Karisma Price

“I’m obsessed with New Orleans. It’s where I’m from. Its history is deep, and its future is hopefully never ending.”

I’m Always So Serious (Sarabande Books, 2023)

A question from Megan Nichols: what books do you return to when you feel uninspired or disillusioned?

A book I always go back to is Please by Jericho Brown. I remember being taught his poem “Hustle” freshman year of high school and not really understanding it, but was really happy that I was being taught a living black poet who was from Louisiana like me. A few years later, I bought his book Please. I was in college and by then had learned so much more about poetry and how to read a poem. The way Brown writes about family, violence, and physical/emotional landscape really strikes a chord with me and helped me learn how to write about those themes in my own way. There’s so much self-reflection and focus on the interior in his work, and he also plays a lot with persona and music. I truly feel like I’m receiving a masterclass on writing when reading that book.

Could you tell us a bit about your growing up and your path to becoming a writer?

I grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana and growing up, my favorite subjects were English and Science. Many of my first “ideal careers” were scienced based—first I wanted to be a dentist, then a chemist, then a psychologist—until I took a 7th grade creative writing class. I decided at 12 that I was going to be a poet. I didn’t know any poets or how they made money, but I felt very strongly that that was what I was going to do (lol).

That previous year, my family had just moved back to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and I became more and more interested in capturing emotions and experiences—so much so that I used to carry around a toy camera (I’m also a screenwriter) until I got a real one. In creative writing class, I was exposed to poetry and novels that I’d never heard of. I always loved writing stories, and this was the first time I got to sit with classmates who gave me feedback, and I was expected to do the same and revise my work to turn in to my teacher. I went to an arts school so by the time I got to high school, I still took exploratory creative writing classes, but I was also in my school’s media arts program learning about photography and film. I went to Columbia University for undergrad and got a degree in Creative Writing with a concentration in poetry, and then got my MFA in poetry from NYU. My collection is a revised draft of my MFA thesis.

How do you decorate or arrange your writing space?

I don’t have a writing space. A lot of times I write in my bed or in a coffee shop. For me, what’s important is having access to a notebook, a nice gel pen, and tea. I start every poem draft by hand and then transfer my writing to Microsoft Word. I like coffee shops because I get to people watch and I like the light background chatter. I get to focus on my work without having to be completely solitary and away from others.

What obsessions led you to write your book?

I’m obsessed with New Orleans. It’s where I’m from. Its history is deep, and its future is hopefully never ending. I know that climate change is not just a threat but a promise to our way of life. I wanted to document the New Orleans that I know and remember before it changes again. I often view life from a pre and post Katrina lens and what water has taken from me.

In addition to New Orleans, I’m obsessed with music, blackness, and kinship (which is also what makes New Orleans New Orleans). Throughout the collection, I use persona and experimental forms, allowing me to move away from just one speaker into a collective “we” to meditate on these themes throughout history and to revisit and “revise” myths.

What’s the oldest poem in your book? Or can you name one piece that catalyzed or inspired the rest of the book? What do you remember about writing it?

The oldest poem in my book is “Prelude to Separation.” I call it the first “real” poem I ever wrote because it is about my grandmother and my family’s evacuation from New Orleans for Katrina. When I first started writing poems, I only wrote persona poems because I was afraid of people learning anything about me and judging me. I’ve since gotten over that. I remember wanting to write about how my cousins and I stayed with our grandmother during a hurricane (it happened a lot during our childhood) and that then triggered the memory of us evacuating for the next hurricane that I remembered as a child (Katrina) not long after my grandmother’s death. I wanted to be really honest about my confused feelings and sadness after my grandmother’s death and I brought that poem to an undergraduate workshop. I still remember everyone’s faces after I read it. They were impressed and someone told me it was the best poem I’d written so far. “Prelude to Separation” was the poem that made me want to share more about my life and write more about New Orleans since I was in New York for college. Before that poem, I think I was “hiding” behind persona. When I write persona poems now, I really sit and think of how and why I choose speakers and what kernel of me lives in them.

Which poem in your book has the most meaningful back story to you? What’s the back story?

The most meaningful poem is “C.J. Peete, Magnolia 2004”. The C. J. Peete Public Housing Development was the official name of the Magnolia Housing Projects located in the uptown area of New Orleans, Louisiana, where my family is from. The Magnolia was demolished three years post-Katrina in 2008, and the area is now home to the Harmony Oaks Apartments. The poem is dedicated to Ms. Cheryldale V. Washington, a close family friend who I consider an aunt, and one of the people I interviewed when I planned on making a short documentary about family and friends who lived in the Magnolia pre-Katrina. This documentary was never finished, but the italicized words in this poem are her words and come from my interview with her. This poem allows me to bring a piece of my family’s world to the reader even though the physical building is no longer in New Orleans. It becomes a witness to the people who are the last witnesses of their home in that form.

What was the final poem you wrote or significantly revised for the book, and how did that affect your sense that the book was complete?

The most significantly revised poem would have to be the poem “Buckjump.” It is a very experimental 4-page poem that utilizes space and even has a section in the shape of a boom box that was inspired by the poet Douglas Kearney’s use of typography. The first draft of that poem was very short and only a page long, focusing more on nature, and an unidentified speaker mentioning the woods where the enslaved are buried. In the revised version, I repeat the harm that’s been done to these now ancestors every couple of lines so that there is no mistake of what this poem is about. “Buckjumping” is the name of a dance performed at New Orleans second line parades. These second lines are held for jazz funerals, weddings, and any other moments worthy of celebration. The dance can be steeped in both joy and heartbreak. I wrote “Buckjump” after reading an article on The Advocate’s website: “Researcher maps hidden graveyards of slaves who once tilled Louisiana sugar cane fields” by Terry L. Jones (February 5, 2017). I dedicated the poem to the souls of the black people buried without the proper respect they deserved and intended for this poem to be a written form of “buckjumping” to honor the dead and use the poem’s sonic play to mimic the lively feeling of being at a New Orleans second line. I’m not sure that the revision informed me that the book was “complete,” but revising that poem let me know that I was writing honestly, and no longer sought “permission” to write in a non-conventional way.

 Do you have a favorite prompt or revision strategy? What is it? 

Listening to your work is the best way to revise. A revision strategy that always helps me is reading a poem out loud to see if the line breaks match when I take a breath. Your voice is your best unit of measurement, and it has helped me with word choice, repetition, and even stanza structures.

A prompt I often give to my students is to turn the last line of a poem they’ve written into the first line of a new poem and start from there. I think it’s interesting to write starting at the “aftermath” of something to see what comes out once the “big moment” has left.

What has the editorial and production experience with your publisher been like? To what degree did you collaborate on the cover image and design of your book?

