David Hadbawnik is a poet, translator, and medieval
scholar. His Aeneid Books 1-6 was
published by Shearsman Books in 2015. In 2012, he edited Thomas Meyer’s Beowulf (Punctum Books), and in 2011 he
co-edited selections from Jack Spicer’s Beowulf
for CUNY’s Lost and Found Document Series. He has published academic essays
on poetic diction in English poetry from the medieval through early modern
period, and is Assistant Professor of English at American University of Kuwait.
His latest book, Holy Sonnets to Orpheus and Other Poems, was published by Delete Press in 2018.
1 - How did your first book change your
life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel
different?
Hardly at all,
other than giving me the confidence that someone out there cared about my work.
But that is to be expected given that the book, Ovid in Exile (Interbirth Books, 2007), was published by a small
press as a labor of love. My most recent work, Holy Sonnets to Orpheus and Other Poems (Delete Press, 2018),
builds on the translation practice I developed for Aeneid books 1-6 (Shearsman, 2015) and includes a free translation
of some of Virgil’s Eclogues,
responses to various “canonical” poems, and an extended sonnet sequence that
plays off Donne’s Holy Sonnets and
Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus. The
practice became wilder and freer, and overall I just tried to have even more
fun with it.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as
opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
For a long time
I was a fiction writer – my first short story, in second grade I think, was
about a boy getting attacked by a robot as he walked home from school. And
straight through high school and college, though I dabbled with poetry here and
there, I focused on fiction. In my twenties I moved to San Francisco and began
studying with Diane di Prima, and that was that.
3 - How long does it take to start any
particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a
slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or
does your work come out of copious notes?
It depends.
Working on translation, say, of the Aeneid,
is a very slow but satisfying process, because there I copy out the Latin and then
rough out a translation, then write the “poem” version by hand in a different
notebook, and finally type it into a document, editing and shaping along the
way – so day by day, there are incremental but tangible results. For most of
the poems in Holy Sonnets… I worked
much more quickly, but it still helped to have some framework to start from, be
it an actual translation or another poem I was responding to or a sense of
sequence that I could plug into each day.
4 - Where does a poem usually begin for
you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger
project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
After 20-plus
years I still don’t know how to start a poem. It’s a mystery to me. As it
should be, perhaps. Sometimes I consciously start a project and keep at it for
a long time and then the whole thing falls apart and I have to move on. Other
times I like to work from exercises, which can seem either fun or contrived,
depending. And then, as they say, there are the poems that just sort of arise
seemingly from nowhere and tell you where they want to go. My first book was
kind of like that, but for the Virgil I had to make conscious decisions and sort
of nudge it along. As I get older there is less of the sustained “inspiration”-type
poetry but more of a comfort level and confidence that it’s actually headed
somewhere.
5 - Are public readings part of or
counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing
readings?
There’s a huge
sense of anxiety around readings for many of us – others’ as well as our own –
and I’m not immune to that. I think if you let the anxiety take over it can be
counter-productive, in the sense that you might find yourself trying to please
a certain crowd or meet some imaginary standard. But in fact poems live to be
heard, and it’s important to sort of air them out and get that living response.
I enjoy doing readings because I’m confident in the work and over time I feel
I’ve developed a way of performing the poems that does them justice. Living in
the Middle East as I have for the past three years, I don’t get to do readings
nearly as often as I’d like; I’ve only been able to do one reading for Aeneid after the full book came out, and
two so far for the new book, but I would love to do more.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns
behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your
work? What do you even think the current questions are?
Not at all, and
in fact the theory I absorbed over ten years of grad school, while it was often
fun and exhilarating to read, was detrimental to my poetry and had to be
“unlearned” before I could pick up the thread and move forward. Having said
that, I’m trying to discover ways to push at the concept of “translation.” As a
medievalist, it’s striking to me that poets from previous ages didn’t really
have these categories: “this is an original poem,” “this is a translation,”
“this is an adaptation,” etc. There was just verse. You dipped into it and
borrowed and shaped what you liked. So I guess the questions I’m grappling with
– more trying to ask than answer – are “What is translation? Why do we need to
think of something as a translation? What does it mean to divvy up poems into
these categories?”
