1. When did you start writing? "my mother likes to say that i wrote & drew comic books when i was at a very young age. i don’t quite remember any of that & throughout the rest of my K–12 education, i struggled with reading & writing. so, in earnest, i started writing while i was in community college. i had taken a fiction writing class because i needed an English credit & had no idea what i wanted to do with my life. at the end of the course, i realized i needed to write. i liked it, but more so, i felt more complete. the next semester i 'transferred' into the AFA in Creative Writing program, took a poetry course & found that home." 2. Where do you draw inspiration? "for a long time, i had no inspiration. i wrote generic poetry. this, honestly, lasted until i got into my second semester of grad school, in conversation with my advisor, & i remember clearly him saying 'ok, but where is you in any of these poems? Where’s your connection? why do these topics matter to you?' i didn’t know. i clammed up. not a clue. i was nowhere. eventually, after months of thinking, i concluded that i needed to write about my relationship to gun violence, to masculinity, to brotherhood. so i began to write poems about that. currently, a lot of my inspiration comes from the examination of my mental health & queerness. mostly because they are, again, things that i feel the need to talk about, finally, but also they are topics that i’m struggling with in my everyday life, so they are always on my mind." 3. Could you share your process and thoughts on writing? "generally, i’ll think of an idea, or a line for a poem. that’s the seed. the biggest difference in my process that i’ve noticed from other writers that i share a space with is that i tend to write poems as a project first & foremost. with my first book, loudest when startled, as well as my second manuscript, i only wrote poems that relate to each other. i have hundreds of poems about gun violence, about my brother, about my family, etc., & during the years that i worked on that first book, i maybe wrote half a dozen poems that did not relate to those topics. same goes for my second manuscript. i feel like i get locked on & just can’t break free of that obsession until it’s 'complete.' though, your obsessions are never truly gone. i still write poems that could easily fit right into the first book. it’ll always be there.& i think finding & recognizing those obsessions is such an important step in my writing process that it’ll probably be how i write for my entire life. i just can’t comprehend not having a focus. not having something to say that i’m writing towards." 4. What is your method of writing? Notebooks, computer? "i mainly write sporadically on my phone or tablet, then let it sit. after a while, i’ll return to it on my desktop computer & flesh it out. i have notebooks on my desk in case i need to use them, but i’ve used the same notebook for a few years now & it’s still full of empty pages!" 5. How did loudest when startled come about? When did you realize you had material for a poetry book? "loudest when startled started out as my grad school thesis. it was more bare bones at that point but had the same core of poems. & it frightened me. the subject material was, & still, terrifying for me to write about. it felt important though. it felt like a space that hadn’t been talked about in poetry. there are many writers that have touched upon gun violence in their work, but none seemed to take the same angle that eventually unearthed in loudest when startled. so, i think after completing my thesis, i had this interesting idea for a project. from there, i began to add more to the poems that tie the whole thing together, such as 'without firearms,' or 'this poem is not about a bullet.' that last section needed to most added to it. i needed to understand the poems better. i needed to let them work through me. i was pushing a certain narrative, you know gun = bad, but that wasn’t the only thing the collection wanted to be about. after realizing that i wasn’t writing this grand anti-gun treatise, i was able to really see the poems for what they were; empathetic, understanding, desiring, & most importantly, layered. & shout-out to the editors at YesYes for allowing my book to grow even after they had picked it up for publication. their input made it immensely closer to what it needed to be." 6. How do you know when a poem is done? "i don’t? no, i don’t know. it’s hard. a feeling, i guess. a feeling of completeness. if i’ve come back to a poem several times & leave it thinking 'i don’t see anything else that i can add.' this is definitely something i’m still learning about." 7. What do you hope people take away from your work? "i hope people take away anything from my writing. frustration, fear, joy, sadness, stress, etc. i don’t hope to change peoples’ minds, or teach them, or show them how hard life can be. i just hope they felt something. that they came away from it with something new etched in their soul. small or large. a word. a line. a poem. the whole book." 8. What project(s) do you hope to take on? "well, i’m working on two different poetry projects right now, as well as a novel-in-verse. the older poetry project & the novel-in-verse center around health anxiety while the newer poetry project touches on queerness. i have a few idea for more prose projects. ideally, & i know i joke about this on twitter all the time, but i really want to write about bigfoot. i’m not sure what yet, but i feel like that’s one of my writing goals for life." 9. What writing advice do you find totally useless? "i despise the whole 'write what you know' advice. there’s so much i don’t know. in loudest when startled, there’s so many poems that have experiences that i did not have. that book would not have been written if i stuck to that advice, & i do get that advice several times, especially during my education. i think that piece of advice misleads the readers to believe that everything that happens is true, that i was the 'i' in my poems. i can’t tell you how many times people have messaged me like… apologizing for what the brother character does in my book when those incidents never happened. now, i’m not saying that there isn’t truth in my poems, but my real brother had never gone on a mass shooting, or explicitly told me to buy a gun after i talked to him about suicidal ideation." 10. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough. Tell me all about it! "oh gosh, i feel like i keep about my passions hidden from social media. i tend to talk about writing exclusively. it’s semi-conscious. though, i’ve been letting more things slip as my audience grows. i’m a big fan of manga, not so much anime, but if the cross section of poetry & anime twitter want to adopt me, please! drawing is incredibly relaxing. i’m a sports-person. unfortunately, i live in Minnesota so our sports teams are not known for winning. i hang out with my pets pretty much 24/7 now. as i’m writing this, my dog is lying to the side of my chair on a blanket, waiting for me to finish & go cuddle him, so you know." Hear lukas ray hall read their poem "summer." lukas ray hall is a queer non-binary poet. they are the author of loudest when startled (YesYes Books, 2020). their poems have appeared in The Florida Review, Moon City Review, Atlanta Review & Raleigh Review, among others. they live in St. Paul, MN. for more information, visit their website: www.lukasrayhall.com.
