Ongoing notes: mid-December 2023: Jack Davis, Katie Naughton + Yaxkin Melchy Ramos (trans. Ryan Greene,

I sure have been picking up a bunch of chapbooks lately (but I would welcome further, as you probably know).

Calgary AB: Parry Sound ON: The debut publication by Monica Kidd’s Whiskey Jack Letterpress is the gracefully-produced Guillemots Gillemets: AUDUBON IN LABRADOR: some poems (2023), by Parry Sound, Ontario poet Jack Davis. There’s much to celebrate in this lovely and sleek publication, including the fact that Davis’ work is not only searing in its attention to detail, and the fact that he doesn’t publish that often [see my review of his full-length debut, Faunics, published in 2017 by Pedlar Press, here]. A note at the end of the chapbook offers that “This piece is composed solely of words contained in select entries from John James Audubon’s journal of his travels along the coast of Labrador in the summer of 1833, making illustrations to complete his BIRDS OF AMERICA.” What is it about Audubon that always gets the poets worked up? Not long ago there was Béatrice Szymkowiak’s full-length debut, B/RDS (Salt Lake City UT: The University of Utah Press, 2023) [see my review of such here] set as an erasure project of Birds of America (1827-1838), and even Andrew Steeves mentioned an Audubon project he was working on as part of his own ’12 or 20 questions’ interview (whatever became of that project, Andrew?). There is something intriguing about how Davis moves from the short, sharp lyric moment to a continued moment in this particular seven page, seven poem piece, offering a detail of small somehow stretched or continued. The small moment, touching and touching down once more, again, and continued. As well, there is something reminiscent of Robert Kroestch’s own The New World and Finding It (1999) in terms of letterpress, book structure and poem structure, each page and poem of Davis’ work three couplets long, set on the right page:

Inside this linen enclosing a skin of tolerable French
braided with a grouse for its maker

I am of a peaty nature fed by the drainage of
decomposed truths and opinions I would call a song

What I know full well is renewed every few minutes
like the shy accuracy of drawing ‘somewhere’ on a map.

Vancouver BC/Chicago IL: I’m always pleased to see new work by Vancouver-based American poet Katie Naughton [see also her above/ground press title], and her latest is a second singing (dancing girl press, 2023), a chapbook-length extended suite of lyric fragments, stanzas and moments extended across an ongoing stretch and thread and thought. “this is the moment / of crisis / this is / the crisis” she writes, mid-point in the collection, offering grey spools of lyric across climate, capitalism and the “formal histories” of personal space, geography, being and loss. As she speaks as part of a recent interview for the Colorado Review blog, referencing her pre-Vancouver time in Buffalo: “At Buffalo especially I’ve been exposed to very socially conscious poetry, or work that is very interested in thinking about positionality and forces beyond the individual that shape the conditions of individual life. I started thinking about how to contain those in poetry, and how to write from a place of relative privilege or being somewhere in the middle in a way that doesn’t just reinforce the oppressive system that you are both negatively affected by and also, at least relatively, rewarded by.”

look at the trees their August shade
from the window of your life your one window
from the bedroom from the stairs
you went up and won’t come down again
the heat, the house, the laundry and breath
done there
your minutes transit the house from the bed
of all Augusts
same silent heat wind sun shade still
of time gathered there, that room
I lay on the floor
your child and not
the blonde wood and white linen
soap and ceiling
you had a room once
a bicycle a dusty road
the oak shade the sun
in another state
as children
as I did
do

Houston TX: I’m intrigued by the chapbook WORD HEART (2023) by Mexican and Peruvian-Quechua poet (currently studying in Japan) Yaxkin Melchy Ramos, translated from Spanish by Arizona poet and translator Ryan Greene. According to Greene’s author biography, this chapbook was produced as part of a project to translate (and presumably publish) the first three books of Ramos’ five-part “constellation-book,” THE NEW WORLD. I’m intrigued by the lyric Ramos (via Greene) offers, one filled with beautiful optimism; open-hearted, writing light, especially across the dark. Ramos’ narrative “I” is one filled with resolve and optimism, even when wading waist-deep in grief.

BLANKETS

I’m out of my mind when I sleep
because poetry is a song
where your axles sing over the asphalt

I travel toward the thought of your mouth
when I see how the hills run and
                                                        I leave them in my dust
I travel by night
while your stomach is your heavy heart
and it rolls down the highway like a ship across the Moon

and you hear an identical word
and tomorrow will be the day the beds
in the houses
in the hospitals
in the bedrooms
in the childhood kneeling on the blankets
will end up in our heart’s folds
piling up day after day unwashed.