The editorial process has been great. I’m very happy to be working with Sarabande Books. They are a small press and really appreciate and respect input from their writers. I was also fortunate that I got to pick the cover of my book. The image on the cover is called “The Girl Inside” by Delita Martin. I even got to meet the artist a few months ago when she was in town giving a craft talk at the Stella Jones Gallery where her pieces were being displayed. I’ve been a fan of her work for years and when I first saw that piece, I was on the J train in Brooklyn, and I nearly jumped out of my seat. The child looks exactly like I did as a kid and even my family members saw the book and thought that it was an illustration of an old childhood photo of mine. After I told Martin how important the piece was to me, she agreed to let me use it as the cover.

What are you working on now?

I’ve been working in the narrative space: I’ve just finished writing a TV pilot and am hoping to see if anyone wants to make it a real show (it’s a little spooky)! I’ve also been working on speculative short stories set in New Orleans. I think it would be fun to write a short story collection or even a novel.

If you could choose another artistic path (painting, music, dance, etc.) what would it be and why?

I would be a singer. There’s just something about listening to a song (I really like soul, blues, and R&B) and hearing the singer belt out a note that has joy, sorrow, and lived experience all wrapped into one. The sound is a physical manifestation of those emotions and that’s what I imagine freedom to sound like. When I try to do that, I sound like a dying cat.

What advice would you offer to students interested in creative writing?

Read as much as you can get your hands on. Read widely. But also find out what you like to read about. You should create your own literary canon and learn who your literary ancestors/kin are. It’s always important to know who you’re in conversation with.

What question would you like to ask the next author featured at Speaking of Marvels?

Do you have any self-care practices you include when writing about something heavy?

*

Karisma Price is a poet, screenwriter, and media artist. Her work has work that has appeared in Poetry, Four Way Review, wildness, Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. She is a Cave Canem Fellow, was a finalist for the 2019 Manchester Poetry Prize, and was awarded the 2020 J. Howard and Barbara M. J. Wood Prize from the Poetry Foundation. She is from New Orleans, Louisiana, and holds an MFA in poetry from New York University where she was a Writers in the Public Schools Fellow. She is currently an assistant professor of poetry at Tulane University.

www.karismaprice.com

Marjorie Maddox

“One of the great benefits of this collaboration was working with my daughter—artist to artist. This led not only to important discussions about the creative process, but also allowed us to address and process painful experiences. Art can do that—become the bridge that connects.”

Poems by Marjorie Maddox (www.marjoriemaddox.com)

Featuring Art by Anna Lee Hafer (www.hafer.work)

Contributing Artists: Karen Elias, Antar Mikosz, Greg Mort, Margaret Munz-Losch, Ingo Swann, Christian Twamley

In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind (Shanti Arts Publisher, May 2023)

https://www.shantiarts.co/uploads/files/mno/MADDOX_MUSEUM.html

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/in-the-museum-of-my-daughters-mind-marjorie-maddox/1143389266

A question from Toni Ann Johnson: Why are you writing about what you’re writing about?

This book began as an ekphrastic prompt for my Poetry Workshop students at the university where I teach. As a way for them to respond to art via poetry, I’d presented my students with several artists’ websites, including my daughter’s, www.hafer.work. My students were intrigued and captivated by both her work and her explanations, and several of them wrote strong poetic responses later published in The Ekphrastic Review. How could I not join in? Once I began, it was hard to stop. My daughter’s website was a mini-outline I could follow.

But then I traveled further back still. The book’s introduction, “Entering the Gallery,” explains the book’s foundation, including a series inspired by an exhibit at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore in 2018, to which my daughter and I traveled together.

Here is that introduction, where you’ll discover more about the most pressing reason for In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind: my daughter.

Entering the Gallery

In May of 2018, I drove three hours with my daughter, then an undergraduate art student, to the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. Or rather, I should say, my daughter, Anna Lee Hafer, drove me, her hands tightly clenching the wheel as she fearlessly navigated the expressway through a blinding thunderstorm. The week before, I had undergone an exhausting heart catheterization after an abnormal stress test. Haunted by my father’s heart disease and premature death twenty-five years prior, I was looking to escape my fears. I also was looking to spend time with a daughter who had battled her own close calls.

Why did we visit this museum, one unknown to us despite numerous previous trips to Baltimore? I had seen a social media posting for AVAM’s The Great Mystery Show Exhibition, which included Margaret Munz-Losch’s two tender but unsettling portraits of her daughter. In one painting, the child’s skin squirms with maggots; in another, her skin buzzes with bees. Drawn to the tension between the deceptively innocent and the dangerous, I immediately sent the exhibition information to my daughter. Yes, we agreed; we needed to go.

And just like that, one artistic expression opened into another and then another and another. That day’s rainy excursion and the engaging works we encountered underscored our intersecting passions of art and poetry. It also, I now believe, spoke to us—as art does—about our separate and shared experiences, both joyous and traumatic.

In the year that followed, my daughter would complete her art degree and celebrate her first exhibit and professional sale. I would compose a series of nine poems (included in this book) based on the AVAM exhibit, art that spoke to me deeply and powerfully, caused me to gasp in wonder, and in some cases prompted me to laugh out loud. Later, those ekphrastic responses would fuel my collaboration with photographer Karen Elias on our book Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (Shanti Arts, 2022). Four new collaborations with Karen are included here. Both ekphrastic series intersected with another poem based on a sculptural installation that, by mere coincidence years earlier, employed my name.

Ekphrasis is a way for art and poem, artist and poet, and writer and reader to communicate. On a personal level, I found it also deepened communication—artist to artist, mother to daughter— through an exchange of eighteen pieces based on Anna Lee’s work. Those interactions constitute the core of this collection. The relationship of words and images in each poem respond to the interweaving of images and words in each painting. In composing these works, I was especially intrigued by the various ways words, numbers, and arrows become central to the paintings’ overall themes. Often, I incorporated the phrases I found within a painting or artist’s statement (indicated by italics) within each ekphrasis. For example, you’ll find snippets of the artist’s statement for The Library in the poem “The Choice.” Likewise, in both the painting Swirl and the accompanying poem, you may recognize excerpts from a medication’s list of possible side effects. Also, the poems “Your Move?” and “Inarticulate Archive” employ phrases woven throughout their respective paintings. Sometimes, such tight integrations resonate through the form of pantoum, sestina, villanelle, or mirror cinquain. As is often the case with artistic expression, what appears between the lines or brush strokes echoes, underscores, or comments upon the work as a whole.

This afternoon as I am writing in front of our family room’s fireplace, the season’s first ice storm has moved out of the area. My artist daughter is driving—not through a torrential spring downpour, but on a cold, sunny day—back to her own home a hundred miles away. Before leaving, however, she has hung her painting The Library, a Christmas present from my husband, above the room’s “reading” chair.