1. When did you start writing? "It probably sounds super cheesy, but I’ve been writing since first grade. At the time, I wrote terrible stories about talking bears who went to masquerade balls and leprechauns buying horse-drawn coaches. I still have copies of my story 'collections.' By second grade, I was telling people that I wanted to be an author AND an international spy when I grew up. That additional goal fell away at some point when I realized spies needed to be able to keep secrets, a skill that is fundamentally outside my wheelhouse." 2. What is your method of writing? Notebooks, computer? "I scribble little sentences and phrases in both a paper notebook and in a running document I keep in my phone’s note app. These are mostly jumping off points, though—little snatches of things that I want to ruminate on. Once I’m ready to really draft, I go back to the notes, type the starting sentences or phrases in a blank Word document, and begin drafting in earnest." 3. Where do you draw inspiration? "I think I have four primary 'gates' that I use to enter my shorter work: 1) Image, 2) Language, 3) Theme/Topic, and 4) Emotion. So, for the first two, something will strike me as odd or funny or interesting—say, my son observing a seagull far inland, eating a battered fish filet outside a Long John Silver’s, or the phrase 'turd-based optimism' (both items from my list)—and I write it down in my notes and then let it simmer until it becomes something meaningful. For the second two gates, I usually have an idea I want to write about, such as a scientific concept or a situation I feel conflicted over, and then I consider that until I find a way in—usually via a phrase or image. In general, I have to marry at least two items of the four (i.e., a specific image and a concept) to light a fire under the piece." 4. What got you interested in hybrid writing? "I love that hybrids don’t have to declare themselves—they can be fiction or fact, image-driven or concept-driven. A piece can hide out inside the borrowed form of another and work with or against the form. For example, I write a lot of recipe pieces, and most of these are really flash nonfiction essays written in 'steps,' but I often publish them as poems or hybrids because then I don’t have to fill in the connective tissue in the way many people would expect of a nonfiction piece. Lyrical poetry and hybrid forms are more often dissociative and impressionistic, and there are no fact-checkers—no one will ever read a poem or hybrid and call my partner to verify whether she’s ever dated a girl named April or experienced blackouts, both of which I mention in the hybrid piece 'Recipe: Unidentified Floral Objects.' Not that small literary magazines usually fact-check flash pieces like that, but the expectation of empirical truth is still there, and it can be intrusive to people’s privacy. Some of my images are conjured to serve an emotional or imaginative truth, and those, to me, are just as vital types of truth as fact-checkable truth. So, hybrids excite me because they open up all of these possibilities in terms of form and content." 5. Could you share your process and thoughts on writing? "I’ve already described my process a bit, but one thing I really enjoy is the moment of finding a way into something I really want to discuss. For example, I was recently overwhelmed by a friend cutting off communication with me without any explanation or clear reason. But once I decided to explore it in a piece, the question became how to write about this in a way that could potentially connect to readers through clear sensory imagery—and that, I hoped, would help my piece open out into a larger reflection on grief and friendship. So, I chose to write it as a recipe, and I began by looking for an actual recipe for some kind of ghost confection: I wanted to capture the loss of the friendship as a sort of specter in my life, and that also played on the idea of being ghosted while still being grounded in sweetness; I didn’t want it all to be negative because the pain came from losing something and someone I loved. So, I searched until I found a recipe for ghost candy that included the kinds of ingredients I wanted to appear in the poem. By searching for the ingredients I wanted to incorporate, I was also able to include a cool food fact about pistachios that I’d made note of awhile before, and it all came together from there. I don’t know how good the piece is—in part because I’m still in the emotional weeds of the situation—but the process of writing it did everything I wanted it to do, and that’s something that makes me feel like a piece is successful, whether it ever sees the light of day or not." 6. How do you know when to write poetry? How do you know when to write prose? "The short answer to this is that I don’t really know—sometimes, something comes out in lineated verse, and I convert it to short prose later because it seems to have a kind of narrative arc that lends itself to microprose. On the other hand, I sometimes write what I think is going to be brief, meditative prose and then realize I could add duality, ambiguity, and interest with lines and stanza breaks, and then it gets a shape imposed on it. Anything long (say, 500+ words) is usually going to go into prose for me, especially anything concept- or fact-heavy—lineation creates opportunities and malleability for the language, but it also weighs it down for the reader because they have to process the whys and hows and wherefores of the language in addition to the ideas themselves. I love the flexibility of moving between forms and genres." 7. What do you hope people take away from your work? "In terms of my short work, I really hope readers take away a sense of how making connections, especially between dissimilar things, can create weight and significance: A recipe for a drink called an Obituary Cocktail provides an opportunity to reflect on mortality and long-distance relationships after the loss of a parent. Watching a video of a freelance ballerina over and over allows the speaker to consider her own relationship to capitalism and the consumption of art. I hope readers are able to make those kinds of strange connections for themselves about their own raw materials. I also have this kind of giant hope for every human I know that they will love, obsess, despise, sweat, laugh, hurt, and leap in whatever ways they’re going to, about whichever things they want to, and that they feel the freedom to construct the palaces of their lives from the materials they make in those moments. For me, words are the vehicle for that. That’s not about what my work does, to be clear—I just think those are the opportunities that writing and art provide, for those who create as much as those who experience the creations." 