A Virtual Interview with Sandi Stromberg

Background

Thursday, May 9, 2024, 7:15 p.m. – 9:00 p.m CDT

Hybrid: In-store at 5501 N. Lamar #A-105 and on Zoom

Zoom event registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bookwoman-2nd-thursday-hybrid-poetry-and-open-mic-featuring-sandi-stromberg-tickets-851973835677

Feature Sandi Stromberg’s full-length collection, Frogs Don’t Sing Red (Kelsay Books, April 2023), includes several works nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Stromberg is an editor at The Ekphrastic Review and has served as an editor for two anthologies: Untameable City: Poems on the Nature of Houston (Mutabilis press, 2015) and, with Lucy Griffith, the ekphrastic anthology Echoes of the Cordillera (Museum of the Big Bend, Sul Ross State University, 2018), where poems are in conversation with photographs by Jim Bones.

Most recently, Stromberg’s poetry has appeared in Panoply: The Literary Zine, San Pedro River Review, The Ekphrastic Review, MockingHeart Review, Woodland, The Orchards Poetry Journal, and Unknotting the Line: The Poetry in Prose. Her poetry, translated into Dutch, can be found at Brabant Cultureel and on the website of Dutch poet, Albert Hagenaars. 

The Interview

CH: What is your first memory of poetry? What was your relationship with books during childhood?

SS: My first memory of poetry was Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees.” My mother had a slim volume of poems by different authors that she received as valedictorian of her high school class. This poem spoke to some part of me.

I was a voracious reader. We moved often so books were my refuge and world.

CH: When did you first begin to take an interest in writing? What drew you to writing poetry?

SS: In fifth grade I wrote a poem about mushrooms growing at the foot of trees. My teacher loved it and sent it to the Lorimorian, the small town’s weekly newspaper. They published it.

I didn’t try to write another poem for years, but I dreamed of being a writer and still love the feeling of paper and pens and what can be created with them.

CH: I understand you lived in Europe for the first two decades of your adult life. How did that experience influence your growth as a writer?

SS: Living abroad I suddenly had time to write, college and grad school finished. My first husband and father of my children was an international businessman. I found a mentor in Spain who set me on the path to writing and publishing magazine features and how to edit.

CH: I also understand you’ve spent much of your professional career as a magazine feature writer. What did you take from that work into your poetry?

SS: Transitioning from magazine writer to poet was a challenge. So much of what is necessary to make prose flow are too general for poetry. Time sequences often too wordy. Reporting actual facts more important than metaphor, etc.

I also put poetry on a pedestal. In no way could I achieve such lyrical heights of expression.

Then I had an epiphany of sorts in 1999 in Houston that made me step over whatever the barrier was and risk expressing the world around me poetically.

CH: Congratulations on your new collection, Frogs Don’t Sing Red. Please tell us a little about it.

SS: In January 2019, I started writing to art challenges posted every other week by The Ekphrastic Review. For the next 48 challenges, I wrote and submitted a poem; 35 were chosen and published. I was addicted and had a path for creativity during the worst of the pandemic.

Then, while taking classes from David Meischen, I found what I’d been looking for—a way to organize my work into a cohesive collection. So often a piece of art can remind us of some personal experience. Braiding a response to the art with a personal moment can make an interesting poem.

CH: When you think of the process of sequencing the poems and editing them for this book, what surprised you?

SS: I had the good fortune of having Cindy [Huyser] in my small review group as I gathered around 25 poems into a sort of semi-autobiographical story arc.

Then I realized I had a huge time gap from childhood to my current life and spent a couple of months rereading my stacks of poems and inserting them into three middle sections. This was so rewarding.

CH: You’ve been an editor for two anthologies: Untameable City: Poems on the Nature of Houston (Mutabilis Press, 2015) and with Lucy Griffith Echoes of the Cordillera (Museum of the Big Bend, 2018). How has the experience of editing others’ work shaped your approach to your own?

SS: I felt honored to work on two anthologies. I think one grows as a poet in the process. At least someone like me who has learned by osmosis! Poetic tropes slowly sink into my “little grey cells.”

CH: As poets, we’re indebted to the literary citizenship of others to create the spaces in which to share our work. You’ve spent ten years on the board of Houston’s Mutabilis Press—how has this experience contributed to your growth as a writer?

SS: The same holds true for being involved in Mutabilis Press and now as an editor for The Ekphrastic Review. Being there to nurture other writers as I’ve been nurtured is rewarding and keeps me growing and learning as a poet.

CH: I was excited to learn that one of your poems, “The Art Asylum,” is currently being set to music for the Chinese two-string bowed instrument known as the erhu by Singaporean composer Andrew Ng Ting Shan. How did this collaboration come about? Has the premier of the piece been scheduled?

SS: My son is a musician, composer, sound technician/ engineer, and inventor of musical instruments, as well as senior instructor at Singapore’s LASALLE College of the Arts. On my recent visit there, I met Andrew, who was involved in a production with my son, a Thai composer and two dancers.

Andrew is composing music for his final recital to a Chinese poem and one by Hermann Hesse. He said he was hoping to find an American poet! I gave him my book and he enjoyed it, then chose this poem, which surprised me. The recital will take place later this year.

CH: Who are some of the writers who you count as influences on your work? What are you reading now?

SS: Some of my influences are H. D., Elizabeth Bishop, Adrienne Rich, Alicia Ostriker, and Kevin Prufer. Right now I’m reading Kevin Prufer’s The Fears, Kelly Ellis’s The Hungry Ghost Diner, Sharon Olds’ Balladz, and about to read Sasha West’s How to Abandon Ship.

A Virtual Interview with Kelly Ann Ellis

Background

Thursday, April 11, 2024 7:15 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. CDT

Zoom registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bookwoman-2nd-thursday-hybrid-poetry-reading-and-open-mic-wkelly-ann-ellis-tickets-851970515747

Feature Kelly Ann Ellis is the author of The Hungry Ghost Diner (Lamar University Literary Press, 2023), her debut poetry collection. Ellis and lives and writes in Houston, Texas, where she is a member of Poets in the Loop. She holds an MA in English Literature from the University of Houston, where she currently teaches.

Ellis is the co-founder of hotpoet, a literary nonprofit and small press that publishes the online journal, Equinox, for which Ellis serves as managing editor. Her work has been included in several juried poetry festivals and has appeared in various journals and anthologies. Her collaborative cinepoems were featured in Houston’s REELpoetry Festival for three years consecutive years, and her poetry was showcased in the Houston Fringe Festival in 2019 in the  music and dance production, It’s About Love. Her fiction placed 2nd in The Short Story Show‘s 2020 contest and was re-released in a “best-of” podcast in 2021. Ellis was twice nominated in 2020 for a Pushcart prize.

The Interview

CH: I’m so glad you’re here tonight celebrating the publication of The Hungry Ghost Diner! I want to start the interview by asking a little about how you got started with poetry. What is your first memory of poetry? When do you think you first connected to it?

KAE: Thanks, Cindy! I wrote my first poem at the age of six. It went like this: “Spring fills my heart with a wirled of joy/that nobody can destroy.” My dad thought it was brilliant, put it on his office wall, and never told me that I had misspelled “world.” As I got older, I would pour over Best Loved Poems of the American People (my mother was a big Readers’ Digest fan) and had my favorites, especially tragic ballads like “The Highway Man,” which I liked to memorize and can still recite in part.

I think another thing that reading popular poetry did for me is that it made me innately aware of meter and of musicality. As an adult, I first fell in love with free verse poets like Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg, then with confessional poets like Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, and finally with feminist poets like Adrienne Rich and Marge Piercy. So, although my tastes have changed, I think I’m still a bit influenced by those accessible, closed form, narrative-driven poems of my childhood.

CH: What draws you to poetry?

KAE: I like poetry because it helps me to learn things about myself—and maybe, in the process, to gain some wisdom about life in general. I used to write just for the catharsis of expressing difficult emotions and experiences, but then I found that the more I can give form and shape to these feelings and situations, the more control I seem to achieve over them—or at least over the stress, anxiety, or sadness they can generate. I always think of that Edna St. Vincent Millay poem, “I will put Chaos in fourteen lines” and believe it applies to me—and perhaps, in some ways, to all poets.

CH: When did you first begin to think of yourself as a writer? As a poet?

KAE: I always wrote, from childhood through adulthood, but I tended to focus on prose more than poetry. I wrote a play in high school about Diogenes, and in college, I wrote short stories and tinkered with ideas for novels. When I first applied to the University of Houston graduate writing program it was as with a fiction portfolio. As it turns out, I ended up getting an MA in literature instead of the MFA I had wanted, and for years I didn’t write much of anything.

When I found myself with children, a full-time job, and a household to run, I started writing poetry because the shorter form seemed more manageable than longer prose pieces. I was living in the suburbs and joined a writing group. I even started a reading venue that really took off at the only trendy coffee house in my rather ho-hum neighborhood. Then, when I went to a Bay Area Writers’ conference, I won several prizes, placing 1^st and 2^nd in poetry and 1^st in nonfiction. But what really made me feel like a poet was when I drove out to Georgetown for San Gabriel Writers’ League conference and found that I had been awarded Best in Show and received $350 in prize money. It was thrilling and so unexpected. That one success cemented my identity as a writer. I remember telling myself all the way home to Houston, I AM a poet!

CH: Congratulations on the publication of The Hungry Ghost Diner (Lamar University Literary Press, 2023). Tell us a little about the book.

KAE: I compiled the manuscript during the pandemic shut-down, when I was taking a lot of classes from Grackle & Grackle and had started taking David Meischen’s classes. Many of the poems in the collection were written around that time. When I started thinking about the title, Cindy, you were the one who gave me the idea for using the image of the hungry ghost. You suggested it after I told you that most of my poems dealt with discontent or longing—so thanks for that.