To view this room in art’s many rooms, I need only turn my head. And you, dear reader, need only to turn the pages.

Could you share a poem that invites the reader into the world of the book?

In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind opens with the cover painting, The Library, as well as the poem, “The Choice.” Both artistic forms encourage the reader to “choose imagination,” an appropriate suggestion for a collection that brings together painting, collage, poetry, and photography. With my daughter’s work, I especially am intrigued by how she weaves throughout her paintings words that raise important issues and comment on overall themes. Thus, in this poem and others, I ribbon these same phrases, including quotations from her artist’s statement. (You’ll see these in italics in the pantoum below.) Throughout the collection, I am intrigued by the artworks’ invitations to create, as well as their examination of choice, point of view, shifting perspectives, and the effects of illness or isolation.

I would encourage you to read this piece side-by-side with the cover painting and closeup panels found here: https://www.hafer.work/work/thelibrary A slight change in perspective, a different choice here or there, another word or phrase—these make all the difference in the overall impact of a poem or painting. Often, I choose fixed forms—pantoums, villanelles, sestinas—to explore such repetitions with variation.

Artist’s Statement: This painting represents the inner workings of the mind. Each decision directly affects another. What move in chess shall we open with? What book shall we pull from the shelves? What path shall we take today through this library?

The Choice*

                  -After the painting The Library

                  by Anna Lee Hafer

Late night, mid-morning, dawn,

the door of the library clicks open,

cracks wide to rooms of elsewhere

& beyond—imagination’s Open-Sésame

to other doors, libraries, landscapes. Click open

possibility. What book shall we pull from the shelves?

Beyond Open-Sésames, imagination’s magic

enters the mind’s inner workings, gathers

possibilities. What book shall we pull from the shelves?

What ancient treasure tug from the tale?

The mind’s inner workings enter in, gather

tools of chessboard and floor, bookcase stacked

with tale and treasure, the ancient why

of creation sparking each synapse

of stacked choice: chess, ceiling, floor, books—tools

to chisel word and image onto the shaped space

=

of creation. Sparking each synapse,

the mind reaches beyond reason to memory,

chisels word and image onto the shaped spaces

of now, before, maybe, if—choice

the reason the mind reaches beyond memory,

mirroring the large and small. This way.

Choose now, before, maybe, if—

or not. Your turn. Concentrate.

Mirror the large and small. This way.

Do you remember? Can you stay?

Yes? No? Your turn. Concentrate.

What move in chess shall we open with?

Do you remember? Can you stay?

What voice is woven in the fabric?

What move in chess shall we open with?

Follow the arrows to pawn or king.

What voice is woven in the fabric?

Here is the story of Open-Sésame.

Follow the arrows to pawn or king,

rooftop or floorboards. Don’t go

without a story. Open-Sésame

your way to elsewhere & beyond.

Climb rooftops. Sketch floorboards. Go.

What path shall we take today through this library?

This way to elsewhere & beyond.

A splatter is not a mistake, but a choice.

What path shall we take today through this library?

Follow the inner workings of the mind.

A splatter is a choice, not a mistake.

Cracks open the room to elsewhere.

Always the inner workings of the mind follow

choice. Each dawn, mid-morning, night,

crack open rooms to elsewhere.

You hold the pen and paintbrush.

Late-night, mid-morning, or dawn, choose

imagination. Click open the door to the library.

*Italicized phrases are taken from the artist’s description of the work, as well as from words and phrases hidden within the painting.

Which other poems in the book address the creative process of both writer and artist?

Many, but here is one in particular. You may find a closeup of the painting here: https://www.hafer.work/work/swarm

Artist’s Statement: The word swarm has such negative connotations. The first hits on the internet reference a swarm of 55 earthquakes striking off the Oregon Coast and a step-by-step guide on how to rid your area from swarms of insects. However, what happens when the word swarm is viewed in a more positive light?

Naming Creation

        -after the painting Swarm by Anna Lee Hafer

=

From her mouth

=

letters transform swarm. Her pursed lips

release a kiss of them, explosion of light

and swirl that redefines the way words slip

from cortex to cochlea. Their circular dip

into dance and sense twirls at dusk, border of night/

day transformed in the swarm. Her letters purse lips,

beget articulation—reverse total eclipse

until inspiration’s bright flash of lights

swirls, redefines the way words slip,

spark synapse after synapse after synapse

while hand, brain, memory, insight

transform the letters to warms. Her pursed lips

—–

release painting & poem. No planned script

can recreate such abundance of bright

swirl that defines the way words slip

into meaning, transmission of firefly blips

igniting the mind’s sky with inspiration. To write

letters transformed by swarming, purse lips

=

and swirl vision. Like this, redefined words slip

=

from her mouth

What led you to write your book?

One of the great benefits of this collaboration was working with my daughter—artist to artist. This led not only to important discussions about the creative process, but also allowed us to address and process painful experiences. Art can do that—become the bridge that connects.

Can you name an early piece that inspired the rest of the book? What do you remember about writing it?

Certainly the American Visionary Art Museum was an early catalyst. (See the “Entering the Gallery” introduction.) Viewing the exhibit with my daughter, I was affected powerfully by Margaret Munz-Lozch’s portraits of her daughter. At first glance, the portraits appear deceptively innocent. Upon closer inspection, danger looms large, echoing much of what was transpiring in my daughter’s life as she struggled with illness, and I struggled with how best to help her. Here is the painting and the poem that responds to it.

At the American Visionary Art Museum: White Rabbit

                                                from Beauty and the Beasts

                                                by Margaret Munz-Losch

Eyes the pale blue-

gray of cornflowers,

the naked girl buzzes

with bees, is bees: nipple,

elbows, neck, chest, swarming

forehead; insect fingers grasping

the starkly white, pink-eyed,

magician’s rabbit of miracles

paired with the good-luck clovers

sprouting from her dirt-blonde bun

crawling with workaholic drones loyal

to scent and perceived innocence,

the way my mother skin

tingles with hers, is hers/

yours, tiny stings that cling

to the most vulnerable

flesh left to love, hovering

sweetly, deceptively,

over the decaying, the dead.

What was the most challenging part of writing the book and how did you find a way through?

Some of my daughter’s work is abstract, without an obvious narrative. For these pieces, I relied on the overall tone, as well as her artist’s statement, to draw me into a type of story between the brushstrokes. For instance, with The Letter E, a rushing whirlpool of a painting (https://www.hafer.work/work/lettere ), I found my way to the poem with the below artist’s statement. The repetition in the villanelle adds to the serious issues lurking beneath the ironic humor.

Artist’s Statement: The Letter E is a painting that questions how we absorb new information. This piece was inspired by a child penalized for asking a brilliant, creative, out-of-the-box question in class while the focus of the day was the letter E.