8. What project(s) do you hope to take on? "I don’t really have any new projects I want to take on right now, but that’s mainly because I want to finish two big projects I’ve been working on: First, I have a hybrid poetry manuscript which focuses on food and drink as ways into questions of queerness, parenthood, grief, religion, and embodiment, and that one is so close to being done I can taste it (pun intended). The second is a memoir project that ties to the poetry manuscript—it deals with the intersection of fad diets and disordered eating with Southern evangelical culture. That one is in an earlier stage, and I’m really enjoying the research that goes with the writing." 9. What writing advice do you find totally useless? "I wouldn’t say there’s anything that’s totally useless because everything works for someone out there, but for me, as both a writer and teacher of writing, I dislike most kinds of 'banning' advice. Anything that tells you what not to do—for example, 'never use adverbs or em dashes,' 'take out every use of the word ‘just,’' 'never tell the reader what a speaker is feeling'—feels like a useless chain to me, especially when those edicts don’t come with any direction about what the writer should be doing instead. I’m not saying that I’d like to read an unbroken string of adverbs or a pure discussion of emotion with no imagery attached, but edicts often serve to hamstring the writer. In addition, judicious, intentional breaking of 'rules' can be engaging, delightful, subversive, thought-provoking, and more." 10. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough. Tell me all about it! "I’m not sure this is a thing that needs talking about, but one of my favorite things to do is to make up stories about passersby. I’ll spot someone interesting at a café or in a store, or I might hear them speak for a moment, and then I spin them a full backstory, out loud or in my head. It’s even better when someone else weaves the tale with me—one of the things I adore about my girlfriend is that she’s all in on this, even though she claims not to have a creative bone in her body. For example, we recently interacted with this willowy, imperious, beautiful, withering manager for an outdoor restaurant. We were meeting a friend, and the friend arrived about fifteen minutes after we did. By the time she got there, we had an entire narrative about how the manager was moonlighting as an assassin, carrying arsenic in her locket and living in a meticulously-restored Victorian where she grew oleander in her window boxes; we’d named each of the four cats we’d given her. We announced this with so much detail and such authority that our friend found herself legitimately confused for a second before she realized we’d concocted it all based on the roughly two minutes we’d spent with the woman. Moments like that bring me pure, undiluted joy." Hear B. read her poem "Recipe: Rhubarb, Ginger, and Chili Jam." B. Tyler Lee is the author of one short poetry collection, With Our Lungs in Our Hands (Redbird Chapbooks, 2016), and her essay “A large volume of small nonsenses” won the 2020 Talking Writing Contest. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in 32 Poems, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Blue Mesa Review, Qwerty Literary Journal, Crab Orchard Review, Cream City Review, The Hunger, Jet Fuel Review, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. She attended the 2021 Tin House Summer Workshop for poetry. In years past, she won a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Award, was named a Ruth Lilly finalist, and had a creative nonfiction piece listed as a Best American Essays notable work. More of her work can be found at BTylerLee.com, and she tweets as @BTylerLee7. She teaches and parents in the Midwest.
1. When did you start writing? "My journey with writing has been extremely sporadic, to be honest. I remember trying my hand(s) at writing at an early age (maybe 7 or 8), and then abandoning it. Thereafter, I only really wrote creatively when I was required to. Like as part of the syllabus at school, for example. At about 16, I ventured into writing for myself once more and I enjoyed it enough to write poetry for a solid 3 years thereafter. I had a few poems published then in small magazines which are now sadly defunct. However, as I ventured further into engineering, I hadn’t realized how far away from my creative pursuits it was carrying me. It was only in my honors year of engineering that I came to the realisation that I do not have to box or segregate my interests. All of my likes, dislikes and interests form part of who I am; they don’t have to live separated inside of myself. That’s when I started writing creatively again. As I had been battling with my mental health at the time, most of my writing focuses on that. Writing creatively allowed (and still allows) me to express my disorder(s) in ways that I verbally often cannot." 2. What is your method of writing? Notebooks, computer? "I don’t really have a writing method if I am being honest. Some days, inspiration will hit me suddenly when I’m in the bathroom. I’ll rush to my phone and type it out roughly in my notes app quickly. Then, later I will edit that piece properly on my computer. I don’t really use notebooks for creative writing. I do, however, counterintuitively use a notebook to record all my submissions. I know that this doesn’t make any sense at all; an excel spreadsheet would probably be better suited for this, but somehow, I just like seeing the submissions on paper – as though they’re more ‘real’ or tangible in that regard." 3. How do you title poems? "This is an interesting question and I imagine everyone would have a different answer to it. Sometimes, I begin with the title! This happens when the title is the first thing that pops into my mind; almost as though that particular poem is possessing me and I’m merely a medium. Other times, I’ll write the entire poem and then only think of a title based on what I feel the main theme or concept of the poem is or should be. Once again, there is no structure or method to my process, sadly; it’s all ‘going-with-the-flow’, really. I try not to restrict myself creatively, as I feel restricted enough in my other pursuits." 4. When do you know if a poem is done? "I don’t! I don’t think any of my poems (even the published ones) are really done in the complete sense. I feel like something more can always be added or edited or removed or improved upon. I don’t think any of my poems are done; there can always be more (or even less) of or to it." 5. You’ve published, as of July 4th, over 40 pieces this year alone. How are you able to write and produce such a staggering number? "There are 2 reasons for this, really. 