As you know, the “hungry ghost” image originated to describe the Buddhist incarnation of a being who cannot leave their earthly home or move to a higher plane because of perpetual, insatiable hunger.  Later this image came to be used in psychology fields as a metaphor for addiction. I added “diner” to the phrase “hungry ghost” because I wanted the title to be more approachable and local, to lighten the heaviness of that image, and to suggest the possibility that the ghost could somehow be fed. I thought that adding “diner” was more in keeping with my voice, which tends to be rather casual, and I also liked the double meaning of the word.

CH: The Hungry Ghost Diner is your first full-length collection of poetry, though I know you’ve written several chapbooks. How did you go about selecting the poems in this collection? What was your take on sequencing them?

KAE: Since I had the word “diner” in the title, I organized the book around types of diners, each representing a different type of haunting or hunger.

The first section, “Late Night,” introduces the ghost—and the overarching theme—with the first line of the first poem, “Strings.” It reads “Ghosts are the worst addicts…” Each poem in it either contains or mentions a ghost—or some sort of supernatural phenomenon—to set the stage for what follows: sections arranged around types of diners (or signs that can be found on such diners), each titled to reflect a sort of hunger.

Using my “plate lunch” approach of arranging the sections, I then sequenced each section to have the same sort of arc as the entire collection has, with attention to variety and cohesion. It was a learning process. When I submitted the manuscript to Lamar University Literary Press, they expressed interest but said that they would need a longer manuscript around 90 pages rather than the 50 I had given them, which was challenging because I now needed to gracefully insert more poems into the existing structure—or to change the existing structure. As it turns out, I did a little of both, keeping my original concept by not only adding new poems to the existing section, but also adding sections with poems I mined from my body of work.

CH: What did you learn from the process of putting this book together?

KAE: I definitely learned that I needed to revise and edit poems I had long thought of as finished. I also had to omit certain poems from the manuscript because they were either redundant or they simply did not fit, for a variety of reasons. Some of the poems were too personal, and some I omitted because they lacked appropriateness—I decided that I did not have the experience, knowledge, or even right to weigh in on the topic they addressed.  

I guess the biggest thing I learned was how labor-intensive—tedious, even—putting together a manuscript is. In fact, the saying that a poem is never finished, only abandoned, was brought home to me. I finally had to stop tinkering with the poems because not only was it driving me crazy to keep revising and editing, but I never would have finished the manuscript if I hadn’t just called it quits at what seemed like a reasonable stopping point.

CH: You’re very active in Houston’s poetry community, and I know you’ve long been a member of the critique group Poets in the Loop. How has long-term participation in peer critique shaped your work as a poet?

KAE: I value my friendships and the connections with fellow poets that I’ve made over the years, and I think the ones I’ve made through critique groups are especially meaningful because they involve a deeper level of vulnerability and trust as we open up to each other through our poems. I believe that participating in critique groups has definitely helped me to hone my craft and overcome blind spots I might have about my own work. They’ve also helped me to develop a thicker skin and to stand by my own editorial choices.

I am fortunate to be in a group that is honest yet tactful. The goal is for all of us to learn and grow, and thereby to become better poets. In addition, we have all come to support each other, not just in writing poetry, but in the many ways that good friends support each other—not to mention, we have a pretty fun time when we get together. The critique group is a community, in and of itself, for which I am extremely grateful.

CH: In addition to the printed word, you’ve had collaborative cinepoems featured as part of Houston’s REELpoetry Festival. Tell us a little about these collaborations.

KAE: My first cinepoem, “The Weight of Smoke” was made from a poem I had written and pictures I had taken during a family trip to Lake Cushman on the Olympic Peninsula. Vanessa Zimmer-Powell had the software, the editing skills, and the generosity to help me pull it together, and it aired in the first REELpoetry festival.

The second cinepoem I produced was based on a poem I had written when my late mother had first become ill, and it is quite emotionally heavy. I read it with a partner, and it was recorded by Alyson Poston-Fahl in a soundtrack accompanied by the music of Charles Bryant for a production Bucky Rea put together that year for the Fringe Festival. I sent the soundtrack to my daughter Dominique, who put it together with film clips that she had taken over the years in Hawaii and Southeast Asia, and the cinepoem “Offering” was born. So as you can see, it was a collaboration over time with several key players bringing their skills to its making, each with powerful impact on the final product.

The last cinepoem I made, “The Ballad of Diamond Bessie” was derived from a pantoum I wrote in one of David Meischen’s classes, a poem based on the true story of a woman who was murdered during the mid-1800’s in Port Jefferson, Texas. For this one, I asked my youngest, Madeleine, to stop in Port Jefferson on her way back from her college in Arkansas and to take some footage both of the town and of nearby Caddo Lake. Madeleine did this and got footage that included Diamond Bessie’s grave (draped with costume jewelry), the town’s railroad trestle, and the haunting scenery of the lake’s bald cypress forest. I recorded the soundtrack with my then-partner Dennis playing slide guitar in the background. Lastly, Madeleine put it all together with the footage she had taken, supplementing with pictures of costume jewelry and free domain material from the internet, and this resulted in “The Ballad of Diamond Bessie” being aired in that year’s festival. It sounds like it took a lot of time, but actually we made it over the course of a couple of days.

As you can see, although the poems and the concepts for the cinepoems originated with my own creative efforts, I had a great deal of help with the visual adaptation, stylistic construction, and overall editing of these projects. Fortunately, I have some very talented daughters and friends who were willing to help me, and collaborating with them to bring these projects to fruition has been most rewarding.

CH: Your work with the literary non-profit you co-founded, hotpoet, is a gift to the community and a terrific act of literary citizenship. How has your work with hotpoet influenced the way you look at your own poetry submission process?

KAE: As the editor of Equinox, I read a lot of submissions and end up turning down far more submissions. than I accept. Often, I actually love some of the works I feel forced to reject, generally because they just aren’t a good fit, either with the theme or within the context of the other selections for a particular issue. Knowing that this is often the case has helped me to not take it personally when one of my poems is rejected.

Another thing I’ve realized is that I get far more poetry submissions than prose submissions, so I have started sending out more prose to journals myself, with good results, as I’ve had more prose than poetry accepted recently.

Finally, I’ve learned not to wait until the last minute to submit my work to a journal because its editors are probably not waiting until the last minute to read entries and make selections. I tend to be a little fatigued with reading and have already chosen quite a few pieces by the end of the submission period, and I might not be as open to last-minute entries as I am to the earlier ones.

CH: What do you read for relaxation?

KAE: I like reading fiction that is fast-paced and clever, intellectually challenging but not tediously academic. Some writers I enjoy are Zadie Smith, George Saunders, and Mohsin Hamid, For nonfiction, I have recently enjoyed Lulu Miller’s Why Fish Don’t Exist for its intricate braiding of memoir, science, history, and even conjecture; and Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone for its ingenious, hilarious, and ultimately poignant  weaving of memoir with recipes acquired from significant people and defining experiences over the course of a lifetime. I also enjoy short stories and essays when I’m busy since they don’t involve as much of a time investment as longer pieces. If I read poetry for relaxation, it is generally something accessible and nature-oriented,

A Virtual Interview with Kevin Prufer

Background

Thurday, March 14, 2024 7:15 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. CDT

Zoom event registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bookwoman-2nd-thursday-hybrid-poetry-reading-and-open-mic-w-kevin-prufer-tickets-833413029807?aff=oddtdtcreator

Kevin Prufer’s ninth book of poetry is The Fears (Copper Canyon, 2023), and his first novel is Sleepaway (Acre Books, 2024). His previous poetry books have been long-listed for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize, short listed for the Rilke Prize (2015 and 2011), received the 2020 Julie Suk Award, and been included on “Best of the Year” lists at The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, BookList, and elsewhere.  The editor of several volumes on literary translation and publishing, among others, he is Professor of English at the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program, where he also directs The Unsung Masters Series (www.unsungmasters.org).

The Interview

CH: First, I want to welcome you to BookWoman, and thank you for joining us as a feature. Congratulations on the publication of your most recent poetry collection, The Fears (Copper Canyon Press, 2023), and on your forthcoming debut novel, Sleepaway (Acre Books, April 2024). Before we talk about the books themselves, I’m curious as to your childhood experiences with books and writing. What is your first recollection of poetry? When did you begin thinking of yourself as a writer?

KP: Well, I know my mother read me poetry when I was little because I still have a few of those tattered books of children’s verse.  And we always had shelves and shelves of books at home—thousands of books, I’d say.  And a lot of those were poetry books. I remember paging through one of them and coming across a poem that compared the days on a calendar with ice cubes in an ice-cube tray.  That strange image returned to me every time I looked at an ice cube tray

But it wasn’t until high school that I took a real interest in poetry—and, as is so often the case, it was because of a great teacher who asked me to read poems and take them seriously.  I remember discussing them in class and, because we were required to memorize a poem a week, I constantly had little bits of poems floating around in my head.  I didn’t understand the poems, exactly—we memorized Eliot and Karl Shapiro and Levertov and etc.—but I was attracted by their mysterious and elusive qualities.

CH: You have a BA from Wesleyan’s College of Letters, an MA in English and creative writing with an emphasis in poetry writing from Hollins Graduate Writing Program, and an MFA in poetry writing from Washington University. How did you decide on your educational trajectory?

KP: I didn’t know what I wanted to study in college.  I was always a pretty good student and most subjects came easily to me.  Ultimately, I decided to focus on German language, Western European literatures, and history—all of which were helpful for becoming a poet, though I knew little about the great English language writers when I graduated.  For a while, I worked at the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, but didn’t enjoy it.  Ultimately, the writer Annie Dillard, who judged a student poetry contest I won at Wesleyan, encouraged me to quit my job and spend a year at her alma mater, Hollins College, and just write.  It was the best thing I ever did—and it’s where I became acquainted with Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, so many writers I would grow to love.

CH: I understand The Fears is your ninth full-length collection of poetry. Please tell us a little about it. What was the seed from which it grew?