Does a strictly regulated and enforced schedule hurt more than help our brain’s ability to absorb new information?

The Letter E

            -after the painting by Anna Lee Hafer

Don’t distract me with questions,

those extraneous detours that topple learning.

E and only E is today’s lesson.

The enemy of schedules is curiosity, omissions

necessary for well-paced delivery. We yearn

for no distractions. Don’t ask me questions—

time-wasting, silly digressions

of how and why. Pay attention. Our concern

is E and only E. Today’s lesson

is letter 5. Your inquisitive obsessions

are enemies of order. Don’t ruin

class by distracting me with questions.

Creativity’s the one transgression

I won’t allow. Sit still. Don’t squirm.

E and only E is today’s lesson.

Up next? The letter F, natural progression

of learning. Quiet! It’s not your turn

to talk. Don’t distract me questions.

E and only E is today’s lesson.

And, of course, I could discuss poems with my daughter. I was similarly fortunate with my friend and collaborator Karen Elias.

However, I didn’t have the same advantage with internationally known artists exhibited at The American Visionary Art Museum. And yet, when I corresponded with several of them—sending finished poems and explaining the book project—I was overwhelmed with the generosity and pure delight of their responses. What a great, great gift to be able to interact so openly—through art’s many forms—with these renowned artists, who were willing to reach out artist to artist/person to person. I am forever grateful for their inspiration and kindnesses, particularly to Greg Mort (https://www.gregmortcollection.com/) and Margaret Munz-Losch (https://www.margaretmunzlosch.com/)

How did you decide on the arrangement and title of your book?

In this case the title, In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind, came first, inspiring the shape and emphasis of the collection. (One day, it just popped into my head! For me, it serves as a type of museum guide, allowing the reader to move from one exhibit room to the next.) In addition to my daughter’s 18 paintings, I intersperse the AVAM series, as well as a number of photographs by Karen Elias. My interests in perspective, family relationships, the spiritual and natural worlds, medicine, and hope/persistence show up again and again. A natural progression from one work to the next emerged early on.

Which poem is the “misfit” in your collection and why?

I wouldn’t call it a misfit, but there is only one poem without a corresponding work of art: “Remnants of Marjorie Maddox,” a piece inspired by an installation description that employs my name. Confession: I stumbled on a summary of the 1990’s installation purely by chance while Googling my name. Intrigued, I wrote the poem. I dare you to try this prompt yourself. 😊

What was the poem that affected your sense that the book was complete?

The final poem in the book, “Wild Rest,” returns to the process of creation and the importance of allowing your mind to “wander and wonder.” It also returns to the image of the armchair from the opening painting, so I felt a sense of coming full circle when placing this poem at the end.

What are you working on now?

Continuing with several mother/daughter themes and commenting on society’s changing definitions of truth, I’ve been revising and submitting the manuscript Seeing Things. Here is my working description: With its focus on memory, disease, and their ramifications, Seeing Things examines overlapping roles of 1) daughter of a mother entering the beginning stages of dementia, 2) mother of a daughter struggling with illness and depression, 3) woman juggling her own memories of survival, and 4) woman living in a world with shifting boundaries of truth/fabrications. In addition, Seeing Things explores the ways that we distort or preserve memory, define or alter reality, see or don’t see those around us. Woven throughout the collection is a series of odes.

*

Writer’s Bio

Lock Haven University English Professor, Marjorie Maddox has published 14 collections of poetry—most recently Begin with a Question (Winner 2022 International Book and Illumination Book Awards), and the ekphrastic collections from Shanti Arts Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For, with photographer Karen Elias, and In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind, with her artist daughter Anna Lee Hafer (www.hafer.work) + other artists. In addition, she has published the short story collection What She Was Saying, 4 children’s/YA books, and has co-edited with Jerry Wemple Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania. She is assistant editor of Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry. www.marjoriemaddox.com

Artist’s Bio

Anna Lee Hafer, a studio artist near Philadelphia, has exhibited paintings at Davison Art Gallery, Rochester Contemporary Art Center, Finger Lakes Arts Series, Lycoming Arts Gallery, and elsewhere. She has published images most recently at Still Point Arts Quarterly, The MacGuffin, The Penn Review, The Pine Cone Review, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, The Ekphrastic Review, Glint, Sheila-Na-Gig, and The Inflectionist Review. Hafer pours and layers paint to create dimension and texture. By juxtaposing interior and exterior elements, she makes the audience question whether they are looking at something inside or outside. www.hafer.work

www.marjoriemaddox.com

www.hafer.work

Chloe Chun Seim

“More than anything, I remember being in the country, roaming the prairie after school, reading and drawing next to our small ponds and creeks during the summer.”

Churn (Texas Review Press, 2023)

A question from Monica Macansantos: Do you ever find yourself inspired or guided by your childhood in your work?

Churn is heavily influenced by my childhood. Like protagonists Jordan and Chung, I grew up on a farm in central Kansas. More than anything, I remember being in the country, roaming the prairie after school, reading and drawing next to our small ponds and creeks during the summer. Coyotes were always near. Occasionally, mountain lions came down from Colorado and picked off farm cats and cattle. Being enthralled in that chaotic beauty gave me the closest feeling to religion I’ve had and inspired the somewhat melodramatic land-god religion Jordan develops when young.

Could you share a representative or pivotal excerpt from your book? Perhaps something that that invites the reader into the world of the book?

I’ll share a brief excerpt of Churn’s opening page.

“Chung, a gray speck in the mauve Kansas twilight, flails, arms raised, five hundred feet off from the farm. He’s been in the mud for an hour. I noticed him, shrieking, rubber boots ten inches deep and unlikely to be set free without our parents’ help, as it happened. I should’ve told our parents then, whichever one of them could function enough to stand. I should’ve helped him, my little brother. Instead, I sit on our front porch and feel the prick of the passing storm. I ignore the frenzied begging of the cats swarming me and think of what a good punishment this is for the bad thing my little brother has done. Last night, he brought my favorite stuffed tabby into the bath or played with it and dropped it or let the dog, who wasn’t supposed to be inside, drag the plush thing into the water. It didn’t matter. The toy’s faux fur crimped. Its voice box broke. No more I love yous. No more You’re purrtastic! A low, buzzy hiss comes where sweet joy once rang, and so I let the earth swallow him.

The land has a way of bending you to its will whether you are deserving or not.”

Why did you choose this excerpt?

This is one of the few scenes in Churn that takes place on their family farm, before their parents separate and everything fractures. Still, I think this excerpt encapsulates the difference in perspective and personality between these two siblings and foreshadows some of the more haunting environmental events to come.

What’s the oldest story in your book? Or can you name one piece that catalyzed or inspired the rest of the book? What do you remember about writing it?