7 – What do you see the current role of
the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think
the role of the writer should be?
I like what Lew Welch had to say; something like, “the poet’s job is to listen to the din of
the tribe and make a song out of that.” And outside of First-world, Western
culture, that’s still very much what poetry seems to be. It’s been lost in the
noise of late capitalism for many of us, but that seems to me the job.
8 - Do you find the process of working
with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I’ve been
blessed with editors who are very supportive and easy to work with. Since
small-press poetry is, as previously mentioned, so often a labor of love,
there’s a real opportunity for poets to be involved in the editing, design, and
even marketing process of a book as it’s made. Besides engaging with editors in
the area of content, I’ve enjoyed having input on the latter elements of the
process. As someone who’s been on the “editor” side of things, I really appreciate
when a poet I’m working with embraces that role. What you are entering into
when you agree to publish with someone is a relationship, and it goes both
ways; the poems don’t magically appear in the world after they’re written. So
for example with Jared Schickling and Crane Giamo at Delete Press for Holy Sonnets, I suggested an artist to
provide the cover image, solicited the art from him, and had a really
productive back-and-forth with the editors as the book went through the editing
and design process, discussing everything from typeface to page breaks to the
dimensions of the book to the cover design.
9 - What is the best piece of advice
you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Diane di Prima
says that a writer is someone who writes. This simple but profound statement
completely removes the need for validation beyond one’s own relationship to the
writing, and gives infinite permission to experiment, write badly, mess up, and
start over as one learns the craft.
10 - How easy has it been for you to
move between genres (poetry to translation to critical prose)? What do you see
as the appeal?
It’s terribly
difficult and I find that I am a “one thing at a time” type of writer. If I’m
writing a critical essay then chances are I will have to submit to that process
until it’s over. I see little distinction between poetry and translation, so
that’s easier, but still by and large it’s one project at a time. The appeal of
moving between genres is that different topics require different modes of
attention and thus different forms, so one does well to keep fluent in them as
much as possible.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you
tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
A day begins if
possible with a run. Being in the desert, that usually means the gym, but I run
outside whenever and wherever possible. This helps get the blood pumping,
clears the mind, and sets the tone for the day. As for a writing routine,
that’s tough, but I carry a small notebook wherever I go and I try to write
something in it, no matter how brief, every single day. When working on the Aeneid translation I try to copy out and
translate 15-20 lines per day, which I find is a good discipline and something
I can do in the 30-45 minutes I have before the demands of the day rush in.
12 - When your writing gets stalled,
where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I go back to
the basics and play games with words and just try to notice something in the
world that takes me out of myself.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Mowed lawn.
14 - David W. McFadden once said that
books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work,
whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Different things
at different times. For a long time it was jazz – the avant-garde music scene
in the Bay Area during the late 90s / early aughts, along with the greats like
John Coltrane, Grachan Moncur, Albert Ayler, et al. who influenced them; going
to art museums and galleries in the great cities; just standing for hours on
end looking at the Diego Rivera murals in the Detroit Institute of Art, where I
spent so many days during college.
15 - What other writers or writings are
important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I am endlessly
inspired by writers who translate / channel / “creatively adapt” older forms of
literature. This really begins for me with Chaucer, who almost never writes
something wholly original but is always making a new version of something, with
a particular and often hilarious twist. If we’re talking contemporary writers,
then Anne Carson, Patience Agbabi, Thomas Meyer, Christopher Logue… Just last
week I came across a newish book by Peter O’Leary called The Sambo, a reworking of part of a Scandinavian epic, and I was
blown away by it.
16 - What would you like to do that you
haven't yet done?
Write a novel.
Record an album. Translate something wild and obscure from medieval Latin.
17 - If you could pick any other occupation
to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have
ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Musician.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to
doing something else?
Lack of skill
as a musician.
19 - What was the last great book you
read? What was the last great film?
Book: Valis by Philip K. Dick, which wasn’t so
much “great” as mind-blowingly weird. Film: Black Panther, which did a pretty good job of being a kick-ass action film that
also packed a powerful message.
20 - What are you currently working on?
Since it’s
summer, I’m trying to push through the last couple books of the Aeneid, while also catching up on
various academic essays, despite my “one thing at a time” rule.