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Kimberly Reyes

Kimberly Reyes is the author of the poetry collections vanishing point. (Omnidawn 2023), Running to Stand Still (Omnidawn 2019), and the chapbook Warning Coloration (dancing girl press 2018). Her nonfiction chapbook of essays Life During Wartime (Fourteen Hills 2019) won the 2018 Michael Rubin Book Award. Her work is featured in various international outlets including The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Associated Press, Entertainment Weekly, Time.com, The New York Post, The Village Voice, Alternative Press, ESPN the Magazine, Film Ireland, The Irish Examiner, Poetry London, Poetry Ireland, RTÉ Radio, NY1 News, The Irish Journal of American Studies, The Best American Poetry blog, poets.org, American Poets Magazine, The Feminist Wire, and The Stinging Fly. Kimberly has received fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, the Fulbright Program, CantoMundo, Callaloo, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Tin House Workshops, The Irish Arts Council, Culture Ireland, the Munster Literature Centre, the Prague Summer Program for Writers, Summer Literary Seminars in Kenya, Community of Writers, and other places.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I didn’t, haha. Unless you win a major award it doesn’t really change your life and you realize you’re a writer so you keep writing. vanishing point. is similar to my previous work in that it represents significant years of my life -- I don’t pretend that my work isn’t mostly autobiographical. And It feels different from my first book in that it’s a bit more experimental in form.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I didnt come to poetry first, I was a journalist first so prose was and will always be my bread and butter, I for sure still write nonfiction. Poetry is just my true love that doesn’t pay. It keeps me sane, although I guess sanity is relative.
 
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Such a good question. It really depends on where I am mentally and readings serve as barometers for that. I can tell if I feel situated and if I have community by how comfortable I feel in a particular place and time at a reading. So sometimes I enjoy reading and sometimes I dont. And as far as my creative process I don’t really know if i connect giving readings to that but I am certainly inspired by hearing certain poets read.

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?
God yes. I mean what is this all for? Is the human condition worth it? Do we take these lesson with us? Does it all even out in the end or are all of these injustices meant to just eat at us until the end of time? Why why why?

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
To try to make sense of things and to try to make this existence a bit more bearable for ourselves and for each other.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I absolutely LOVE working with editors! I think it’s such a privilege when someone takes you and your work seriously enough to engage with it in a meaningful way, to ask questions, and to challenge you to do better. A good editor really needs to be engaged beyond the surface level and when that happens I’m always appreciative. I’ve noticed that the practice of editing is disappearing, especially from smaller, underfunded presses, and it’s sad. Attention is the most valuable currency there is.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Rising pizza dough and hot trash (I’m from NYC).

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Write a screenplay. I’ve become hooked on poetry films and seeing my work come to life visually so I’d love to see that happen on a larger scale.

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?
I’d love to be a small shop owner, maybe selling crystals or baked goods in the countryside. Something without deadlines in the way I’m used to, where my day to day is an actual day to day that I can’t predict.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I don’t know if I ever really had a choice. My teachers told my parents it was something I should pursue ever since elementary school and then I was always writing for my school papers so I assumed I’d be writing for magazines and then I saw Almost Famous while I was in college and I was like: Done! This kinda ties back into the screenplay thing, I guess I just wanna be Cameron Crowe.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Last great book: Wanda Coleman’s Wicked Enchantment

Last great film: Aftersun.

20 - What are you currently working on?
My next book for Omnidawn while trying to stay sane in my PhD program. If the book comes out and I’m a doctor in 2025 I will have succeeded.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Erin Wilson

Erin Wilson grew up in a rural community on Manitoulin Island, Canada. Her work has appeared in journals including Dalhousie Review, CV2, Verse Daily, Tar River, in the anthology Worth More Standing, Poets and Activists Pay Homage to Trees, and in numerous other journals internationally. Her works include Blue and At Home with Disquiet (both full-length collections with Circling Rivers) and The Belly of the Pig (chapbook, Dancing Girls Press). She has been long-listed for the CBC Poetry Prize. She makes her home now in a small town on Robinson-Huron Treaty territory.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

On the surface, my first book didn't change my life at all. But underneath everything, there was this actualization of a belief I had held since I was a child. It was a private vindication. I was a writer. My second book, Blue, is a book about depression, motherhood, grief and the transformative power of art. It has a more cohesive theme and purpose.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

It's a very strange thing. My husband (James Owens, who also writes poetry) and I were just trying to decipher why this has been the case for us. It comes very honestly and has its roots in the essence of who I am. Language has always been a living entity to me. I am and have been alert to it since my beginnings. It seems to be a facet of the fabric of me -- body and mind woven tightly together. Some people have ruddy complexions and gnarled fingers. Some people have one leg shorter than the other. I have poetry.