“Wilson Lake,” the first chapter/story of Churn, was first drafted when I was still an undergrad, so in 2013 or 2014. At the time, I didn’t have a specific trajectory for the larger story in mind. “Wilson Lake” served as the catalyst for me to experiment with the supernatural and pursue linked short-story writing.

Which story is the “misfit” in your collection and why?

“Grandma Kim at Forty-Five: a serigraph in four layers” is definitely the misfit of Churn. It’s a brief flash story/chapter that uses the limited-set numbering used in printmaking. It was a form I was interested in replicating. I love screen printing, took a few college courses in it, but I always struggled with the perfect duplication you were expected to achieve. This story explores imperfection as a form of duplication.

What was the final story you wrote or significantly revised for the book, and how did that affect your sense that the book was complete?

The final story/chapter, “Beginnings,” was the last portion I wrote for Churn, and much later than any other part of the book. I had been trying to find a fitting end for the book for nearly two years. It was difficult, identifying how to end a project that’s ultimately a twenty-year study of trauma and recovery. I didn’t want the ending to be overly optimistic or tragic. While “Beginnings” tracks the first months of 2020, the pandemic and the rise of anti-Asian violence, it delivers what I hope is a complicated, bittersweet ending to these characters’ stories.

*

Chloe Chun Seim‘s writing has appeared in LitMag, Potomac Review, McNeese Review, Split Lip Magazine, and Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among others. She won the 2021 Anton Chekov Award for Flash Fiction and her illustrated novel-in-stories, Churn, won the 2022 George Garrett Fiction Prize. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Chloe lives in Lawrence, KS.

http://www.chloeseim.wordpress.com

order Churn here

Arlene Keizer

“My project… was to understand how Delaney transfigured the pain and rage and sorrow and suffering of his experience into paintings and drawings that exude light and the joy of material and spiritual existence.”

Fraternal Light: On Painting While Black (Kent State University Press, 2023)

A question from Megan Nichols: what books do you return to when you feel uninspired or disillusioned?

I turn to poetry by Lorna Goodison, Jay Wright, Denise Levertov, Derek Walcott, Adam Zagajewski, Harryette Mullen, Ed Roberson, and Yusef Komunyakaa; Seamus Heaney’s essays on the writing of poetry; Toni Morrison’s fiction and essays, as well as excellent literary fiction from many other eras and perspectives. Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior is my favorite memoir, a book that opened many doors and windows for me.

How did you decide on the arrangement and title of your book?

Fraternal Light: On Painting While Black is a lyric response to the life and art of the African American painter Beauford Delaney. The phrase “fraternal light” is an almost Surrealist image that came to me as I was writing “A Country Meter,” a poem imagining Delaney’s sense of relative freedom after emigrating to France in 1953. The subtitle carries the weight of the anti-Black racism and homophobia that circumscribed Delaney’s life and the reception of his work. The chronology of Delaney’s life governed the ordering of the poems: the first section responds to his early life and then his career as a successful Greenwich Village modernist; the second section follows him to Paris.

Which poem in your book has the most meaningful back story to you? What’s the back story?

The poem “Terror in the Heart of Freedom” has a complex back story. As I mentioned, the whole book is a lyric evocation of moments in Beauford Delaney’s life, and this poem meditates upon two intense events: the violent 1919 attack on the Black community of Knoxville by white Knoxvillians, and Delaney’s 1969 visit to his relatives in Knoxville. Throughout his life, Delaney was haunted by the memory of “Red Summer” (to borrow James Weldon Johnson’s term for the extreme white-on-Black violence that swept the US in 1919). As I wrote this poem, I had in mind two paintings of Delaney’s, one from 1921 and the other from 1969, produced after his last visit to Knoxville from his home in Paris. The title of the poem (used by permission) comes from Hannah Rosen’s scholarly history of Black freedom struggles in the post-Emancipation era. I’ve situated this poem early in the collection to convey at the outset my sense of wonder at all that Delaney endured and all that he was able to accomplish.

What was the final poem you wrote or significantly revised for the book, and how did that affect your sense that the book was complete?

The final poem I wrote for Fraternal Light was “Mandala,” which I’ve included here (by permission of Kent State University Press):

My project throughout the process of writing this book was to understand how Delaney transfigured the pain and rage and sorrow and suffering of his experience into paintings and drawings that exude light and the joy of material and spiritual existence. What I came to believe after years of examining his art and reading his letters and excerpts from his journals was that the work of painting became a Way for Delaney, in the Buddhist sense and in the African American sense of “making a way out of no way.” “Mandala” records a moment of enlightenment for me, vis-à-vis Delaney’s artistic practice. Upon writing it, I felt that I had traveled as far I could in the company of Delaney’s extraordinary body of work.

Could you share with us a glimpse of your writing practice or process for this book?

I began this book in 2018 because I had been captivated by Delaney’s life (to the degree we have access to it) and his artwork, especially his portraits. When my younger brother Brian died in 2020, Fraternal Light became a way of mourning him and Delaney at the same time.

What are you working on now?

I’m writing the diary of a mythological character.

If you could choose another artistic path (painting, music, dance, etc.) what would it be and why?

I love handcrafts, though I’ve had little formal training in them. Back in 2015, I learned to weave cloth on a floor loom, and I’m slowly developing my skills as a weaver. I can imagine being a textile artist; to me, weaving and writing seem deeply analogous, as many cultures throughout the world have demonstrated.

What advice would you offer to students interested in creative writing?

Listen carefully to what well-meaning mentors and peers have to say about your work, but try not to let advice override your inner sense of your own writing and its meaning.

*

Arlene Keizer, an Afro-Caribbean American poet and scholar, writes about the literature, lived experience, theory, and visual culture of the African Diaspora. She earned an MA in English and Creative Writing (Poetry) at Stanford and a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. Her forthcoming manuscript, Fraternal Light: On Painting While Black, won the 2022 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize. Her poems and articles have appeared in African American Review, American Literature, The Kenyon Review, PMLA, Poem-a-Day, Radical Teacher, TriQuarterly, and other venues. Born to emigrants from Trinidad, she lives in Brooklyn, NY and teaches at Pratt Institute.

Fraternal Light: On Painting While Black may be pre-ordered here

Sarah Audsley

“…it took time to think deeply and to excavate the personal material I wanted to bring forth; then I wrote and revised.”

Landlock X (Texas Review Press, 2023)

Could you tell us a bit about your growing up and your path to becoming a writer?

I grew up in central Vermont near my grandmother’s 12 acres of farmland and on my parents’ five acres of land. Each parcel, connected by an old railroad bed that we could walk, is featured in Landlock X. My father built a log cabin in the late 70s, which became my childhood home. As for writing, I wrote poems in elementary school and in high school but, very naively, I did not know that the “writing world” existed until I turned 29. Up until that point, I was unaware that writing conferences, residencies, MFA programs, etc. were available for aspiring writers and poets. Finally, I took a creative writing class at my local community college, and then the trajectory and commitment to writing unfolded.