KP: I write and write and write.  I don’t ever worry about what the poetry book will look like.  My only concern is that the poems are good enough.  When, eventually, I have enough poems for a book, I spread them on the floor and ask myself what my concerns seem to have been.  For some reason in the two years when I was writing The Fears I was thinking a lot about dread, mortality, absence, erasure.  I didn’t know that exactly as I was writing the book, but it became clear as I was assembling it.  So it’s hard to talk about the seed and much easier to talk about what it grew into.

CH: In the poem “A Body of Work” from The Fears, the speaker begins by contemplating what we as writers leave behind (“a body of work that will grow increasingly / unintelligible to each new generation.”), then closes in speaking as if from beyond the grave (“You don’t know me, but once / I was particulate and alive. Now what am I?”). Would you talk a little about this poem in the context of the conversations your poems have with the work of poets from the past?

KP: I love the Eliotic notion that all of literature is like some kind of giant conversation in which writers of the present are in discussion with writers from the past … and vice versa.  Or, to make the metaphor more contemporary: all of the history of literature might be likened to a giant high school lunchroom with lots of conversations going on simultaneously.  Sometimes one table gets really loud, sometimes another.  Or, as my friend Wayne put it to me once: literature is a way that the long-dead get to talk to the not-yet-born.  I love all of these ways of thinking about literature, reading, poetry because they are inherently generous.  They suggest that so much of writing involves understanding what other people have said … and then, whether directly or indirectly, responding to that understanding.

CH: As I was writing the previous question, I also couldn’t help but think of the Unsung Masters Series, which you co-curate with Wayne Miller and Martin Rock. I feel so lucky to have been introduced last year to the work of Bert Meyers through the series. Please tell us a little about the mission of the series and how you came to help curate it.

KP: Sure! And thanks!  Wayne and I started the Unsung Masters Series fifteen years ago to highlight the work of great writers who have somehow been largely forgotten.  Once each year, we publish a book devoted to the work of an “unsung master.” About half the book reprints his or her writing.  For the rest of the book, we focus on recreating the author him/herself through interviews, essays, photographs, drafts, ephemera.  Whatever is available to us.  We love to take suggestions for future volumes.  You can read more at www.unsungmasters.org.

CH: Looking through the catalog for the Unsung Masters Series, I see a handful of titles which carry the subtitle “On the Life & Work of a Lost American Master” (e.g. Dunstan Thompson, Nancy Hale, and Beatrice Hastings). How did these poets come to light?

KP: Each story is different.  I like to say that the reasons a truly great writer is forgotten are always much more interesting than the reasons a truly great writer is remembered.  And the way they’re re-discovered always has an element of chance, of happenstance.  In the case of Dunstan Thompson: my friend Doug Powell (who co-edited that volume) happened upon a copy of his rare 1947 poetry collection Lament for the Sleepwalker in a bargain box at used bookstore in Manhattan.  He became so excited by what he read that he called me and read them over the phone.  I became excited, too.  That book went on to be the first in the series.  I’d say that in almost every case, the story is like that: one writer stumbles upon a great, dusty old book and can’t believe she’s never heard of the author.  She looks around, reads more, becomes dismayed that no one has heard of the author, becomes a sort of evangelist for that author.  And eventually, she finds the Unsung Masters Series and pitches the idea.

CH: How would you describe the arc of your own body of poetic work so far? How do you approach a new book project, in terms of the writing of the poems and the form they will take?

KP: Well, I began the way most poets begin: I wrote about myself, my family, my personal concerns.  Then I grew tired of my own story and tried other things.  I wrote about history and the echoes of history that I see all around me, in the news, in politics, in people.  Then I started writing about other people, people who interested me, fictional people.  I became interested in seeing and understanding the world through eyes that aren’t really mine.  Now I’m interested in story, in how a poem can control the passage of time, how it can manipulate a reader’s experience of time, character, selfhood.  I like to think that my career as a writer has involved building a larger and larger space between myself and my work … but, of course, I can’t really escape myself.  I’m in every poem somehow or other.

CH: I understand your debut novel, Sleepaway, is due out next month. What were some of the challenges you encountered as you wrote it? How do you think the experience of writing the novel will inform your work in poetry?

KP: Writing Sleepaway was a delight.  I worked on it every night for many weeks, thinking about the characters during the day and typing after dark.  In some ways, it wasn’t that different from building my long, narrative, jangly poems.  I used the same strategy I use when I write poetry: I type a little plus-sign whenever I get tired of a narrative thread and then, after the plus-sign, I begin a different narrative thread.  So, the novel felt like a very extended exercise in addition—one scene, one mind, one event added to the previous one.  I’m not yet sure how it will inform my poetry, except to say that having spent a long time sunk deep in the minds of a few of my fictional characters, I feel as if I’ve gotten better at making use of the (maybe illusory) distance from the self fiction and poetry can provide.  

CH: I understand you teach creative writing both at the University of Houston and as a faculty member at the low-residency MFA program at Lesley University. How does your teaching practice inform your writing practice?

KP: I keep them pretty separate. I don’t read student work at night and I don’t write poetry during the day.  I love working with students and try to bring to their work my best ideas and experience.  And, of course, I sometimes learn from my students.  But I have to keep them separate.  It’s important to me that my day job not become an extension of my own writing, which shouldn’t be a job at all.

CH: What do you read for pleasure?

KP: I’m always reading several books at once.  Big books of history, certainly.  And novels, though I rarely read very contemporary novels.  I love W. D. Howells and Willa Cather and Arthur Koestler.   Sometimes I read poetry for pleasure.  But I can’t subsist on it. I love mysteries.  Science Fiction.  I’d say I’m omnivorous. Most every writer I know is.   

A Virtual Interview with karla k. morton

Background

Thursday, February 8, 2024 7:15 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. CST

BookWoman, 5502 N. Lamar Suite #A-105, Austin, TX 78751

Zoom registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bookwoman-2nd-thursday-hybrid-poetry-reading-and-open-mic-karla-k-morton-tickets-791686314077

karla k. morton, omnium curiositatum explorator, our in-store feature for this hybrid event, has sixteen poetry collections. A National Heritage Wrangler Award Winner, twice an Indies National Book Award winner, Foreword Book Award winner, SPUR Award Winner, Betsy Colquitt Award Winner and E2C Grant recipient, she is guest editor for TCU Press’ Selected Works of Walt McDonald. She is published in journals such as American Life in Poetry, Alaska Quarterly Review, Southword Literary Journal, Boulevard, Lascaux Review, Comstock Review, New Ohio Review, the New Mexico Poetry Anthology, Atlanta Review forthcoming in The Southern Review,  and is short-listed for Ireland’s O’Donoghue International Poetry Competition. Her book, “The National Parks: A Century of Grace” (TCU Press) is historic, as it is the first book of poetry ever written in-situ from all 62 of 62 National Parks.  Morton gives a percentage of royalties from this book back to the National Parks.  She is a graduate of Texas A&M University and is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters.  She is the 2010 Texas State Poet Laureate and a nominee for the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame.  

Bring your mask if you’re joining us in-store for this fully-hybrid in-store/Zoom program.

The Interview

CH: It’s an honor to have you at BookWoman and I’m excited to get to know more about your journey as a poet. What role did poetry play in your life growing up? When did you develop an interest in writing it?

kkm: Thank you SO MUCH for having me! BookWoman is such a wonderful bookstore!

You know, I was always that weird kid who kept to myself. I grew up on three acres and loved to just go to the back and sit and listen to the wind. I knew it would have something to tell me. It saved me, really.  It gave me focus. I would take pencil and paper and write whatever I felt it was telling me – I still do.

In 5^th grade, my teacher, Mrs. Aaron, gave us a poetry assignment to write about our favourite color. I was so excited. I ran home and wrote it. In the morning, I handed it to her and she read it on the spot, then slowly looked at me and said “Wow!” That was huge to me and I wanted to draw that expression again and again from the world. I was hooked from that moment on!

CH: You’re not only a poet but a photographer and songwriter as well as a public speaker, and you now have fifteen books to your credit. When did you begin to focus your energies on writing? Were you developing your interests in photography and songwriting at the same time?

kkm: From the time I was in the back pasture alone, I was writing. I have always written poetry as long as I can remember. I was guided into college with a Journalism degree (to soothe my parents’ worry that I would never eat again), and found great joy in the photo-journalism aspect of it. There’s nothing like being in that dark room watching an image appear on the paper. I loved it. I had several exhibits with my B&W photos, but still all the while writing poetry.

Songwriting has always been a love of mine – a natural extension of the poetic word. I am still mesmerized by rhyme – good rhyme that is. When poetry has a meter and clever rhyme and incredible music, it lifts it into Song: a complete other, spectacular Art form.

CH: I understand your first book, Wee Cowrin’ Timorous Beastie, is a Scottish epic written in verse, and that it was produced as a book/CD project with Canadian composer Howard Baer. What were some of the challenges in working on an epic? How was it to work with a composer?

kkm: Ah, this epic still leaves me in awe. I have a dear friend named John Murray, a Scotsman who lives in Glasgow. I have always called him a pirate. One day, I googled the name “John Murray” only to discover there actually was a Scottish pirate by that name hundreds of years ago. Then, one night, the beginning lines came upon me “Come dear lads and hear the great story, an old tale of love but brimming with glory…” and I wrote it in a fever. I could not sleep; could barely eat. It’s one of those inexplicable creations. I tried to find a place for it, but was literally laughed at by publishers! I then had the thought to put it to music. When Canadian composer and musician Howard Baer read it, he called and said that he was woken up in the night with a tune, and it would not let him rest until he wrote it.       Gloriously wild, isn’t it???

Working with Baer was an incredible experience.  He gave every character their own instrumental voice, and wove them into this amazing creation.  He brought in musicians who specialized in their Celtic instruments, then had them play the melody, then their own harmonies and layered them as if he was building an onion.  It is truly a magnificent piece, and a fun story. Again, mixing words and music makes nothing less than magic.