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?

Every project is different. Sometimes poems arrive as finished products while I am driving, and I struggle to get them down blindly in a notepad on my lap, while not taking my eyes from the road. When I can pull over, I try to make sense of the scribbles before all is lost. Other poems take years of observations and note taking, not to mention emotional development. I am only just now beginning to learn how to become humble to the needs of the poem. But we race death, and so I have to find the balance between waiting long enough to allow pieces time to mature and getting projects accomplished before I am naught.

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?

I am definitely an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project. However, there are a few different voices (registers) I write with. (See above: racing death. I try truth from every angle.) The voice determines which project the poems will call home.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I'm the kind of writer that is at home in the woods or in a field of grasses or beside a swamp or on a hill of fern. I greatly enjoy reading to ditches. I've known a red pine or two to seem to enjoy a few particular pieces I've written. I get shivers thinking of the rapt attention given me by granite. I'm thinking of trying an audience of snow-locked birches soon.

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?

I think the current questions are the same questions that have always existed. I am alive. Am I alive? What am I? Am I? What is this world that I believe I'm experiencing? What is time? What is language? My god, where has it come from?!? How do I take what is ephemeral and get it to stay, with meaning and value?

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

“You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it.” Wendell Berry

“A Poet is called upon to provoke a spirtual jolt and not to cultivate idolators.” Arseny Tarkovsky

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I laugh. Sometimes difficult. Sometimes essential. Usually, with retrospect, at least interesting. There are a lot of personalities and voices to be negotiated.  (Deep gratitude to Jean Huets of Circling Rivers.) Also, this is how one begins to learn to become humble to the needs of the poem. There is a critical time when the poem leaves our hands, and while it technically remains ours, it is no longer ours.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Read. And widely.

“What I do is me: For that I came.” Gerard Manley Hopkins

“...go crazy or turn holy.” Adélia Prado

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

I begin every day by reading the rounds of new publications, hoping to encounter something that will trigger a desire to pursue a new way of thinking, hunt down a particular piece of art, music or philosophy. If new publications don't have inpact, I turn to books. Usually by reading my favourite authors, something is ignited. Then I open my notebook and begin. If there is really no spark, I head to the woods. I always keep a notebook with me. I'm always looking, listening. Usually in the woods there are words to be taken down. Swamps rarely disappoint. If I have to go to my day job, I am quickly bereft. If I am lucky, a heron will fly overhead while I'm en route. If I'm really lucky, it will pass overhead during Beethoven's Sonata No. 31 in A-flat, Op. 110, Adagio ma non troppo. Need to give this movement a common name. Maybe The Heron's Sonata.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

Books, nature, music, art (Wyeth, Turner, Whistler, Rothko, Morandi, Hammershøi), walking, which is a form of attention and a kind of prayer. It loosens one from the self and brings new perspective. I suppose all of these things are attention and prayer. Actually, deep attention is prayer. Also, by spending time with my children who are now young adults. They always have something to teach me about what it is to be a person and what the world is like these days. (In many ways, on my own, I operate as outside of the world as possible. No cell phone. The systems that are in place have corrupt underlying principles. If you have to buy it, don't trust it. And what isn't for sale anymore?) If I can stay away from the news (which is important but should be taken in small doses like medicine), CBC radio.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Woodsmoke, pine, a particular patchouli incense, homebaked bread...

13 - 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?