Could you share a representative or pivotal poem from your book? Perhaps something that invites the reader into the world of the book?

“When My Mother Returns as X” is an important poem for the book and it closes the collection. In this poem, I think the variable X, which is a through thread across the collection, achieves its fullest realization.

Why did you choose this poem?

This poem was written early on when I was a student in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. I was working with C. Dale Young, at the time. I am grateful for his mentorship and continued support. Years later, this poem helped me unlock the overall vision for the book. I find it fascinating when we can see how our past selves, our past poems have already, somehow, some way, written the answers for us.

How did you decide on the arrangement and title of your book?

Landlock X is organized into three sections: Field, Dress, Portal–which is also the title of one of the poems in the second section. The three sections offer the opportunity to consider a triptych and helped me place the three erasures of a translation from Korean to English. The title of the manuscript came later and it felt like a revelation when I realized it. Then all the other structural considerations fell into place.

What was the final poem you wrote or significantly revised for the book, and how did that affect your sense that the book was complete?

“We (or in the Blue House)” was the final poem I finished for the book. I wanted to write from the point of view of the first person plural, the “we.” It feels exceptionally difficult to write from the collective voice, but I wanted to try and extend this gesture, and to write for and to my fellow adoptees.

Could you share with us a glimpse of your writing practice or process for this book?

Writing Landlock X took years of work and began in earnest while I was a student at Warren Wilson College. After graduation, in 2019, I spent time writing new poems, revising, and sequencing the manuscript. Residencies at the Banff Centre and Vermont Studio Center offered time and space to dig deeper. A Creation Grant from the Vermont Arts Council, and grant support from other organizations, buoyed me up when I needed it. The process for writing this book is not new: it took time to think deeply and to excavate the personal material I wanted to bring forth, then I wrote and revised.

What has the editorial and production experience with your publisher been like? To what degree did you collaborate on the cover image and design of your book?

Working with Texas Review Press’s director J. Bruce Fuller, and the team at TRP, has been wonderful. TRP is very professional and organized; I feel lucky to be working with such a kind press. At every step of the way, I had input on the overall design of the book. I selected the cover art image, which is artwork by Nancy Y. Kim (how a yellow hollow, 2021, Paper Pulp, Silicone, Acrylic Paint, 25.5 x 22.5cm / 10 x 8.9 in). I met Nancy when she was an artist in residence at Vermont Studio Center where I work. We stayed in touch and I reached out to her about collaborating on the cover art for Landlock X. She read the manuscript in full and we chatted about possible images. I love the cover so much! Additionally, I am grateful that TRP was willing to publish Landlock X with four full color pages of collage and visual poems. This felt essential for my overall vision for the book, and I’m so glad TRP and J. Bruce Fuller agreed.

What are you working on now?

New poems. Resting. Thinking. Reading a ton. Walking my dog. Spending time outside.

If you could choose another artistic path (painting, music, dance, etc.) what would it be and why?

Painter or professional rock climber.

What question would you like to ask the next author featured at Speaking of Marvels?

What is your relationship to the first person speaker, the lyric “I”?

*

Sarah Audsley is the author of Landlock X (Texas Review Press, 2023). A Korean American adoptee, a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and a member of The Starlings Collective, Audsley lives and works in northern Vermont.

https://sarahaudsley.com

Lucien Darjeun Meadows

“I’ve described River as a love letter for the lands and peoples who raised me, and I hope that love comes forward….”

In the Hands of the River, Hub City Press 2022

Could you tell us a bit about your growing up and your path to becoming a writer?

Growing up largely homeschooled in rural West Virginia, I found my friends, classmates, and community not in the humans but in the ecological relatives of our holler. Coming from a mixed-race Cherokee/white family, also, I was raised to see the land and all their peoples as close kin. So many days would I spend out with the hills, in the fields, and even now, I get restless when winter comes and we have to close all the windows. I was always an avid reader (my grandmother said I began reading at an absurdly young age I won’t repeat!), and some of my earliest memories are from pedaling my tricycle around the back field, creating little poem-chants about my cat, this tree, that sunset, and so on.

Though I lacked examples of Southern writers, queer writers, and mixed-race Indigenous writers growing up, I am grateful that I kept writing. I was nourished by a poetry unit in grade school, models like Sylvia Plath, and meeting my partner at a local coffeehouse’s open mic. I read a few poems (my first public reading!), then nervously ran out the door. He followed, which began a now seventeen-year conversation, and as he is also a writer, his support along with that of two instrumental mentors, Elizabeth Spires and Camille Dungy, pushed me to keep writing, develop my craft, and consider a future in poetry.

How do you decorate or arrange your writing space?

That will be the day when home is big enough to hold a dedicated writing-only space! For now, writing space is the dining table. Both here in Colorado and in Illinois (where I lived for my MFA and where the poems of In the Hands of the River began to accumulate in early stages), I write at the dining table, sitting in a way that I can see a window and the world outside, as well as at least one beloved houseplant inside.

Could you share a representative or pivotal poem from your book? Perhaps something that that invites the reader into the world of the book?

Gladly! I offer the first poem of In the Hands of the River, titled “Rust,” and first published in Beloit Poetry Journal:

Why did you choose this poem?

“Rust,” to me, holds and welcomes the reader into a number of themes that come forward across the collection. How the imprint of the land and the river shape our human bodies and minds (and vice versa). The way time pools deep in places where memories and histories repeat across generations. That delicious dangerous friction between death and life, hope and despair, sameness and difference—and that these seeming-opposites are, really, always so porous and connected with each other.

What obsessions led you to write your book?

From my earliest poems to In the Hands of the River (and beyond!), I am drawn to writing as a vital way to spark empathy—and in so doing, greater tolerance and connection. If just one person reads this and knows, as a result, they are not alone, I have often said and thought, then I have succeeded. I wish I had more models of writers “like me” growing up. Even now, there’s still so much room and need for more diverse Southern voices in contemporary literature. I offer this book as one small voice in that space.

I am honored to stand with writers like those featured by my publisher Hub City Press, a nonprofit press dedicated to uplifting marginalized Southern voices, and for River and me to contribute to ongoing conversations in Appalachian and Southern literatures, like those begun by long-beloved Marilou Awiakta, Diane Gilliam Fisher, J. Drew Lanham, Janet McAdams, and Ann Pancake, and those opened by new and emerging writers like Lee Cole, Marlanda Dekine, Danni Quintos, and many, many more.

What’s the oldest poem in your book? What do you remember about writing it?