1 is that I have the tendency to get mildly obsessive about certain things. So, when I started submitting in January this year, I aimed to get 10 pieces of writing/photography/art published for the year. By the time I had reached that goal in February, I had fallen too far down the rabbit hole! The process of submitting and discovering new lit mags/journals had already formed a part of my obsession and I just simply went along with it. I think it’s cooling down a little now, though. The other reason is that I am sitting on a pile (slush pile?) of unpublished writing. I’ve discovered close to 350- 400 poems (this may not be a staggering amount for people that write daily), that I had written (on my phone, laptop, in notebooks years ago) and had completely forgotten about. So, some of the poems that are being published now were written recently, some were written 3 or 4 years back and some were written when I was 16 or 17. So if it ever feels to the reader that ‘the voice’ in my writing is not consistent, that’s probably why: they’ve been written at varying ages and stages of my life." 6. You have an upcoming poetry collection, Washed Away, coming soon from Alien Buddha Press. Can you tell me, a little, what it’s about? "Well, to summarize it briefly: it’s a collection that centers around my struggles with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and depression. The collection is fragmented into three stages. In these stages, I have tried to outline the stages or progression of my disorder as paralleled to the progression of the collection. As the reader travels through the collection, they’ll be travelling alongside me on my mental health journey. I’ve also likened these stages to the stages of washing one’s hands i.e. soap lathering, rinsing and drying. This is in part due to me being a compulsive hand washer and in part, due to the emphasis of handwashing during this awful pandemic. Needless to say, that is how the title of the collection was born; from the process of washing and being washed away. Not only do I feel that I wash germs and soap off of my hands, but there are days when I feel washed away by my disorder(s). Days when I feel that I have to rebuild or remold myself from being disintegrated or washed away." 7. What project(s) do you hope to take on? "Right now, I am pretty keen to take on any interesting or innovative projects! There are so, so many creative, talented and innovative people in the lit mag community. People are continuously creating and growing, and I love to see that. This makes me think that the possibilities surrounding new projects are basically endless. I would, however, like to explore visual poetry a little more. I have seen some pieces featured on various websites/journals and it amazes me how some poets can create text so visually. That truly is a skill that I do not have and would like to explore it a little more. I would also like to explore writing fiction. I have tried to write a handful of pieces recently and those were not great (they were bad!)." 8. What do you hope people take away from your work? "As a large portion of my work revolves around mental illness, I hope that people who have suffered from similar experiences will know that they are not alone; someone does understand. For people who have not gone through something similar, I hope that my work can offer a brief spotlight on matters that they may not be aware of and/or may not understand. I do understand that my own experiences with my own mental health issues cannot serve as an umbrella or blanket experience(s) for everyone, but I do hope that in the dark seemingly endless night of mental illness and solitude, my work luminates a small space in the same manner that a minute firefly would." 9. What writing advice do you find totally useless? "None! I enjoy listening to advice from everyone about anything! I don’t always (basically never) heed said advice, but it does give me insight into the way other people work, think and write. I think that’s important information; it helps me understand them, myself and more about the world." 10. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough. Tell me all about it! "I’m not particularly good (I suck at) this but it formed part of my honor’s dissertation and my current master’s dissertation: game development. I am not an avid gamer (I don’t game at all) and I knew nothing about game development before 2018. But I’ve dipped my toes into these seemingly infinite waters and it’s been interesting. I have only developed about 3 very simple games, but the process is what is interesting to me. Currently, I am trying to develop a very simple prototype for an anxiety management app and I have realized just how much I don’t know about coding or game development and just how far I have to travel in terms of learning about these topics! I’m also thinking about creating a simple twine game to allow players to understand OCD a little better. There may (or may not, don’t hold me accountable to this) a twine poem at some point, too!" Hear Shiksha read her poem "On some days, I have killed myself at least twice before breakfast." Shiksha Dheda is a South African of Indian descent. She uses writing to express her OCD and depression roller-coaster ventures. Sometimes, she dabbles in photography, painting, and baking lopsided layered cakes. Her debut poetry collection is forthcoming from Alien Buddha Press. She rambles annoyingly on at Twitter: @ShikshaWrites.
1. When did you start writing? "I started writing as a kid in dollar store composition notebooks. I tried writing novels for the longest time and eventually at around 14 I started trying to write novels parodying my friends and our relationships. But I didn’t start writing poetry in any kind of serious way until college when a professor told me that everyone can write poetry and I just hadn’t written any I like yet. I took that to heart and in the end of 2019 I started writing poetry but I started writing poetry in earnest in the fall of 2020." 2. This is the first year you had poems published. Congrats! How did you come to send work out to literary magazines? "One my all-time favorite college professors Dr. Jaydn Dewald introduced me to the world of chapbooks and online literary magazines in my first creative writing class with him and I fell in love with the indie world of poetry publishing. I saw online literary magazines as an easy entrance into the world of publishing my writing which has always been my dream and started by submitting to a pandemic anthology which rejected me. But in January I just started submitting over and over again until I finally got an acceptance from Wrongdoing Mag." 3. What is your method of writing? Notebooks, computer? "Typically, I write in Microsoft Word on my laptop unless I’m struck by an idea then I’ll quickly open my huge document for poetry and quickly jot it down. Due to having ADHD and slow handwriting I try and stay away from writing poems down because my brain ends up moving faster than my hands can." 4. Could you share your process and thoughts on writing? "Okay yes. I love this question. I think that writing and sharing stories and words and thoughts is one of the most intrinsic parts of the human experience. We as a culture especially here in the west don’t necessarily value stories outside of the literary communities and I think that writing is such a fundamental part of living. Which kind of why my ‘process’ is less about trying to force out certain things that I want to write about and more about writing the things that want to be