I'm from rural roots. Our family art was skinning beavers, surviving winter and putting up preserves. And those things are art. I don't quite know how I became what I am now, except to say I've always been hungry for the holy. Yes, books, the old ones, the great ones, works in translation, music (Hildegard von Bingen, Bach, Purcell, Beethoven, Kissin, Gould, Pärt), philosphy and art.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

Lawrence, Tolstoy, Steinbeck, Stegner, Berger, Chekov, Fowles, Lispector. Gosh, the poets: Eliot, Thomas, Whitman, Roethke, Rilke, Celan, Gilbert, Rexroth, Thompson, McKay, Brett, Lilburn, Lowther, MacEwen, Crozier, Atwood, Szymborska, Tsvetayeva, Miłosz, Vallejo's Human Poems, Jaccottet, Tranströmer, Hauge, Carruth, Charles Wright, Hass... The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry is essential reading. Basho, Issa, Buson, Santōka -- the haiku poets keep me sane.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Walk more. Always more. Please, body, let me be able to continue to walk. Experience more art in person.

16 - 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?

In another life -- I wish I would have been a farmer, to have really developed a hands-on understanding of the interrelatedness of the natural world.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

My need, my nature.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

The Tree of Man, Patrick White

Ordet

19 - What are you currently working on?

Three or four books simultaneously. One will be ready for submission this coming winter, the majority of the poems having already been published. The others need time. I am curious to see how they develop. I'm inside the unfolding of them, as ignorant (and excited) as anyone.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Kimberly Alidio

Kimberly Alidio is the author of the books, why letter ellipses (selva oscura, 2020), : once teeth bones coral : (Belladonna*, 2020), and After projects the resound (Black Radish, 2016), and the chapbooks, a cell of falls (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2019), and solitude being alien (Dancing Girl, 2013). She’s a tenure-track drop-out, once-and-future adjunct, ex-high school history teacher, and MFA poetry candidate at the University of Arizona. She lives in Tucson with her partner, the poet Stacy Szymaszek.

1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

For more than ten years before my first poetry chapbook and first poetry book, there was a shadow book on U.S. Filipinx history that refused to find its way into the world. This book had an advanced contract with the University of Chicago Press that remained on file long after I left academia. The amazingly patient and persistent Robert Devens, when he left his job at the press, handed my chapter drafts over to Timothy Mennel who emailed me to ask whether I was still working on it, ten years later. He kindly let me out of my contract but technically has first dibs on it should it ever manifest. My relationship with those editors was probably one of the most sustaining relationships I had in academia. Academic book editors were kindred spirits of a sort, but small press poetry publishing was an alternative universe of valuation.

For most of my life, I knew things were going to come out of me and take the shape of books. Whether it was something “I” had to say or something that had to be said through me is hard to say. But I do admit that all along I just wanted one book with my name on the spine. After three books, I’d like to think the “I” has worked its issues out.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I didn’t. As an adult, I was fully identified with being a humanities scholar of U.S. empire, critical ethnic studies, and Filipinx Studies, and not with the poetry that I wrote consistently through high school and college.

I had an exit year working as an assistant professor at the University of Texas after being dismissed for not submitting my research manuscript to the promotion-and-tenure committee. During that year, I took my first poetry workshops with Abe Louise Young and Hoa Nguyen. I subsequently attended whatever I could — VONA/ Voices, Kundiman, all four weeks at Naropa’s Summer Writing Program — while on a postdoctoral fellowship and various adjunct gigs. I wrote my first book while teaching high school, the first supportive workplace I ever clocked into. My second and third books came together the summer after my first year in an MFA program.

To gain writing time and resources, I’m again in an academic institution. Even so, I still come to poetry for the breathing space not afforded by the research university’s neoliberal rationalizations, moralistic humanism, and standardized versions of innovative thinking, diversity, and language-use. I have very specific expectations for poetry as a field akin to Duncan’s meadow rather than as a discipline.   

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?

My inquiries and interests, if there’s enough breathing space, are usually all over the place. They become “projects” on their own time. Not too long ago, I was writing a hybrid New-Narrative-ish book that eventually broke apart into two poetry books and a poetry chapbook – no prose anywhere. The whole process was gnarly, probably because I was busy upending my life at the same time. Once I settled into a supportive partnership and living situation, the books and chapbook quickly took shape.  

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?

I’m starting to play around with the idea that a poem begins for me as a humming vibration or frequency. And as a space of communion. Where gestures begin to work with linguistic units. That’s about all I can say about words, sounds, utterances, lines, forms, the page, sequences, and books.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

In our self-isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic (it’s April 22, 2020 6:34PM Arizona time right now), my partner, Stacy (who answered these questions seven years ago!), and I made up a game of “Guess Who This Is.” The game goes like this: one of us picks a book from her shelf and reads aloud until the other one guesses. Stacy’s really good at it. And honest, too. I picked up Helping the Dreamer and Stacy yelled, “I can see it’s Anne!” Rookie mistake because I really wanted to perform Anne Waldman.