In September 2012, exactly ten years before In the Hands of the River would be published, I was living one thousand miles from home in Illinois and beginning my first semester of my MFA program. Further from home than I had ever lived, and now not only a first-generation university graduate but the first in my family to attend graduate school, I was missing the lands, kin, and cadences of home like never before. Just a few months prior, I had learned of the work of contemporary northern Appalachian (Maine) and gay poet Jacques Rancourt, and his poem, “Black Horse,” wouldn’t leave my mind. That month, I wrote “No More the Counting of Marbles,” first published in Still and the oldest poem in River, in homage to Rancourt’s poem, and a bit of a love letter from Illinois to my family and home back east:

How did you decide on the arrangement of your book?

I cannot thank my brilliant editors at Hub City Press—Katherine Webb and Kate McMullen—enough for turning these pages into a vibrant flowing River. The book holds an opening poem, “Rust,” and four sections. Each section begins with a poem that forms a sequence with the opening poem for the other sections: the first section opens with “First Time,” the second with “Second Time,” the third with “Third Time,” and the final section with “After.” These four poems depict four very significant moments in the speaker’s life. When I organized the manuscript, I placed these poems at the end of each section. In a way, I propelled each section toward a silence we could cross with the jump-and-restart of a section break.

Katherine and Kate, however, suggested opening each section with these poems. What a transformation! The path is much more interesting when we’re confronted with silence at the beginning, and then, we follow the speaker through the hard work of coming back into voice and life. (Needless to say, Katherine and Kate also made many marvelous in-section ordering suggestions. I am still delighting in, and learning from, the connections and frictions between poems that they had the wisdom to notice and amplify.)

Which poem in your book has the most meaningful back story to you? What’s the back story?

I’ve described River as a love letter for the lands and peoples who raised me, and I hope that love comes forward—amid all the challenges the speaker and his family faces, from poverty to mental health crises, substance abuse, and more—and often, the collection turns toward being both an elegy and a love letter for the speaker’s father. The poem “Still,” appearing in the final section and first published in storySouth, is where many of those love-and-loss strands come forward (and where the collection’s title appears), and does so often speaking directly to the father across Cherokee and English.

Thomas James, an understudied gay poet from Illinois who published only one collection in the 1970s (Letters to a Stranger) before committing suicide, opens his poem “Letter to a Mute”:

            If I could reach you now, in any way

            At all, I would say this to you:

Those lines just bring me to my knees every time. When writing “Still,” I imagined James’s two lines as prefacing the entire attempt of this poem. While I love to share “Still” in readings, I have to be careful not to get too choked up or I won’t make it through the poem!

What has the editorial and production experience with your publisher been like? To what degree did you collaborate on the cover image and design of your book?

Working with Hub City Press on the cover and design of In the Hands of the River has been a delight! Katherine Webb, Kate McMullen, and Meg Reid were receptive to my thoughts at every stage, from poem ordering to the number of sections, the section-break glyph, page size, and, of course, the cover.

We went through several rounds of designs, none quite feeling right. When Kate connected with and shared several cyanotypes by northern Appalachian artist Jeannie Hutchins, the image who would become River’s cover shimmered into an exuberant “Yes!” for us all. I always wondered what my book’s cover might look like, if I were ever to have a book. River’s cover is everything I ever hoped—and more.

What are you working on now?

In addition to my dissertation, The Queer Ecology of Clouds in Nineteenth-Century British Poetics, which I will defend in May 2023, I am excited to be nearing completion of my second creative manuscript! This hybrid project of poetry and lyric fragments moves between Appalachia and Colorado, engaging personal and ancestral trauma, memory, and survivance as it follows the speaker’s completion of a 100-kilometer ultramarathon—a sport that cultivates a very class-privileged, white, heterosexual, male space—as a queer mixed-race runner from the working class. I am deeply inspired by the work of writers including Noé Álvarez (Spirit Run, 2020), Mirna Valerio (A Beautiful Work in Progress, 2017), and Verna Volker (Native Women Running) in helping this work and me find voice.

 The final sequences are still in flux, but I am thrilled to have had selections from this manuscript published in Colorado Review, Nashville Review, Poetry Northwest, Shenandoah, and elsewhere.

What advice would you offer to students interested in creative writing?

Keep writing. Keep trusting in your work and yourself. Regardless of what teachers or the publication market seems to be saying, the world needs your voice. Sooner or later, the work will find homes of some kind in the world, but don’t think about publication as the goal. Now, now and always, keep writing the work that you feel compelled from deep within to do—the work that only you can bring into words.

What question would you like to ask the next author featured at Speaking of Marvels?

I’m always fascinated by ancestral lines, inheritances, and legacies. So, I would love to ask the next featured author: What three (or so) authors, creatives, or works most influenced your collection? And/or, if readers are moved by your collection, who would you recommend we next seek out?

*

Lucien Darjeun Meadows was born and raised among lands sometimes called Virginia and West Virginia to a family of English, German, and Cherokee descent. He has received fellowships and awards from the Academy of American Poets, American Alliance of Museums, and American Association of Geographers. Currently, Lucien is completing his PhD in Literary Studies at the University of Denver and serves as Managing Editor for Denver Quarterly, Poetry Editor for The Hopper, and Volunteer Ranger Assistant for Larimer County and Fort Collins.

http://www.lucienmeadows.com

Seif-Eldeine

“I wanted to create characters that were real and true, in a sort of distilled realism, or a hyper-realism. The characters are meant to be archetypal, and it is their small triumphs that make Voices from a Forgotten Letter: Poems on the Syrian Civil War about overcoming rather than being victimized by war.”

(Voices from a Forgotten Letter: Poems on the Syrian Civil War, Chestnut Review Chapbooks, 2023)

A question from Monic Ductan: Who are your literary heroes? Why?

The Confessionals are first and foremost among them. I think Ariel by Sylvia Plath is the single best book of poetry I have ever read. I appreciate how versatile Robert Lowell was during his career, seemingly reinventing himself during 3 distinct periods of his career. I enjoy Anne Sexton and her use of Catholic imagery to explore her mental illness. I have had my own struggles with bi-polar, which I confront in my second manuscript. It’s therapeutic and creatively stimulating going back and looking at how the trio transformed their illnesses into works of art. And as someone from Massachusetts, I always got to root for the Boston teams.

Philip Levine was a huge inspiration for the book I wrote. While the Confessionals are the major influence for my second manuscript, Levine was the inspiration for many elements of Voices from a Forgotten Letter: Poems on the Syrian Civil War. I appreciate, above all, his sensitivity and humanity. Like many of the protagonists in my book, Levine’s protagonists are heroes of everyday hard circumstances. For Levine, it was the economically deprived streets of Detroit; for me it is the war-torn provinces of Syria.

Recently, I’ve been reading the Acmeists, a group from late Tsarist / early Soviet Russia, including Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Osip Mandelstrom. They covered an era of Soviet Russia similar to the strife and fear going on in Syria. Their act of writing poetry in itself was heroic, and many of them paid their lives for it.