CH :As I look at your bibliography, I see that a third of your book projects have been collaborations (including your very first book, Wee Cowrin’ Timorous Beastie). Would you tell us a little about your experiences with collaboration? How has collaboration influenced your practice as a writer?

kkm: I have a great love of the Arts – and combining them makes them even more powerful. Poetry and Music and Film and Dance and Painting and Theater and Sculpture….I could go on and on. Put great things together and it has the power to touch all the senses.

CH: You and I met around the time your book Redefining Beauty came out, which was also around the time you became the 2010 Texas Poet Laureate. This 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Award-winner has been praised in so many ways, not least for its candor and humor about your journey through breast cancer. What was the biggest surprise for you as you wrote the poems for the book and assembled the manuscript? What’s the most surprising response you had to the book?

kkm: There are so many people in this world going through terrible things. I was simply writing poetry as a way to physically and mentally get myself through the horrors of chemo and radiation and pain. That is the power of the written word – it can carry you and lift you. It can put the demon on the paper and let you take two steps back from it.  Whenever anyone is going through hard times, I tell them, instead of putting your fist through a wall, write it down. The paper can take it. The paper can always take it.

As I was going through this, David Meichen and Scott Wiggerman, with their Dos Gatos Press, actually contacted me and said they knew I had to be writing about it, and would I consider letting them publish a book. Wow, what a gift that was. It was surprising to me to see the reactions of the readers. Laughter is a great healer, and sometimes just saying out-loud what you feel, puts things in a different perspective. I believe it is actually harder to watch someone you love going through it, than just getting through it yourself. This book gives people something to give to others going through this treatment. We all have our demons to conquer – in whatever form they appear. Maybe “Redefining Beauty” is a pathway to do that. I did have one sweet elderly lady come up to me after reading “Spock Thinks I’m Sexy”, which is one of my most requested poems from that book. She said “Oh my, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a poem end with the word ‘asshole’!”

CH: Please tell us a little about your experience as Texas Poet Laureate. What did you hope to accomplish? Looking back, is there a moment that seemed to encapsulate your experience?

kkm: You know, in Texas, even though they name a Poet Laureate every year, we actually always get to keep the title, we just use our year to distinguish us. So we are never former, or used up, or has-been, haha! It is truly one of the greatest honours I have ever had, and I still am active out in the world spreading poetry. I know it sounds naïve, but I truly believe the Arts, especially Poetry, can save the world.  When I was first named 2010 Texas State Poet Laureate, I did the “Littletown, TX Tour” where I went to schools all over Texas who seemed underserved in the Arts. I had the schools host a poetry and art contest about their town, and I wrote a poem about their town. Remembering my first experiences with a byline, I can tell you that nothing inspires young writers more than to see their name and their work in print! This book, titled “Hometown, Texas: Young Poets & Artists Celebrate Their Roots” (TCU Press) allowed for kids all over the state to be published! 

But everything I’ve done since being named, and everything I continue to do, I do as the 2010 Texas State Poet Laureate. It is an unending honour and one I will use forever. As all poets hope for, I pray my work gets better and better – like good Italian red wine.

CH: You’ve now published two books with 2005 Texas Poet Laureate Alan Birkelbach. In the first of these, No End of Vision: Texas as Seen by Two Laureates, Birkelbach’s poems accompany your black-and-white photos. How did you decide on this project and make it happen?

kkm: Years ago, I was working on some Ekphrastic Workshop prompts, and was taking photos for that. Alan and I have been the best of friends since we met way back in 2006, and I was sending him the photos as well. Little did I know they were inspiring poems from him! Then one day, he showed me all his amazing poems and I said, let’s most definitely put this in a book! 

CH: Your second book with Birkelbach, The National Parks: A Century of Grace, in which you visited all 62 of the U. S. National Parks, must have been an epic undertaking (and I understand it was a four-year project). What was the vision that launched this project? How were you able to underwrite a project of this scope? How did the experience change you?

kkm: Oh yes, it was truly an epic adventure!

It all began when I was at a meeting and the speaker was a retired Park Ranger. She said that the National Parks were celebrating their 100^th Anniversary in 2016. I heard nothing else that entire meeting, because all I could think of was, what can I do? I am a nature-inspired poet, so what can just one person do?

I went home and began to research and discovered that in one hundred years of our nation’s National Parks, there has never been a book of poetry written by a poet who traveled to all 62 National Parks! How could that be??? So, it became my calling. I simply had to do it. Now, I am a practical person.  I knew I would be traveling in remote wilderness areas and it is prudent to have a travel partner.  It wasn’t my husband’s calling, and I understood, so I thought, what is more historic than one Poet Laureate, but two Poets Laureate! I called up best friend Alan and said I am going to all of America’s National Parks, and write poetry and take photos and put them into a coffee table book with percentage of royalties to go back to the National Parks, do you want to do it with me?  Well, thirty-seconds later, he was in.  He asked me how I was going to do it. I told him I had no idea, but I had to do it. I spent a few years applying for every literary grant you can imagine. Not one organization saw the value in doing this. What I wanted to do was what the Rangers do every day – to preserve and protect these sacred spaces for the next seven generations. Imagine what this world could be if each generation thought of the next seven generations…

So, we set out on our adventure on our own nickel. We each maxed out multiple credit cards, wore out tires and trucks, and put ourselves into a debt that we will probably never get out of, but we did it, and we did it well, and we did it for the right reason: for the National Parks themselves. I am so very very proud of our book, and so very grateful to TCU Press for creating such a gorgeous full-colour, hard bound coffee table book. It is timeless, as are the National Parks. They have named a 63^rd National Park, and we are headed there in March/April just in time for a second edition!

This epic adventure brought us to our knees 62 times. You can’t experience something as grand as this earth’s glories, and not be moved, not be transformed. My eyes see deeper, my heart spreads wider. Mother Nature is the great teacher. To learn from her makes us complete humans. This book is a way to save these sacred spaces for each generation yet to come.

CH: What inspires you about performance and being a public speaker?

kkm: I must admit – I absolutely LOVE performing and speaking to groups! Poetry was originally an oral art form, and how it is heard is just as important as how it is read on a page. It has two lives. But to be able to perform it in person sets its power in motion. Poetry and the Arts are the way one heart reaches out to touch another heart. It keeps us connected, it keeps us in touch with each other, reminding us that we are all together in this world, that each moment, each heart beat, each word uttered, is important. This world is in need of healing. Poetry can do that.

CH: What are you currently reading?

kkm: I am knee-deep right now in “One Hundred Poems to Break Your Heart” edited by Edward Hirsch, and… let’s see what I have on my bath-stand at the moment (I love my end o’day reading in the bathtub!): “One Man’s Meat” by E. B. White, “The Southern Review” Journal published by Louisiana State University, “Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel” by Carl Safina (which I come back to again and again), “The Illustrated Life and Times of Billy the Kid” by Bob Boze Bell, “Italian Basilicas and Cathedrals” by Leopoldo Marchetti and Carlo Bevilacqua, and “The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher” by Lewis Thomas.

Inspiration comes from everywhere.  Every day, I get so excited to wake up knowing that there will be something in the day that will change me, that will teach me, that will inspire me.  Despite all our worldly problems, it is truly an amazing life. 

I am so grateful to you Cindy, to BookWoman, and to all those who help keep the written word alive.

A 2023 Virtual Interview with Amanda Johnston

Background

Thursday, December 14, 2023 7:15 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bookwoman-2nd-thursday-hybrid-poetry-reading-and-open-mic-amanda-johnston-tickets-753013041277

The BookWoman Second Thursday Hybrid Poetry Reading and Open mic is delighted to welcome our feature, 2024 Texas Poet Laureate Amanda Johnston, in-store at BookWoman, 5501 N. Lamar #A-105 and on Zoom. Cindy Huyser hosts this in-person / Zoom hybrid reading, and a “round robin” open mic follows.

Amanda Johnston is a writer and artist. She earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine. She is the author of two chapbooks, GUAP and Lock & Key, and the full-length collection Another Way to Say Enter. Her work has appeared in numerous online and print publications, among them, Callaloo, Poetry Magazine, The Moth, Puerto del Sol, Muzzle, and the anthologies, Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry and Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism. She has received fellowships, grants, and awards from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, Tasajillo, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, The Watermill Center, American Short Fiction, and the Austin International Poetry Festival. She is a former Board President of Cave Canem Foundation, a member of the Affrilachian Poets, cofounder of Black Poets Speak Out, and founder of Torch Literary Arts.

The Interview

CH: I want to start by catching up about your work with Torch Literary Arts, which you founded back in 2006. Congratulations to Torch for receiving an NEA grant this year! Please tell us how it’s been to see the organization grow and thrive.

AJ: I am honored to continue the important work Torch Literary Arts does to support Black women writers and enhance our local and global literary community. Receiving funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and other major funders, like the City of Austin Cultural Arts Division, the Poetry Foundation, and the Burdine Johnson Foundation, have made this next wave of impact possible. Since our relaunch in 2022, we’ve created paid opportunities for over 100 artists, published over 80 Black women writers from around the world, and curated over 50 in-person and virtual events including the launch of our summer retreat for writers with works in progress. None of this good work is done alone. I’m grateful for the outpouring of support that has also made it possible for Torch’s staff to grow. In the fall of 2023, we added three new associate positions to support programs, communications, and the growth of the online magazine. We also welcomed back our administrative fellows – an internship program for college students and emerging nonprofit professionals. Torch’s community of participants and followers continues to grow and the need for the services and programs we provide is clear. This is the time to show up and make a difference. I invite everyone to become a champion for inclusive literature, freedom of speech and expression for all, and a valued supporter of Torch Literary Arts. It takes everyone to create a thriving and equitable community, the kind of community we desire and deserve. One way to support Torch is by donating to Torch Literary Arts’ End-of-Year fundraiser at TorchLiteraryArts.org/support .

