Involving Human Subjects, a poem I wrote using only titles from various CIA documents."

6. What do you hope people take away from your work? 
"What I hope people take away from my writing is that they can control their fear only if they confront it directly. In the final poem, nature abhors a vacuum, I write about the dangers of ignoring your fears. If you choose to “refuse to face your distorted doppelganger” and “bypass invisible walls, cheat / exploit, glitch, flail, fall” then you’ll never overcome your fears. Instead, your fear will absolutely control you, and you’ll find yourself 'screaming in permanent / vantablack fear.'"

7. What inspires you?
"I am inspired by the strange, the weird, and the macabre. I’m drawn in by people who are thinkers - the ones who know our world isn’t the only dimension that exists. I’m deeply inspired by shows like The OA, Twilight Zone, and The Dark; books like The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories; and authors like Shirley Jackson and Edgar Allen Poe."

8. What other writing project(s) do you hope to take on someday?
"I’m currently wanting to tackle 3 specific projects! First, I’m planning a novel that is based on true stories from my mom who grew up in a genuine haunted home. Her stories are bone-chilling, visceral, and terrifyingly real. 

Second, I’m in the writing stages of a short film that I’m planning on filming here on Prudence Island! I don’t want to give away too many details, but it deals with nightmares and lucid dreams. 

Finally, I would love to one day work on a collaborative chapbook where I write poems with someone else and we create ideas together. I think that would be so much fun and so unique."

9. What writing advice do you find totally useless?
"I absolutely despise when people say 'Just write!' Sure, it’s solid advice in terms of getting words on paper, but it really doesn’t offer anything valuable. If you’re trying to learn to improve your writing, and you 'just write' at the same level of quality from which you’re trying to improve, then you’re just forming bad writing habits. I find more specific, actionable writing tips are more helpful, such as 'Find a passage from a book you enjoy and write it down, so you get a feel for how the words flow.' The more specific the tip, the better."

10. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough. Tell me all about it!
"I don’t talk about it often, but I’m actually a tarot reader! I enjoy it very much and I equally love reading Lenormand. 

Video games are another huge source of joy and inspiration for me as I’ve played video games all my life. Some of my favorites are Uncharted, Detroit: Become Human, and Ape Escape 3. Oh, by the way, this answer may be a clue to my next chapbook… ;)"

Hear Kaleb read his poem “double-dutch.”

Kaleb Tutt (he/him) is an author and poet from south Louisiana, now living on Prudence Island, off the coast of Rhode Island. His three loves are his dog, Sookie, Taylor Swift, and of course, poetry. His debut chapbook ir / rational is available for purchase now. You can purchase it from him directly through his Twitter at @KalebT96 or through his publisher, Roaring Jr. Press. You can also find it on Amazon. Find out more about Kaleb at his website.