written. So, instead of having certain writing rituals I more so, have rules for when I can and can’t write. Like I don’t write under the influence of any sort of recreational substance. I don’t write early in the morning at home. I can write if I’m sad only if I’m not avoiding feeling the emotion. Writing is so cathartic for me and I think by just allowing myself the freedom of writing what my brain is throwing out at me with no consequences produces my best work." 5. How do you title poems? "This is so funny to me as a question because I’ve talked at length with my friends about this and my titles kind of just come to me. I’ll leave pieces untitled for the longest time until the title appears in my head. They usually reflect the vibe of the work more than anything else and no two poems are titled the same way." 6. How do you know when a poem is done? "So, in the same vein the poem itself kind of just tells me. I’m big on listening to your writing and I do a lot of reading out loud in my room to myself and my dog Tiffany. I love big images and I love leaving poems hanging on by one last big image. So, I just wait until when I read it out loud I get goosebumps or think to myself, ‘If someone else wrote this I’d never stop thinking about it.’" 7. What do you hope people take away from your work? "I want people to have the images stuck in their head for days. I love poetry that can inspire art and music and any sort of creative pursuit and I want people to read my work and imagine it in a million other artistic formats. I think it’s so important that art is constantly in conversation with the past and future and I would love for people to think about other things they’ve read or watched or listened to. There is a community of poetry readers on Tumblr that make collages of art, poetry and literature and it is my absolute dream to be included in one. So, if people close my work thinking a million other thoughts and tying it to other art I think I’ve accomplished my goal." 8. What project(s) do you hope to take on? "I eventually want to query a chapbook of southern gothic fusion poetry this Fall. But, long term I would love to get more involved in the guest reader / editor of literary magazine side of things. Curation of art is one of my favorite things in the world and I’d love to work with a magazine to help get great writing out into the world. The world needs great art and to be apart of the process of getting it out there is the dream." 9. What writing advice do you find totally useless? "‘Write drunk, edit sober.’ I that this phrase completely lacks nuance and if taken at face value could actual be a detriment to the artistic process. Because if you wanted to tell people to write honestly and edit with impunity I don’t understand why you wouldn’t just say that. It absolutely infuriates me when people throw this advice at new writers. Your artistic process shouldn’t hinge on anything other than the want to create and I think this phrase really causes more harm than good." 10. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough. Tell me all about it! "I breed and train dogs! I work with an amazing responsible breeding program in the south and through that I get to work with German Shepherds, Dobermans, and Newfoundlands. I stay home and train the dogs I my best friend and I own together. We work together to get them titled in dog shows and keep them healthy and happy. Recently one of our sheppies won her first title in show and two more are slated to show later this month. I love working with dogs and keeping up with their training and maintenance. I love them like family and they frequently inspire poems. My first accepted poem actually features a line about Bucket one of our sheppies. I absolutely love them all will talk on and on about them given the chance but that can lead to rambling." Hear Calia read her poem "vanilla bean chapstick." Calia Jane Mayfield is a Black southern poet originally from Georgia who now resides in South Carolina with her best friend and many dogs. Her other writings are available in Wrongdoing Mag, Not Deer, and Poetically Mag.
1. When did you start writing? "I’ve always been a writer. I’ve kept journals and written poetry since I was pretty young, maybe 3rd or 4th grade. Then of course, when tumblr poetry was popular, I hopped on that trend for a while and continued to write poetry more frequently. But I didn’t know that I wanted to be a poet, to pursue it as a career. When I started undergrad, I started as a fiction writer because I loved telling stories. But I found my way back to poems during my Masters, and now here I am, exactly where I’m meant to be." 2. What is your method of writing? Notebooks, computer? "For me, it’s a combination of iPhone notes and the computer. In every day life, I’m collecting ideas, images, and phrases in the notes app on my phone and I just let them accumulate. Then as they build, some things start to connect or I start to see some things living within the same poem. Once that starts to happen I tend to get an urge to sit down and get a first draft out. I’ll open a new Word Document and throw those phrases into the document and then I work on building the connective tissues between them. I feel like an engineer or a surgeon even, the way I write those first drafts. I think writing that way is also what makes the writing exciting, I always manage to make things some sort of puzzle to solve." 3. How did BLOODWARM come about? When did you realize you had material for a poetry book? "Interestingly enough, BLOODWARM used to be a part of a much earlier draft of my first full-length collection. But I started to slowly realize that there seemed to be two separate projects existing in that manuscript. I remember actually asking Twitter if I should just put all of these poems about race into a chapbook, and so many people were really supportive of the idea. So I took the poems in BLOODWARM from that full-length manuscript and organized them into a chapbook, and I was really fortunate for it to find such a fantastic home so soon. I’m glad I gave them their own space to inhabit, because I think in the full-length they were being buried a little bit. I’m really proud of this project and how the poems in this chapbook are speaking to one another (and how they will hopefully speak to my readers)." 