CH: Torch’s many successes clearly indicate a mission that resonates with community. What are some of the principles that guide your leadership of Torch Literary Arts?

AJ: What if we love people we haven’t met yet? This is a question I ask myself and our team to ground Torch’s work in love, kindness, and respect for the community we serve. Before the incredible work happens, the intention and energy we cultivate set the tone and guides us as we model these principles in how we care for ourselves and each other, and how we welcome the community of writers, readers, program participants, attendees, and supporters into the spaces we create. From the beginning, we’ve made our beliefs known and shared them with the public. This intentionality helps those searching for a supportive literary community find us and connect across the diaspora.

CH: Your work as executive director of Torch is a deep investment in literary citizenship. How has your work in this role influenced your life as a writer?

AJ: I feel like I’m finally at a place where my work, art, and life are coming into balance. I’m inspired daily by the incredible writers Torch supports and celebrates. My administrative duties mean that I am constantly thinking about how to best show up for and serve Black women writers and, as a Black woman writer, this inherently means I’m also showing up for myself. It’s also a testament to the power of community across the literary landscape. We might dream and write in private, but the work rises to its full power when it is shared with others. I want to honor that community by actively practicing my craft and contributing to the larger landscape of global letters. I’m constantly in conversation with writers and readers about contemporary literature and the rich legacy of Black women writers. This is my life. It’s a large part of who I am and what I believe I was meant to do.

CH: I had the pleasure of attending your recent art exhibition, It’s Expensive, at Prizer Arts and Letters in Austin, and it was my first exposure to your visual art. How long has visual art been part of your artistic expression? How did the work that comprised the exhibition come about?

AJ: As a poet, imagery has always influenced my work. Color, sound, movement, taste – my senses are extremely observant of the world around me and I mentally collect sparks of inspiration to feed into my work. During the pandemic lockdown in 2020, I was inspired to explore those images and ideas through visual art and the creation of mixed media mask sculptures, photography, and video. The pandemic pushed me to explore my artistic impulses urgently as we didn’t know how much time we would have and what was coming next. I wanted to live freely and that meant following this new path of visual art. I’m excited to continue cultivating this work, playing in the unknown, and being present in my artmaking practice however it is revealed to me.

CH: Your writing career also continues to blossom. Congratulations on being named the 2024 Texas Poet Laureate! What possibilities do you see as you prepare to take on this role?

AJ: Thank you! I’m excited about this designation and honored to be the first Black woman to be Texas Poet Laureate. I know the power of visibility and representation, so I’m most excited about the historical significance of this appointment and what it will mean for Black girls and women across the state. All things are possible! I also look forward to championing poetry and poetic expression in Texas and across the country. I’m planning a few projects that celebrate poets and the people of Texas. I hope to use the power of our poetry to amplify the voices and lives of diverse communities that make this place our home.

CH: How do create space for your writing and artistic life with the many responsibilities and commitments you maintain?

AJ: I believe we show up for the things we love. I don’t have to create space because I’m living in that space. I am an artist and this is my life. Of course, my schedule gets busy, so I try to capture inspiration when it comes to notes or short emails to myself to come back to when I have more time to write. I’m currently working on a manuscript of poems titled Active Threat. Some of the poems are 10 years old. I’m excited to get some quiet time this month to write and format the collection. 

CH: What advice would have been most helpful to you when you were starting out as a writer?

AJ: Don’t be afraid to try new things and share them with the world. You’re only keeping yourself from doing more of what makes you happy and connecting with people who love you and want to support your work. Write, revise, submit, repeat!

CH: Suppose you could spend an afternoon with a writer who is no longer with us but who continues to be a source of inspiration. Who would you choose and why?

AJ: Lucille Clifton. I had the privilege of meeting her and I know we would have had wonderful conversations about life, family, poetry, and art if we only had more time. Her poem “won’t you celebrate with me” is a prime example of what I hope to achieve in my poetry.

CH: What are you reading now?

AJ: Late Bloomers by Deepa Varadarajan, Promise by Rachel Eliza Griffiths, and The Shared World by Vievee Francis.

A Virtual Interview with the Editors of Dos Gatos Press

Background

Thursday, November 9, 2023 7:15 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

On-line Event Registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bookwoman-second-thursday-poetry-reading-and-open-mic-unknotting-the-line-tickets-735858942907?aff=oddtdtcreator

The Central Texas poets of the newest Dos Gatos Press Southwestern anthology, Unknotting the Line: The Poetry in Prose, will be featured for this virtual edition of the 2nd Thursday series. Featured contributors Claire Vogel Camargo, Diana Conces, Lucy Griffith and host Cindy Huyser will be joined by Dos Gatos Press’ co-founder and co-editor of the anthology, David Meischen.

Unknotting the Line: The Poetry in Prose is the fifth in Dos Gatos Press’ “Poetry of the Southwestern United States” series. The anthology’s editors, David Meischen and Scott Wiggerman, are also the co-founders of Dos Gatos Press, and take turns responding to questions in this interview.

The Interview

CH: I’m excited about the upcoming reading for Unknotting the Line: The Poetry in Prose, the fifth in title in Dos Gatos’ series of anthologies “Poetry of the American Southwest.” For those who might not be familiar, please tell us a little about Dos Gatos’ history and mission.

DM: Dos Gatos Press started in 2004—as a very small venture devoted to Texas poets and poetry. For the first several years, we devoted our efforts exclusively to the Texas Poetry Calendar. In 2009, we published Redefining Beauty, a collection by karla k. morton, who was the Texas State Poet Laureate at the time. To date, we’ve published four collections by individual poets. Our most ambitious publications to date are Wingbeats I and Wingbeats II, nationally recognized collections of poetry writing exercises contributed by teaching poets from all over the country. In 2013, we broadened our focus from Texas to the entire Southwest, publishing the first in our series, Poetry of the Southwestern United States. Unknotting the Line is the fifth collection in this series.

CH: What inspired you to create this series?

SW: I find the American Southwest a place that continually inspires, as a place that feels more like home than any other place I’ve been. I have also been lucky to find scores of highly talented writers in this area. As a poet whose poems are closely dependent upon this environment, I wanted to showcase those who also feel the draw of this land, who take inspiration from the flora, fauna, cultures, and spirit of the American Southwest. This series represents appreciation and gratitude.

CH: Like Unknotting the Line, the first three books in this series have coalesced around form in the larger sense: Lifting the Sky: Southwestern Haiku and Haiga (2013), Bearing the Mask: Southwestern Persona Poems (2016), and Weaving the Terrain: 100-word Southwestern Poems (2017). How did the prose / poem hybrid form become the focus of this most recent volume?

SW: Yes, most of the Southwest anthologies have coalesced around a form or genre, but usually with flexibility within the form, such as persona poems, 100-word poems, and prose poems. For example, in Unknotting the Line we include flash fiction, flash nonfiction, haibun, tanka prose, and cheribun. Forms seem to be blurring over the past quarter century, and we wanted to promote the prose poem in its many varieties, including some that many poets were unaware of, like the hybrid forms of haibun, tanka prose, and cheribun. Part of the impetus came from David, who has a long history of prose pieces, and part of it came from me with my increasing focus on Asian, especially Japanese, forms. As editors, we both have to be committed to a theme for our anthologies—or we don’t proceed.

CH: By contrast, the fourth book in the series, 22 Poems and a Prayer for El Paso, commemorates an event curated by Albuquerque Poet Laureate Michelle Otero to remember the victims of the El Paso shootings on August 3, 2019. How did this book come about? What was your organizing principle as you selected and sequenced the poems?  

SW: This book is the anomaly among our anthologies, the only one that we had limited control over, but it seemed important to publish. Michelle Otero invited the poets to write poems for a reading at the National Hispanic Cultural Center commemorating the lives lost in our neighbor to the south, El Paso. The reading was so powerful and moving that talk began of the need for an anthology, and it seemed a good fit for Dos Gatos Press and our mission of supporting writers of the American Southwest, so we offered to take it on. The poets themselves were chosen by Michelle (including prominent local poets Jennifer Givhan, Valerie Martinez, Margaret Randall, and Levi Romero), so we had a minimal editorial voice in this book, but the editing of poems, their presentation, organization, and publishing were all done with the guidance and expertise of Dos Gatos. I remember spending several hours with Michelle as we walked around a table with the 23 poems in the collection, sorting and altering the order till we felt we had it right for a good flow. We must have done it right because it won a New Mexico-Arizona Book Award!

CH: Having worked with Dos Gatos, I know how seriously you take the editorial role. As editors, what advice would you give writers who are preparing to send out poems? 

SW: My advice is that any writer who submits work to Dos Gatos should be prepared to make changes to what they send. Sometimes our suggestions are minor (basic copy-editing for spelling, agreement, etc.) or a word that’s not quite right, but sometimes we discover a poem within the poem that’s sent in. We will regularly ask for the elimination of on-ramp openings or off-ramp closings, for example, two things that severely detract from the strength and effectiveness of poems. We’ve been known to suggest rewriting a poem to focus the voice on one point-of-view. In other words, we take our roles as editors quite seriously, not because we are out to hurt anyone’s feelings, but because we want to publish a poem that’s at its absolute best. Most poets are thankful for the suggestions or advice; a few are not. If you are the type who won’t change a single precious word or comma, Dos Gatos Press is probably not for you.

CH: In addition to the “Poetry of the American Southwest” series, Dos Gatos has also published two acclaimed books of writing exercises from poets who teach (Wingbeats (2011) and Wingbeats II (2014)). Please tell us a little about these books and how they’ve informed your own writing and teaching practices.  

