How did you first come to writing poetry? What is it
about the form that resonates?
These two questions are challenging to me because I can’t remember how I came into writing poetry, only that I did. And whether the form resonates is moot. Poetry is, in my humble opinion, a vehicle for disseminating ideas, but there’s nothing inherently special or sacred about the form that makes it a more effective distributor of information and experience than, say, prose, Twitter, or a billboard. What matters to me is that poetry is a vehicle for enacting creative critical thinking through processes, performances, and practices (that are, themselves, part and parcel of the poetry project). In this way, what attracts me to poetry is its freedom to engage both in reckless nonconformity, relationality, and alienation, while understanding that constraint and convention are also valid modes for poetic expression too.
How does a poem begin?
For me, I usually begin in media res. I am a messy thinker and my approaches to the poetic form are frequently dispersed and hazardous, which may be indicative of my mental processes more generally. At least until I have an idea and then it’s all I can think about. Right now, I am working on a speculative field guide on future plants in Ohio, all my names are kin, and I’m obsessed with imagining our landscapes some three hundred years into the future, when humans have transfigured into plantlike structures. It’s all I can think about: we are plant people in the making. And these poems are remarkably easy to begin as I start with AI generated images of future plants on which I scaffold prose poems that interrogate plant philosophy and evolution in a post-climate change world. I love this project which has emerged from conversations from one of my favourite contemporary plant people, Elæ Moss, and I am looking forward to watching how it spores.
You’ve published work in multiple genres. Do you see
your writing as a single, extended project, or a series of disconnected
threads? How do you keep the genres straight?
I know the idea of poetry as project has been
disparaged in some circles, but I find thinking in terms of a collective
project (or maybe goal is a better word) helps to keep my thought processes
relatively controlled. If I do have a project, it falls under the umbrella of
environmentalism and climate change.
Keeping genres straight is a difficult question, since it assumes that genre conventions need to be respected, and I’m not sure if we should. My main focus is a poem that has a conversation embedded, and whatever form suits that conversation will be the most appropriate.
Have you a daily schedule by which you work, or are
you working to fit this in between other activities?
I’m doing too much as it is as I have several critical projects also under development: a trade book, Gaseous Modernity: Bad Air in the Anthropocene (on air pollution), a monograph Waste Management and Risk in Contemporary Poetry (on garbage), and several articles (on digital poetics, pedagogy, and LGBTQ+ Australian literature). Plus, teaching. Plus, living in a pandemic. Typically, I write at least thirty minutes a day, but not necessarily poetry. Ultimately deadlines are a prime motivator, which determines what I am focusing on at any given moment.
What are your favourite print or online literary
journals?
Aside from Talking About Strawberries All of the Time, I really enjoy Tagvverk, as they’re open to diverse forms of writing, and I’m always grateful when journals and presses take literary risks. Anmly and Beestung Magazine offer excellent selections of poetry, and I am a huge admirer of their editorial visions. Other journals of note include rob mclennan’s touch the donkey and Keifer JD Logan’s Where is the River (I love Canadian journals and rob is a tireless promoter of poetry), and Entropy Magazine is usually my go-to when I have a few spare moments to read.
Who are some of the writers you are reading lately
that most excite you?
I recently reviewed Ma Yan’s I Name Him Me,
translated by Stephen Nashef
(Ugly Duckling Presse, 2021), for the Kenyon Review. It’s a vulnerable and defiant collection, and I highly recommend this late
Chinese poet. I am also currently reading Wu Sheng’s My Village: Selected
Poems 1972-2014, translated by John Balcom (Zephyr Press, 2020). I have not
yet read but I am very excited for Johnny Damm’s latest publication Failure Biographies, a comic collage, from the Operating System (huge props to Elæ Moss for their labour and book design brilliance). It is not released, but promises to be a perfect blend of horror and
science fiction. What’s not to love?