Part of my writing practice is to listen to a lot of recorded poetry readings. And I love and live with a person who programmed poetry readings and oversaw poetry reading curation from 1999 to 2018, at Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee and at the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in New York City. I think a lot about what poetry readings have been, what they seem to be now, and what they could be.

At this moment, I wonder what a poetry reading might be for. What ethics and practical concerns inform attending as a reader or as an audience member? To celebrate and gather? To participate in unilateral and/or inauthentic obligation? To make sure people know you’re alive and matter? To uphold some idea of the local or the ethnic? To clock into your gig? To sell an image other than a book? Is it deeply felt work?

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 surprisingly, I do. Each of my books has an endnote indicating those concerns. None of them tries to answer the questions it raises, though.

There are a lot of questions of this current moment. If we could get into a space of communing together, let’s say in a half-hour, we could draw up a mighty list of urgent and beautiful questions. Different ones would arise between us tomorrow. And the next day.

Right now, I’m wondering: What is care? How are we living this moment? To borrow from Latour’s questionnaire, Where to land after the pandemic?: What suspended activities do we want to see cease or change? What do we want to see begin anew? How do we propose that people transition, change, or begin anew?

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?

Poets can care about and for the language used to pose questions. We can make multi-dimensional macro-micro inquiries into the language used to pose answers. As much as we are typically tasked with imagining, we can attend to what is present and to what is already arriving.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

My poetry editors have included Marthe Reed, Brenda Iijima, Krystal Languell, and Fred Moten. In each case, there’s been real trust and joy.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Over the past two Januaries, I’ve worked with the writer Selah Saterstrom’s divinatory readings. From her latest: “Claim the resources you’ve gained from surviving loss.”

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

I don’t keep a writing routine separate from other routines. But I try not to keep separate routines. I go through my day and reflect on how any labor and any experience relates to a writing and reading life.

I don’t associate writing with time but with space. I try to sit at my desk in my studio in a routine, ritualistic way and do whatever I need to do to inhabit that space, to keep it vital and energetic.

11 – When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I don’t know if I’ve experienced this as a poet in a way that I lived it for many years as an historian. If writing is stalled, other aspects of my life are likely to be “stalled,” and I have to go figure that out. I’m happy to no longer follow the academic model of subordinating all aspects of my life to “writing a book.”

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Presently, creosote. This question is raising a question about what and where and when “home” is (sigh). I don’t know — jasmine rice in my rice cooker. My chicken adobo. Old Bay seasoning? Chlorine.

13 - 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?

U.S. modernist poetry cut its teeth on all those things. They’re all in the poetry.

I love queer visual art, performance, and dance.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

My life and work are gloriously gifted by the experience of writing and reading poetry in relationship with an amazing poet. So, most immediately, Stacy Szymaszek — her lived experience with poets, her lineages, and her projects — past, present, and future. And her bookshelves.

Fred Moten and Stefano Harney helped me to write After projects the resound, and an excerpt from Lorine Niedecker’s Lake Superior Journals guided my second book,  : once teeth bones coral :. My third book, why letter ellipses, is sort of crowded with all sorts of people, like Yayoi Kusama, Amiri Baraka, Andrea Dworkin …

Lately, I’ve felt a queer, kindred relation to certain writers associated with U.S.-ian Language Poets: Tina Darragh, P. Inman, Steve Benson, Ted Greenwald, Stephen Rodefer. Susan Howe continues to be important. I have a tongue-in-cheek aim to reclaim Language Poetry, generally held to be antithetical to the expressive, subjective, and even experimental poetics of BIPOC/ LGBTQIA+ writers, for a poetics of queer-of-color, postcolonial, cross-lingual synesthesia.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Work with others to build alternatives to neoliberal, racial, settler-colonial, carceral capitalism and figure out how to end it.

16 – 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?

Being a poet is not an occupation. But: I would have liked to have learned to be a painter, sculptor, or dancer. (Please don’t @ me with O’Hara.)

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

Language wants me.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

Duncan’s The Opening of the Field. Akerman’s No Home Movie.

19 - What are you currently working on?

Care and consciousness amidst the pandemic. Reading poetry in translation. Writing experimental, creative translations of Pangasinan-language poetry — a language of my mother’s that I neither speak nor read but a language that helped to raise me.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;