SW: I absolutely love the two Wingbeats books, and we continually discuss a third or fourth one—or at least a revised edition or two. These were massive undertakings that cut deeply into one’s own creative endeavors, so if we decide to go forward, we don’t want to have any regrets about doing so (and neither of us is getting any younger). I started the first Wingbeats by personally contacting teaching poets who I thought might be willing to send us an exercise for the collection. I included guidelines so that the exercises would all follow the same basic pattern despite the many very different voices and styles. And yes, lots of back and forth and lots of editing went into each and every exercise! I tried out nearly every exercise before we accepted it—how else to know if all the steps were there? So each exercise was “test-driven,” all of which helped me improve my approach to teaching with step-by-step directions. To this day, I rely on the exercises and the endless variations within most of them, as does David. In fact, we have run series of Wingbeats workshops for over a dozen years, and we’re still running a monthly writing series based on the books—six months of the year in-person at Albuquerque’s Books on the Bosque (Bookworks before that) and six months of the year online over Zoom (continuing the COVID lockdown trend).

CH: Dos Gatos Press is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt corporation. What animated your decision to take Dos Gatos in this direction? What have you found to be the benefits and drawbacks of this approach?

DM: In the spring of 2004, when Scott and I agreed to take over publishing the Texas Poetry Calendar, which had already been going for five years, we thought it likely that we would eventually want to publish more than the annual calendar. First came the name. We had two cats, and we loved the Southwestern feel of Dos Gatos Press. I was the driving force behind the decision to apply for non-profit status. I think I had grants in mind, though I’ve not applied for grants. My efforts, like Scott’s, go into our commitment to publishing excellence—on a scale that allows both of us time for our own writing.

CH: How have you managed to balance your own artistic / writing practices while running Dos Gatos?

DM: This has been THE challenge for us—as writers deeply committed to our own writing. About three years after we founded Dos Gatos Press, I seriously considered dropping out. I was working toward an MFA in fiction writing. I wanted to keep writing poems. I didn’t want constant stress. My solution was to move from full-time to part-time employment. Scott and I are also deeply committed to each other. We take on new publishing ventures only when we know we can balance publishing with writing.

CH: What advice would you give someone who is thinking of starting a small press?

DM: Answer this question first: Do you want to write and publish? If so, examine yourself and what you do from day to day. Are you employed?—full-time or part-time? What about your relationship life, your family life, your social life? How will you make time for current commitments and publishing? Without fail, reach out to other small publishers. Ask lots of questions. Start small. Know that publishing something as small as a chapbook will take far more time and energy than you think it will, that if you care about quality, each project will consume you until it’s done.

A Virtual Interview with S. G. Huerta

Background

Thursday, October 12, 2023 7:15 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

On-line event registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bookwoman-2nd-thursday-hybrid-poetry-reading-open-mic-featuring-sg-huerta-tickets-706124235597?aff=oddtdtcreator

SG Huerta, who recently earned their MFA in Creative Writing (poetry) from Texas State, will be our in-store feature for this hybrid in-store/Zoom reading. 

SG Huerta is a queer Xicanx writer from Dallas. They are the Poetry Editor of Abode Press, a new intersectional Texan press. A 2023 Roots Wounds Words Fellow, they also serve as a nonfiction co-editor for ANMLY and memoir reader for Split Lip Magazine. SG is the author of two poetry chapbooks, The Things We Bring with Us (Headmistress Press 2021) and Last Stop (Defunkt Magazine 2023). Their work has appeared in Houston City Hall, The Offing, Split Lip Magazine, Infrarrealista Review, and elsewhere. They live in Texas with their partner and two cats. Find them at https://sghuertawriting.com

The Interview

CH: What is your earliest memory of poetry?

SGH: I read Emily Dickinson at some point in elementary school. My mom has been a reading teacher for most of my life, and my dad was a big reader. A lot of my childhood memories are of reading with my sister or going to the library with my mom! I remember the first poem I wrote was in fourth grade, and it rhymed, which is something I don’t do in my poetry now. By either middle school or high school, my dad got me a secondhand copy of Sylvia Plath’s Ariel. I think that’s what sealed the deal for me.

CH: When did you first become interested in writing poetry? What drew you to it?

SGH: Starting around age 10, I’ve been a bit of a compulsive journaler. When I was younger, some entries just tended to come out as poems. I think what initially drew me in was the new vehicle to express myself with. Once I was diagnosed with depression and later bipolar disorder, poetry became a way to make sense of the world around me, but also inside me.

CH: What took you in the direction of the MFA? Why Texas State?

SGH: In college, I decided to switch to a creative writing degree from STEM despite being told not to. By my last year of college, I kind of realized I didn’t want to do anything but write.

In 2018, Cyrus Cassells—former Texas Poet Laureate, amazing poet and person—did a reading in Lubbock, and I was so enthralled by his poetry. I struck up an awkward conversation in the typical babypoet way, and learned that he taught at Texas State. When it was time to start thinking about my future, I looked into the program more and it became my top choice. When I got the call that I was accepted, a literal week before COVID shut the world down, I said “you’re joking!” Working with incredible people like Cyrus, Cecily Parks, and Naomi Nye honestly was life changing.

I sometimes wish I’d taken a year off or maybe considered other options—academia was and is very hostile to people like me: queer, trans, Latinx, bilingual. But I came out of the program with a lot of great connections and a better idea of what I want my writing life to look like.

CH: I understand your debut chapbook, The Things We Bring with Us, was named a finalist for the Charlotte Mew Prize at Headmistress Press. Please tell us a little about the book. Over what period of time were these poems written? How did you select them?

SGH: The Things We Bring with Us was my undergraduate thesis at Texas Tech. The first poems were written in 2018 and the final ones were written very early 2020.

I had the opportunity, all thanks to the generosity of Texas Tech University and the Terry Foundation, to travel to Europe in 2018 and 2019. The first summer, I went to Spain for a poetry of travel class. I had a lot of feelings come up. It was weird to be in a place for the first time, yet feel a sense of familiarity, but then realize that familiarity exists because of colonization of the Americas. I also was traveling quite a bit throughout college, usually not spending much of my own money, because of institutional access and/or work obligations. I felt tokenized a lot of the time at Texas Tech. These poems were born out of that. On a flight back to Lubbock from Columbus, Ohio (Columbus is inescapable), I wrote the title poem, which opens, “White strangers often give me money / for traveling for work, for barely functioning / while gay and brown, for writing poems / about gayness and brownness. Never explicitly.” Before it was a book, this was not a popular opening line!

CH: The poems of this first book are travel poems, and Sara Ryan’s blurb for the book connects travel to the process of finding oneself. What did you learn in the process of putting together this chapbook?

SGH: While I was writing these poems, I was also in the process of figuring out my queerness and how to not hide it anymore. I was raised incredibly Catholic, and that was something else to grapple with! Through writing, I learned how to be queer and spiritual in my own way.

CH: Your most recent chapbook, last stop, came out this year from Defunkt Magazine. Tell us a little about it.

SGH: In the summer of 2020, my father died by suicide. I think it goes without saying, but it changed everything. When he died, everything was still mostly in lockdown. I had only lived in San Marcos for 11 days. I didn’t know a single person there. MFA orientation was the next day on Zoom. All I could do was write and write and write and read and read and read. A lot of my writing was nonsensical grief, which is important. After maybe the tenth poem in the span of a week, I started a sticky note with a tally of how many “grief poems” I had written.

Eventually, maybe a year and a half after my dad’s death, the grief poems slowed down. I thought that maybe they would be a powerful collection. Losing someone to suicide is so isolating and can cause so much guilt. My dad was also a writer, and I thought, what better way to honor him and my grief and other suicide survivors than poetry.

Defunkt actually published the title poem, “Last Stop,” in 2021. When I saw they were accepting chapbooks the following year, I knew the team would treat my work with care.

CH: How would you compare your experiences in putting together and publishing the two chapbooks?

SGH: The universe is really silly. I got the acceptance email from Headmistress Press the day after my dad died. I was in his dining room while sorting out all the our-dad-just-died stuff with my siblings. I glanced at my phone for a moment of escape. I was in shock. And also, I felt so guilty. How could I celebrate when we were all mourning? I have so much love and respect for Headmistress Press—I’m forever grateful to Mary and Risa! But looking back, it was really hard for me to be as excited as I should have been.

In terms of writing, I felt a lot less restrained in writing Last Stop. At the risk of sounding cliché, when my dad died, I felt like I finally had permission to just write my truth. Of course, when that acceptance email came in, I felt the guilt. How can I be happy about a book that wouldn’t exist if my dad were still here? It’s something I am still grappling with. I think it’s important to talk about it, and to not grieve alone.

CH: I understand you are currently the lead poetry acquisitions editor for Abode Press, and also serve as the non-fiction co-editor for ANMLY. What do you like about the editorial process? How has what you learned in these roles impacted your own writing process?

SGH: I love being an editor, especially in different genres. Abode, founded just this summer by Diamond Braxton, is an intersectional small press rooted in antiracism and empathy. We’re in the middle of our first open call for chapbook submissions. I can already tell we have some difficult decisions ahead of us! Reading chapbook submissions specifically has taught me a lot about how to keep a reader’s attention, and how to strike that balance between a cohesive collection and a repetitive collection.

I started as a nonfiction reader for ANMLY about a year ago, and am now working on my first issue as co-editor! Nonfiction is a whole other beast. When I first started reading submissions, it became clear how much depends on the first line. It’s also a fantastic way to see what other people are writing about in real time. 

In every editorial role I’ve had, the best part is definitely putting that spotlight on our incredible authors. Editing is a privilege—it’s important to me to use that position to help writers put their words out there in the most effective way possible. Plus, honestly, as a kid who loved nothing more than reading and writing, it’s very cool to be an adult who reads as part of their job!

CH: What are you working on now?

SGH: I recently realized that I’m maybe working on a memoir about academia and the way it harbors abusive power dynamics. I don’t expect to be finished for another decade or so, but I’ve been working on it for the last six months, and I’m excited to see how it takes shape.