4. What drew you to write form poetry? "I fell in love with form poetry first reading Erica Dawson. I think a lot of people’s introduction to formal work is through the Shakespearean sonnet, and while those sonnets are important, the language and form of them can feel stuffy or stiff. Erica Dawson’s formal poems were so smooth that you didn’t realize they were formal until after you’d already read them. And her poems gave me permission to bend form to what I needed it to do. I realized I could write formal poems about Blackness, about my life, about every day experiences in form. Her poems helped me to unlearn all of the untrue things I’d internalized about form; that the content of them had to be 'serious,' that the language couldn’t be accessible, that writing formal poetry couldn’t be fun." 5. Where do you draw inspiration? "I draw inspiration from just living. I would say I draw the most inspiration from reading. When I’m not reading, I’ve found that it’s much harder to write. When I’m reading more, I’m constantly changing the landscape of how I’m thinking about poems. It also helps to refresh my vocabulary as well. Joy Priest, a dear friend of mine, once told me that I write from a feeling. And I think that’s very true about my writing. At the heart of every poem I write is a feeling that I’m trying to work through, exorcise even. Feeling is both the first inspiration and priority of anything that I write." 6. You are currently pursuing a PhD in poetry at the University of Cincinnati. What brought that about? "In a lot of ways, the PhD was a natural progression after the MA. There are more practical reasons for getting the PhD, such as being more competitive on the job market and having the time and resources to develop as both a writer and academic scholar. I also wanted to be in a program that still had a significant emphasis on academic/scholarly research, as I have a deep interest in slave narratives and the history of written resistance by Black women poets. It’s been such a gift to be in a space where my academic work influences my creative work and vice versa. It’s brought me to places in my poetry that I never would have reached otherwise, and has allowed me to grow and evolve in surprising and wonderful ways." 7. What do you hope people take away from your work? "I hope people always leave my work with a greater understanding of what it’s like to be a Black woman in this world, in this country. With BLOODWARM specifically, the chapbook is all about race, and I hope the poems tackle it in a new and unique way. I hope Black youth read those poems and feel seen and understood. I hope my Black peers read these poems and feel a sense of community. I hope non-Black people read this book and feel inspired to do something differently, to teach those around them, to be better allies to oppressed people in this country." 8. What other project(s) do you hope to take on someday? "I hope to write YA sometime soon! Maybe a short story collection or a novel in verse. Maybe both! I love narrative projects and I think I’d really excel with a YA audience. But we shall see!" 9. What writing advice do you find totally useless? "Hmm, I think a lot of prescriptive writing advice can be useless, as writers are all different and what may work for one person may be completely useless for someone else. I think we should just want people to find what works for them and to encourage them to do those things to the best of their ability." 10. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough. Tell me all about it! "I actually love painting, and I don’t talk about it enough OR do it enough. Years ago in undergrad, I practically painting all of the art for the entire apartment I was living in at that time, and was even taking commissions and selling some art pieces at that time. Hopefully, as I enter a less hectic part of my PhD program, I can work painting back into my schedule for good!" Watch Taylor read her poem "My Twitter Feed Becomes Too Much" via Variant Literature. It is from her forthcoming chapbook, Bloodwarm. The poem first appeared in Frontier Poetry. Taylor Byas is a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she is now a third year PhD student and Yates scholar at the University of Cincinnati, and an Assistant Features Editor for The Rumpus. She was the 1st place winner of both the Poetry Super Highway and the Frontier Poetry Award for New Poets Contests, and a finalist for the Frontier OPEN Prize. Her chapbook, Bloodwarm, is forthcoming from Variant Lit this summer, and her debut full-length, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, is forthcoming from Soft Skull Press in Spring of 2023. She is represented by Rena Rossner of the Deborah Harris Agency. 1. Why did you start writing? "I started writing when I was really young, too young to remember a clear reason for doing it. I also read a lot. Voraciously, as kids do, in plenty of genres. I think I started because I wanted to imitate what my favourite authors could do for me, which was to create a world that felt not only like a place you could live in, but a place you wanted to live in. So I started writing prose. I actually spent a long, long time only writing prose, mostly fanfiction and a couple of novels. I unearthed some middle school attempts at poetry last year, which were laughably bad, as you can probably imagine, but that wasn’t really the focus for me back then. I rediscovered my motivation to write poetry in the summer of 2020 and I started it again as a way to express my feelings and work through the mess of my mind. I used to do that in fiction too, but more obliquely; it’s weird to think of poetry as more direct, but in fiction I often projected and muddled through my issues more subtly. With poetry I want to take my pain and joy and confusion and make it...if not pretty, then at least worth looking at." 2. What is your method of writing? Notebooks, computer? "I used to only write on my computer but I’ve actually been branching out lately! I do also write on my phone, but not really full poems, just ideas for lines or titles in a huge note that’s been with me for ages. For a long time I would do everything on my computer, from a doc with (more) ideas for lines to the actual poem draft. It’s easier to get the initial ideas onto a computer document for me than onto physical paper, mostly because I’ve learned to type really quickly and so I’m kind of ahead of my conscious brain when I do it. Drafting on paper doesn’t do that for me. It slows me down, makes me think, to the point where the writing gets impacted. But that makes physical notepads really useful for revising. These days I use legal pads to revise. I copy out the draft in blue pen first, which lets me start to think about word choice or clunky phrases. If there’s an issue with flow, writing it out by hand often warns you about it. Then I use a black pen to reread and make edits or comments, usually while reading it out loud to myself, which is partly because I’m dramatic but also because hearing it helps me think about the rhythm. This is what works best for me right now, but I used to write a lot of prose drafts on paper, so maybe I’ll change my process in the future." 