I also recently finished my first full-length poetry collection. It is exciting and scary!

CH: Who are some of your favorite poets? What’s the most recent book of poetry you’ve read?

SGH: Eileen Myles and Danez Smith are two of my favorite poets. The Things We Bring with Us was heavily influenced by Myles and their collection Not Me. I read after a bookseller in New York recommended it to me and my little lesbian heart just about exploded. Smith, in my opinion, is one of the best poets out there right now. Their work is so inventive and holds both immense grief and joy. It’s clear that community and solidarity lives in their poetry, and I want that to be true for mine, too.

I’m kind of a monster and read several books at once… I just finished mónica teresa ortiz’s new chapbook have you ever dreamed of flamingos? Mónica is a dear friend and fantastic poet—definitely a Texas poet of our time! I also recently finished Ecologia by Sophia Anfinn Tonnessen for a review forthcoming in a new lit mag, manywor(l)ds. I have a couple thousand words on it, but the short version: Tonnessen’s poems render transness holy and natural and utterly poetic.

It’s beyond exciting to be poeting at the same time as so many incredible writers.

A Virtual Interview with Anthony Sutton

Background

Thursday, August 10, 2023 7:15 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Zoom Event Registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bookwoman-2nd-thursday-wanthony-sutton-and-charlie-clark-tickets-645752060797

Anthony Sutton’s debut poetry collection is  Particles of a Stranger Light (Veliz Books, 2023). Sutton resides on former Akokisas, Atakapa, Karankawa, and Sana land (currently named Houston, TX), as an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor fellow at the University of Houston’s Creative Writing and Literature PhD program and teaches in the community for Grackle and Grackle. Anthony’s poetry has appeared in Grist, guesthouse, Gulf Coast, The Journal, Prairie Schooner, Puerto del Sol, Oversound, Quarter After Eight, Southern Indiana Review, Zone 3, the anthology In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy, and elsewhere. With Michael C. Peterson, they are co-editor of the Unsung Masters volume on Black Arts-adjacent poet Tom Postell.

The Interview

CH: When did you first begin to think of yourself as a writer? As a poet?

AS: It wasn’t until I was 20 I started writing poems. My early years in college were kind of miserable and I transferred schools a couple times. I recall one day I was on a campus I didn’t really want to go back to but needed to send my transcript off for another transfer and I just heard language coming together in my head that I could shape into… something. As a kid I remember latching onto interesting turns of phrase, which I take as being the beginnings of a writerly-ear. That day was the first time I heard a voice I could follow.

CH: I understand you are currently in the University of Houston’s Creative Writing and Literature PhD program, where you are an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor fellow. How did you decide on this path for your education?

AS: I’m generally a very studied and academic person and I feel more able as a writer when my connection to the history of literature, art, and ideas is clear. A year into my PhD and I’ve enjoyed building more depth in the history of Black Critical Thought and a better sense of prosody (which I have kind of avoided for a long time).

CH: Congratulations on the publication of Particles of a Stranger Light (Veliz Books, 2023). Please tell us a little about the book. Over what period of time were these poems written?

AS: The oldest poem in the book was drafted in August 2014 and the youngest was drafted in June 2022, weeks before Veliz accepted the manuscript and we began the editing process. So, I count it as a little over eight years of work, which I think is a moderate amount of time to write a book (I know writers who work much more swiftly and writers who take much longer).

Most of the work on it was done during my MFA which I did from 2014-2017. The version that existed when I graduated was longer and less focused than what got published, after that I spent five years cutting it down, adding new work, and trying to see where the poems wanted to go.

The defining moment in those years was in 2018 when some of the poems were getting picked up in lit mags, but not as quickly as I had hoped. I decided to cut every page that I wasn’t comfortable with, thinking it would either be a short book or a long chapbook. It ended up being about 45 pages, and so I continued it as a book with the idea that it wouldn’t be longer than 50 manuscript pages of poetry, unless it was really, really necessary.

CH: Your publisher, Veliz Books, begins its description of Particles of a Stranger Light by calling it “A memoir. A horror movie. A descent into hell.” Why did you choose poetry (as opposed to prose memoir) for the material with which you are working in the book?

AS: The essay genre is definitely a major influence for me. Some of my favorite poems in Particles of a Stranger Light feel dangerously close to being essays-with-line-breaks. However, I don’t often have much drive to work in prose. Line-breaks and small bursts of inventive language are what unlock my imagination.

The memoir part of the book is really the spine that holds it together, a set of poems where the speaker may-or-may-not of had their drink spiked, which was also the genesis for this collection. Beyond that, the book isn’t really a memoir-in-poems (I think of it as having a memoir inside of it) and also has poems like “Creation Myth with Blatant Copy-Right Infringement” which don’t exactly take place on the planet Earth. I actually advocate for more U.S. poetry to take place outside the mortal realm.

CH: How did you go about selecting and sequencing the poems for this collection? What did you learn from the process?

AS: Like a lot of poets, I begin with the poems scattered on the floor. Then, there are two main methods I use in sequencing poems. The first is by arranging the poems so that the end of one leads into the beginning of another which creates a sense of arc and continuity. For me, it reveals the conversations the poems have with each other that may not be immediately clear to me. After that, out of fear that I am making too much sense, I back away and look at the poems as shapes-on-the-page and try to see if more interesting visual combinations lead to a more interesting arc. The book is a negotiation between those two methods.

CH: I understand that the poems of Particles of a Stranger Light inhabit a variety of forms. What was your approach to form in the poems of this collection?

AS: Variety and range are very important to me. The thought of being strictly a narrative, lyric, or experimental poet makes me feel claustrophobic. My goal is to write every type of poem I can withstand. Working through a long timetable makes this easier, with time comes work that will surprise you.

In a very good episode of The Commonplace Podcast, Julie Carr says that form isn’t just a matter of shape, but also approach, and I should mention that when I say form here I mean approach more than anything. Two poems in the book that are very different are “Garden Animals” which is a lyric-narrative meditation on childhood memory and “Endless Remakes” which is in the form of a film script and mimics the styles of various auteur directors. Both of them push me out of my default mode which sounds more like versified critical race theory and queer theory.

CH: I understand you’re currently teaching at Grackle and Grackle. How has the experience of teaching influenced your writing?

AS: Grackle and Grackle provides community workshops to writers in Houston and outside (via Zoom). As someone who spends a lot of my time and energy inside of universities, it is a gift to take some really niche ideas about poetry into the wider world. Teaching poetry also enriches me. I don’t think of myself as the kind of mentor who tries to make people’s work “better” (whatever that means) but I try to encourage people to be weirder and more audacious with their work. And then, with the stimulation I get from that, I try to be weirder and more audacious with my own work.

CH: Thinking back over the work you did that led to the publication of Particles of a Stranger Light, what advice would you give to other poets?

AS: I was very lucky to have teachers who instilled the idea that I have to work on my writing every day. The catch is, some days staring at your writing counts; thinking about your writing counts; having your head in the clouds counts (that’s where the really important stuff gets done, for me at least). As time goes on, you get some things you apply for, you don’t get a lot of things you apply for, but really the most important thing is to make sure you have some path forward.

I was corresponding with another writer earlier this summer and at first I was inclined to use the metaphor of a marathon, that every step brings you forward, but that’s not true. One really has to accept that most of the work one does (drafting new pieces, submitting work) amounts to nothing. If you have some goal, a book perhaps, you keep your focus on that and keep figuring out how to get closer.

CH: Who are some poets whose work has become a touchstone for you?

AS: In the book are three poems all titled “C’mon and Show Me Something Newer than Even Dante” which comes from a Bernadette Mayer poem called ‘Sonnet.” Both Dante and Mayer are influential to me. Dante for his cosmic vision and Mayer for her endless inventiveness.

Another poet I reference in the book who is influential to me is Kazim Ali. My poem “Lucifer As Auteur” is after his “Persephone as Boy.” When I read Ali’s poem, it felt like a type of poem I had never read before, and I try to chase after that sense of newness.

Frank O’Hara was also very important to me when I was initially writing this book. Many of my poems take after O’Hara in that current events are important to me, and you can see small records of the last decade in the book (Mike Brown, George Floyd, and the alt-right term “white genocide” all briefly appear). I like that in O’Hara’s work you can see his influences, and from him I learned about Russian Futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky (who also had cosmic visions).

Lastly, Anne Carson and Lyn Hejinian are both poets who both bring immense thoughtfulness to their every sentence. I try to have some of that.

A Virtual Interview with Dora Robinson

Background

Thursday, July 13, 2023 7:15 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Event Registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bookwoman-2nd-thursday-hybrid-poetry-reading-and-open-mic-wdora-robinson-tickets-645106128797

Dora Robinson will be our in-store feature for this hybrid in-store / Zoom event. Robinson is the author of the debut poetry collection Last Exit, which was inspired by her respect and admiration for the Great Plains which informs her heritage and family experiences. 

Dora Robinson, along with her two older brothers Chuck and Harry, grew up un a horse breeding farm in Southern Wisconsin. She emerged from her mother’s womb carrying a packet of pencils in one hand and a collection of poems by Emily Dickinson in the other. Robinson’s poems have appeared in journals such as Coal City Review, Underwood Press, The Texas Poetry Calendar, and others. She lives in Austin Texas with her spouse, Beverly. She loves seeing lightning shoot across the sky and Tex-Mex.

The Interview

CH: What is your first memory of poetry? How did poetry figure in your childhood?

DR: There were several leather bound poetry books my mom kept in her bookcase.  I remember reading several poems by Shelly and Blake. That was my first taste of poetry.

CH: When were you first intrigued by writing? When did you begin to think of yourself as a writer?

DR: My freshman year in high school my English class included a unit on poetry. I became curious about how poets could say so much with such few words. I also became fascinated with words, their origin, and how they sounded when used in poems. When my first poem was published, I claimed I Am A Poet.

CH: I understand that you’ve written historical fiction as well as poetry. How would you describe yourself as a writer?

DR: I did write several historical short stories but soon learned that poetry is my calling. As a writer, it is important that each of my poems (since most are story based) be researched. Also, to use the elements of poetry, metaphor, etc. when indicated and to create images that bring the reader into the poems’ setting.

CH: Congratulations on the publication of your debut poetry collection, Last Exit (Kelsay Books, 2023). Tell us a little about the book.  

DR: Jayne Marek, whom I studied with wrote the following about “Last Exit. “ In Last Exit, the rigors of the American plains mark everyone who lives there. Dora Robinson frankly depicts the perpetual struggles of immigrants and homesteaders against weather, isolation, and economic stress.”  My love of research served me well as a number of the poems are based on actual events.

CH: Over what period of time were the poems of Last Exit written? How did you approach selecting and sequencing the poems?

DR: The first poem in the collection was written in 2012. The final poem, Last Exit, was written in 2021. Jayne assisted in helping me select the poems. I spread them out on the living room floor. After numerous sorting and resorting three themes emerged. Poems were then grouped according to the themes. Several people made suggestions about the order of the poems under each theme. During the ordering process, I  drank a lot of wine.

CH: The prominence of place within the poems of Last Exit can’t be overstated. What is your take on how place figures in your writing as a whole? What has been your greatest frustration in taking place to the page?  

DR: Place anchors my poems. I take great care that the reader knows where he/she is and can experience place as if they lived there. Although I sometimes do get frustrated, I find taking a break helps me stop banging my head.

CH: What did you learn from the process of putting together this collection? How has this experience changed you as a writer?  

DR:  I learned to be more patient. set side and not force poems to fit the collection. My love of words, doing research feeds my muse. I learned that a good editor is extremely important if you want your book to stand out. The editing process also improved my understanding and correct use of syntax.

CH: If you could give advice to yourself when you first began to write, what would that be?

DR: Do not get caught up in “I want to be  published.”  Commit to  the craft–study other poets, write imitations, go to workshops, find a writers group. Write, write, write, and make sure you have someone in your life that gives you constructive criticism.

CH: What are you working on now?

DR: Much of this past year was spent getting the manuscript ready for publication. My spouse and I also bought a small condo and moved. During this time my Muse informed me she was going on vacation. She just returned. I have pieces of poems in my folders and we are going to start there.

CH: What’s the most recent book of poetry you’ve read? The most recent work of historical fiction?  

DR: I just finished Ellen Bass’s book, The  Human Line. I was fortunate to take a zoom class with Ellen. I am also reading The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared.  Love the author’s (Jonas Jonasson) humor and creativity.

A Virtual Interview with Lisha Adela Garcia

Background

Thursday, June 8, 2023 7:15 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bookwoman-2nd-thursday-poetry-reading-and-open-mic-lisha-adela-garcia-tickets-600654954137

Feature Lisha Adela García has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and currently resides in Texas with her beloved four-legged children. Her books, A Rope of Luna and Blood Rivers, were published by Blue Light Press of San Francisco. Her chapbook, This Stone Will Speak was published by Pudding House Press. In addition, she is widely published in various journals including the Boston Review, Crab Orchard Review, Border Senses, Muse and Mom Egg Review.

García leads the Wyrdd Writers, a writing group based in San Antonio with participants from Kerrville and San Marcos and co-facilitates a Poetic Medicine group named Poetry Exile Group founded by Jungian analyst, Dr. James Brandenburg. She also facilitates Poetic Medicine classes in Social Justice, Archetypes and other topics, and is a candidate for certification from the Institute of Poetic Medicine.

García has served as a judge for various poetry prizes, most recently the Chicago Poetry Prize of Chicago’s Poetry Society, and has given workshops for a variety of colleges and universities. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart and was a recipient of the San Antonio Tri-Centennial Poetry Prize. 

The Interview

CH: How did poetry and the music of language figure in your childhood? What is your first memory of poetry?

LAG: Poetry has always brought solace. My mother loved poetry and shared the poetry greats like Neruda, Machado, and Mistral in Spanish. My mother gave me Sonnets of the Portuguese for my eighth birthday when I was confident enough in my English to be able to enjoy it.  The love for poetry in both languages has embraced me ever since.

CH: When did you first begin to think of yourself as a poet?

LAG: I’ve written poetry since I was a young child.  I however, had a large inner critic and didn’t like sharing what I had written.  It wasn’t until I completed my MFA and had a large number of publications that I was confident enough to call myself a poet.  My self-esteem needed to rise and meet the duende.  It needed to rise consistently, until I found my distinct voice in the human sea.

CH: I understand you have an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. What prompted you to enter this MFA program? How did participating in this program change you as a writer?

LAG: We are very fortunate to have Gemini Ink, a literary non-profit, in San Antonio.  They sponsored a mentorship program with known poets. I applied and mentored under Martha Rhodes, publisher of Four Way Press.  Founder and then Executive Director, Nan Cuba and Martha saw enough promise to encourage me to apply for an MFA.  They were kind enough to write letters of recommendation and modeled the magic of why an investment in a creative life was imperative.  I chose a low residency MFA as I was a single mom and working full time.  My life has bloomed with poetry and its healing balm ever since.  I am forever grateful to both of these ladies.  

CH: Blue Light Press published your first full-length collection, Blood Rivers, in 2009. Tell us a little about the book.

LAG: Blood Rivers was my learning book.  I’d written hundreds of poems by then and had never worked on a collection.  The book began as my creative thesis for the MFA and then was refined many more times.  I had discovered Diane Frank, publisher of Blue Light Press as a muse and worked with her individually when she asked to publish the book. 

CH: Over what period of time were the poems written? How did you go about sequencing the collection, and how did you connect with the publisher?

LAG: The final poems selected for this book were written over 10 years and revised and reordered many times.  I had trusted readers and editors help in the process. I believe that you always need an outsider to assist you with final edits and ordering because they can be a much more critical audience.  I am too close to my work and words to be completely objective about the experience I want my readers to have. I need help!

CH: You followed up in 2016 with the publication of A Rope of Luna, also with Blue Light Press. The cover design for A Rope of Luna suggests to me nested identities both bound and breaking free of constraints, an image well-suited to a collection whose title mixes English and Spanish. Please tell us a little about this book as well.

LAG: This book indeed broke me free of many labels.  Poems refer to the extreme losses in my life and the need to grieve but not placate the victim archetype within me. The premise of a rope coming down from Luna and leaving messages, frames the book’s sections.  It attempts to answer the question of who you are and what parts of you remain when all your reference points are gone.  I was extremely fortunate that Blue Light Press wanted to publish this second book as well. 

CH: How did your experience with Blood Rivers shape your work with A Rope of Luna? What was different for you as you put together this book? In your opinion, what are some of the benefits of a long-term relationship with a single publisher?

LAG: The benefits so far of having a single publisher is the cherished relationship one forms over time.  A deep bond of respect. Blood Rivers was a journey to Rope of Luna five years later.  I continued to write consistently and chronicle the world through my bilingual, bicultural filter. My poetry world expanded with more readings and regional activities. I’ve almost completed a third book entitled: Prayers to the Saint of Impossible Situations. In the interregnum between book two and three, the world changed with COVID and the increased intolerance for the most vulnerable among us. As a result, I chose to pursue a certification in Poetic Medicine with the Institute of Poetic Medicine and learn how to effectively use poetry as a healing modality.  Work on the third book stalled while I studied.  Book three needs a home and I promised myself to revisit it soon as a much larger endeavor.

CH: I understand that you practice literary translation of poetry, from Spanish to English and English to Spanish. Translation inevitably involves trade-offs; how do you approach the translation of a poem? What does the practice of translation bring to your poetry?

LAG: The challenge of translation is not just the translation of words from one language to another but also, to unearth the cultural context of the world of the poet. A second challenge requires a re-creation of the poem as another poem in the translated language worthy of its original song. When you are fluent in more than one language, you realize that you inhabit a bridge in a world that always needs translating.

Discovering voices that need to belong to a broader world is such an honor.  My life and poetry practice are enriched beyond my immediate context when a translated voice is allowed to enter my consciousness.  Although I can read the great Spanish language poets in their original language, where would we be as a people, as poets, without access to the voices of Rumi or Szymborska? I would not feel totally human without poems from all over the world.

CH: In addition to your MFA in Writing, I understand you also hold a Master’s in International Business from the Thunderbird School of Global Management, now part of Arizona State University. What synergies do you find between these left- and right-brained arenas?

LAG: During my undergraduate years my choices were to lead a life of academia and a PhD or to risk something entirely new and understand how money moves in the world.  In those days, not many women were encouraged to enter the world of business.  I wanted to be prepared to never have to depend on a man for money.  At that time, Thunderbird was recruiting liberal arts graduates because they were more well-rounded than someone who chose a strictly business focus. I wanted to have that balance in my brain and in my life. I wanted to be able to support myself and future children AND honor that creative side.  I am so glad that I made those choices because now I have two vocabularies, can support myself and live a creative life.

CH: How do you find and create balance in your professional and writing lives?

LAG: I find myself always working on either a client business issue or jotting lines for a poem.  It seems I never really have enough time as I would like for either.  I love my job as a business advisor as much as I love poetry.  I am always trying to find the right balance and some weeks I succeed but some I do not.  I’m just grateful that my life is so full. 

CH: What is the most recent book of poetry that you’ve read?

LAG: I’ve just finished reading, The Well Speaks of its Own Poison by Maggie Smith, Spirit of Wild by KB Ballentine and Anorexorcism by E.D. Watson.  Learned so much from each of these.  My recent Poetic Medicine classes, with E.D. Watson, were on Social Justice and Women with Rage. Our third online class this year is forthcoming.  

Thank you, Cindy, and Book Woman for this great sharing and reading opportunity.