3. How do you know when a poem is done? "I’ve heard a lot of people say you don’t really know when it’s done, and I agree that completion is a nebulous concept when it comes to creative work. But I also do have a gut feeling when I’m drafting or revising that this is where the piece ends, you know? A lot of the time there’s a little volta or a rhetorical question. The rhetorical question is a device that I’ve loved ever since I was a kid, so I find I end on them a lot. While writing, I can feel the end as I approach it. Sometimes I know that it has to have a specific rhythm, or that it has to end on a certain sound. I once spent a while trying to find a word that ended in '-one' for the penultimate line of a piece because I just felt like the sound was needed there and my initial version, which had 'bone', didn’t make sense. I ended up swapping it for a phrase ending on 'stone'. I’m not really sure why I decided on that specific sound, but once I fixed that second-last line the whole piece fell into place for me. And then sometimes there are pieces that I know could be extended or different but I also want to leave the way they are. So they’re done, in that I’m not working on it anymore, but they don’t have to be done." 4. You mentioned on your author page that you love a good prose poem. What got you interested in prose poetry? "I think I got hooked on prose poetry because of how approachable it felt. I know prose. I write in prose at school, to friends, in my daily journal. While I love and appreciate many poets who work with unconventional forms or write lineated poetry, actually using those forms intimidated me when I started transitioning from prose to poetry. The prose poem, which I think I discovered through another young poet’s work on Tumblr (I am so sorry to this person – I can’t remember who it was!), sort of blew my mind. It was poetry, with poetic devices and a poem’s complicated relationship with the truth, but it was also a lot less scary. It fit the work I was producing at the time too, these breathless, confessional, almost epistolary pieces. A lot of my prose poems are essentially love letters or rants or journal entries, forms that are pretty prose-based. I write lineated pieces too these days, and I’ve been slowly experimenting a little more with form, but I still appreciate the prose poem’s ability to riff on other genres and convey this sense of breathless urgency, which the line break, with its imperative to pause, can sometimes hinder." 5. Would you like to share what current writing project(s) you are working on? "I’ve got a chapbook out on submission right now that I’m really excited about! It’s called 'how to construct a breakup poem' and I touch on themes of love as a form of self-destruction, love as performance, and a lot of the sad stuff that you might have seen in the work that I’ve published so far. While I was putting that chapbook together I had to cut a handful of poems that I really loved because they were about a different kind of toxicity; about wanting someone to break you, about both loving and hating someone for being too comfortable, too easy. Those poems (and a few others!) are now being collected into what I think will be a microchap, but it’s still up in the air." 6. Where do you draw inspiration? "I draw inspiration from anything I encounter, but I do have some things that prove to be more fruitful for me. I think music is really useful; it sets the mood for a piece and I’ve thought of plenty of poems thanks to a good playlist and a long walk. Other people’s poetry is also really inspiring. When I’ve been struggling to find a way into a new piece, I like to take a break and read some poems I love and it gets me back into the right headspace. But other than music and existing poetry, I’m most inspired by conversations. I have two younger brothers who fight and shoot the breeze all the time while I’m in my room reading or texting or doing something alone, and the things they say to each other often become kernels of a later line. This is also true of random people talking or my friends chatting or social media posts; it’s just that my brothers are around me all the time so I hear more from them. There’s a playfulness and willingness to innovate with language when children are speaking to each other, especially children who grow up multilingual, that I think is great to have in the background when you’re a poet." 7. What do you hope people take away from your work? "I guess it varies from poem to poem, but generally I want someone to finish reading the piece and have to take a moment before they go on with the rest of their day. I want a line to hit them in the chest, or for there to be something unexpected at the end that makes them think, or for them to realize that I’ve expressed a feeling they’ve had for a long time. The worst thing a poem can do is fail to make any kind of impact on you. Whether it’s to make you cry, laugh, think, or just admire the beauty of the language, I want my poems to have an emotional effect on the reader. A good one, not 'wow this poem was bad'. I want the poem to be meaningful to someone other than me." 8. What else do you hope to take on someday? "Honestly, I don’t really know. I feel really new to the world of poetry and I’m definitely exploring myself as a writer right now. Maybe I’ll try prose again and write some short stories, or even attempt some CNF, but for now I just want to enjoy myself and work on my poems. I wrote my first tanka a little while ago and I want to try a few traditional forms. It would also be really cool to curate a special issue of a journal – if anyone wants to do a Formula One pop-up or a Chinese historical drama themed issue or like...an issue about teenage angst for some reason, hit me up. Mags in need of a guest editor, I would be down." 9. What writing advice do you find totally useless? "I’ve been lucky enough so far to have only encountered advice that was at least partly useful! Or if it wasn’t useful to me then I’ve just forgotten about it by now, but I think most things you hear have some merit to them. Admonitions to avoid certain subjects or placing line breaks in certain places are generally helpful, although even tricky things can be done well. But on the topic of advice, I find that it works best when you’re not overly attached to following it. I’ve taken people’s advice and ignored it if it didn’t work for me, and that’s probably the best way to go about it." 10. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough. Tell me all about it! "I do talk about this a little bit (and I have a poem about this coming in November!) but I’m an avid Formula One fan. One of my friends introduced F1 to me when lockdown started in Canada and now I watch the races every weekend, except for the ones that are at impossible times because of the time difference (sorry, Japan and Australia). The vagaries of F1 are too much for this interview, but suffice to say that all you need to know is that there are 20 drivers, that Drive to Survive is a horrifyingly inaccurate depiction of the actual season, that Alex Albon deserved better, and that Nikita Mazepin shouldn’t be on the grid. I’m a huge Alex Albon fan and I’m still holding out for him to have a seat next season. Please pray for me." Hear Joyce read her poem "and somehow i still do." June Lin is a young poet from Canada. She got her driver's license last fall but is still scared of the highway. More of her work can be found in released and forthcoming issues of perhappened mag, Gone Lawn, and Vagabond City.
1. Why did you start writing? "In sixth grade, my friend promised me $20 if I would write a One Direction fan fiction for her. She said she wanted to read something someone else wrote for her, because it was too much effort for her to do herself. Of course, I’ll do most things for $20, so I made a Wattpad account that day and started writing. It was bad. Very bad. Werewolf AU bad. But I stuck with it, got a decent amount of grounding in the fan fiction scene, and then I grew up. Eventually. Abandoned the fan fiction thing for completely original work, and I haven’t stopped yet." 2. What is your method of writing? Notebooks, computer? "I’m very much a computer person—I tried the notebook thing for a while before I realized I had more near-empty notebooks than thoughts in my head. Instead I have a Google Docs specifically for my writing that trails all the way back to 2015. I’ve also found that brain-mapping apps like MindNode and Trello really help me organize my chaos into something halfway coherent." 3. How do you know when a poem is done? "The second my hands start lingering over the keys, I stop. It’s difficult for me to start writing a poem/story and then come back to actually finish it later. Unless it’s longer prose, I just write until my brain stops working. Then I’ll come back an hour or so later to see if I’m happy with it—maybe tweak a bit, play with the formatting—but about 95% of the finished product comes from that first sit-down. Otherwise, I tend to over-edit, and it’s not fun for anyone involved." 4. How did LITTLE ROOMS WITH BAD LIGHTING come about? When did you realize you had material for a poetry book? "The title came far before the book. About eight months ago, I wanted to write an essay about how the pandemic affected my relationships with my family, but essays are not my thing by any means. Then I wrote one of the first pieces of the chap ('from Matt Hammond'), and after showing it to one of my friends, they recommended I turn it into a micro-chap for Ghost City. The concept morphed from how the pandemic affected my family, and became a sort of catalog of core memories from each place I’ve lived—some good, some bad, all necessary to shape me into who I am now." 5. You are the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Southchild Lit. Why did you decide to establish your own magazine? "To be honest, the idea initially came to me spitefully after a very tough rejection from my university’s magazine. I’d been submitting (in hindsight, objectively bad) work to publications since 2019 and hadn’t gotten a single acceptance. Most of the form rejects were along the lines of, 'Oh, this just isn’t the right home for it.' I mean, it didn’t belong anywhere, but still. Ninety percent of those pieces have been dramatically reworked (and published!) since then. I wanted to make a space with an emphasis on the work that’s been wandering around for a while looking for the 'right home.' And for a lot of people, I’m very proud to say that Southchild has been just that—the right home. I started working on the logistics of the magazine in August 2020, but I didn’t want to launch until I got my very first acceptance. In December, Ample Remains accepted one of my favorite pieces I’ve ever written, and Southchild launched later that week." 6. Where do you draw inspiration? "I have a special section in the notes of my phone for little things I notice just in my everyday, even if it’s something like 'this dude’s mustache is longer on one side than the other.' I also work at a family law firm, so I spend a third of each day watching people tread the line between moral correctness and personal success. It’s definitely interesting to surround myself with people who, generally, are hated—I get to see both sides of the coin and draw from that to create complex, double- or triple-edged characters." 7. What do you hope people take away from your work? "From LITTLE ROOMS specifically, and with a lot of my other work, I want people to walk away realizing that home—no matter what shape, size, or place—plays such an important role in shaping and forming you as a human being. The walls that surround you hold in so much that you don’t often get to take with you into the rest of your life. And while yes, a lot of negative memories and trauma start to surface, there are some positives that you can’t help but take into account." 8. What other project(s) do you hope to take on someday? "Although it’s not at the forefront of my priorities right now, I’m (very slowly) working on a YA fantasy novel! Basic pitch: lesbian pirate captain is kidnapped by sirens, and her motley crew of adopted younger siblings band together to save her. It’s totally different from my usual online persona and writing, but I’m pulling from my Dungeons & Dragons comfort zone to make something that, if nothing else, I really enjoy. Also! I’m collaborating with one of my non-writer friends on a short story right now that we’re both extremely excited about. I know it’s not a big project, but working together with someone on the same chaotically creative wavelength as me has been refreshing, enlightening, and just so much fun in general. I can’t wait for the world to read it (and for Sidd to get all the love and validation he deserves)." 9. What writing advice do you find totally useless? "The worst advice I’ve ever received is that a main character needs to be 'relatable' for readers to enjoy them. I’ve always thought that the most interesting, the most dynamic characters come from divergence from the norm. Generally relatable characters have always come across as bland to me, because everyone is so different and so unique. Play with perspectives that don’t quite match your own. Make grey main characters! Unlikeable ones! Unique ones! As long as you’re not romanticizing or glorifying bad behavior, I think it’s okay for your readers to observe as an outsider, studying the character for all that they embody." 10. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough. Tell me all about it! "I’ve always loved classic literature and am actually majoring in it in college! Since my sophomore year of high school, I’ve been collecting dusty, old books. I go thrifting once every few months and run straight to the book section, snatching up every title I recognize. I have a personal collection of over three hundred now, from Oscar Wilde to Jane Austen to Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Nabokov, Kawabata, et cetera et cetera. My favorites are an old clothbound version of Macbeth printed in the early 50s, scrawled all over with notes, annotations, and alphanumeric phone numbers; my also-clothbound volumes of War and Peace, which I finally finished reading last summer; and my copy of George Orwell’s 1984 that was actually printed in 1984. That one in particular had a note written in it on the last page, in beautiful cursive, that simply stated 'Holy sh-t.' I love getting books secondhand especially for this reason—the more beat-up a book looks, the more it was probably loved by its previous owners." Hear Magi read their poem "From Matt Hammond." Magi Sumpter drafts divorce papers by day and eats them with spinach artichoke dip by night. They are the Editor-in-Chief of Southchild Lit and a July Cancer. Follow them on Twitter @MagiSumpter.
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
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writersAmy Cipolla Barnes
Cristina A. Bejan Jared Beloff Taylor Byas Elizabeth M Castillo Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar Rachael Crosbie Charlie D’Aniello Shiksha Dheda Kate Doughty Maggie Finch Naoise Gale Emily M. Goldsmith Lukas Ray Hall Amorak Huey Shyla Jones B. Tyler Lee June Lin June Lin (mini) Laura Ma Aura Martin Calia Jane Mayfield Beth Mulcahy Nick Olson Ottavia Paluch Pascale Maria S. Picone nat raum Angel Rosen A.R.Salandy Carson Sandell Preston Smith Rena Su Magi Sumpter Nicole Tallman Jaiden Thompson Meily Tran Charlie D’Aniello Trigueros Kaleb Tutt Sunny Vuong Nova Wang Heath Joseph Wooten Archives
December 2022
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