I think Mr. Darcy was right when he said “poetry was the food of love,” and when I’m looking for romance, I go for Nizar Qabbani’s love poetry. Qabbani is a Syrian poet who is mentioned 3 times in my book. He and the poet Adonis are Syria’s most famous poets, as well as the most famous poets of the Arab world.

I’m a huge fan of Billy Collins, and his ability to combine the whimsical, humorous, and profound all in a single poem. His level of accessibility leaves him open to the casual reader of poetry and the depth of his craft leaves him open to the appreciation of his peers.

For a more contemporary example, I’ll use someone the Academy is going to hate me for saying I read, but I like Rupi Kaur. I find Kaur’s poetry invigorating, clean and distilled like a Warhol painting. It is truly consumer art, and I do think that such art should have a place on every poet’s mantel. Such artists are touching the innate in large segments of people, and that should be taken seriously.

A question from Monica Macansantos: Do you ever find yourself inspired or guided by your childhood in your work?

I’m working on a memoir that explores parts of my childhood. It’s in its infancy and I am still working out what direction I want to take it in, so it’s more of an autobiography in terms of narrative, but memoir in terms of style right now. I’d like to push it more to memoir.

I try to bring the wonderment of a child to my work. It’s like beginner’s mind, where everything I learn leads to something else to learn. Children can learn incredibly fast, partly out of necessity. I make my goals feel like necessities so that I am always working on them, like a child who can’t get enough of a game.

A question from Anna Laura Reeve: Do you understand your role in society—as a poet—to be influential, critical, observant, or something else?

For me, the most important part of my poetry is to increase empathy. Studies have come out showing reading literature increases empathy in the real world. Voices from a Forgotten Letter: Poems on the Syrian Civil War does this by creating a bunch of persona narrators. A persona narrator is a character in the poem who narrates. Using persona narrators allowed me to get into the mindset of the civilians and combatants in this tragedy. I hope it will allow readers to see from these diverse viewpoints as well.

I guess I’m not the expert on my own work. Arab-American poet Hayan Charrara said of my book:

Poets write “war poems” for a host of reasons: to witness, to
memorialize and commemorate, to celebrate, to lament, to
protest, to confront, to make sense, to make war’s abstraction
concrete, to document war’s extraordinary realities so they may
not otherwise be forgotten. Seif-Eldeine attends to these all with
grace, attentiveness, openness of heart, and skill. 

I’m not sure I accomplished that, or even set out to accomplish that, but Hayan nailed what it means to write war poetry, or any poetry for that matter. I think his response is better than anything I could come up with on my own.

A question from Megan Nichols: what books do you return to when you feel uninspired or disillusioned?

The three books, one memoir, one autobiography, and one a poetry book, that I keep coming back to are I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, dictated by Malcolm X to Alex Haley, and Ariel by Sylvia Plath. Each one caught the enormous pain that comes with living, and turned that pain into something triumphant. I believe every success story is a comeback story, as every single person experiences major setbacks in life. So, the success story in itself is a comeback story, and I think these 3 authors captured that better than anyone else I’ve read.

Could you tell us a bit about your growing up and your path to becoming a writer?

I grew up between two upper middle class towns outside Worcester, Massachusetts. There was lots of hedonism and adolescent status jockeying between my friends and rival groups. My dad is a psychiatrist that owns his own practice, and my mom was first a nurse, then a lawyer. And if she hasn’t told you yet, she went to Boston College: undergrad, nursing, and law. I really appreciate my parents for spending so much money on my education. I went to private schools where I was far from the richest kid, though we did have money.

The elementary and middle school I went to, Fay School, had a poetry project in the 5th grade. It was my first taste of writing poetry, and I loved it. The enthusiasm didn’t last for long, however, as my grade for the project was one of the lowest of the semester.

I regained my love for poetry when I went to Milton Academy. We were required to take an art, and I liked to write and considered creative writing the easiest art for me to take. I was dreading the poetry section, as I had had my heart crushed once by a poetry assignment, but I got better feedback this time around. My teacher encouraged all of us to send our work out, and I got an honorable mention in a prize run by Princeton. My confidence as a poet was growing.

In college, I got away from taking creative writing as a class but still wrote on my own time.

I went through a difficult time post-college, which included some institutionalizations at mental hospitals, and writing proved to be a great outlet to distract me from everyday life.

Once I was settled in a job, I started taking classes at the Writer’s Studio, where I conceived of a book about Syria that would take the narrative elements of Philip Levine and combine them with the syntax of Hemingway. This was 2012, and I had no idea then how long the Civil War would drag on.

How do you decorate or arrange your writing space?

I write at my work with loud machines going off all day. The tiling on the floor is questionable and the landlord admits he got it cheap. I’ve rocked back and forth in my chair so much writing poetry that the tile has come off and is hanging by a thread to a rocky floor. I’ve tried unsuccessfully to rip the board from the ground, but it won’t come off. Now, when I try to rock my chair, I get stuck on the floor and must lift my butt up and lift the chair up and rock that way. The wall behind me has been pounded by the back of my chair so much that drywall is coming out. This is the best way I have found to decorate my writing space.

Could you share a representative or pivotal poem from your book? Perhaps something that that invites the reader into the world of the book?

I’ll share one of the persona poems about civilians, originally published in The Massachusetts Review because I think it is most representative of the collection.

Why did you choose this poem?

It demonstrates a lot of the book’s strengths and origins. The poem was modeled after a Larry Levis poem, so it’s in that similar vein and tone of the Fresno Poets and Philip Levine. It interweaves the different groups of the conflict and their thoughts. And it interweaves Arabic culture with contemporary events.

What obsessions led you to write your book?

Psychology was a large basis of these poems. Empathy, seeing things from different points of view. I wanted to create characters that were real and true, in a sort of distilled realism, or a hyper-realism. The characters are meant to be archetypal, and it is their small triumphs that make Voices from a Forgotten Letter: Poems on the Syrian Civil War about overcoming rather than being victimized by war.

What’s the oldest poem in your book? Or can you name one piece that catalyzed or inspired the rest of the book? What do you remember about writing it?

Both the oldest poem and the one that catalyzed the book was “Who Wants French Cigarettes in Syria.” The poem was written a year after the Arab Spring began, and my teacher at the Writer’s Studio, Joel Hinman, said I should make a book out of it. So, we got to work on a concept we fleshed out based on this poem.

This poem stays truest to my real life experiences. My grandmother and her sister lived in the same building, not talking for decades. Lidia was a model who had billboards throughout the city, and I imagined what she and her Russian diplomat father must be doing in Syria at that time. As a beautiful, friendly woman in a sea of conservative girls, Lydia did have quite a few admirers.

Joseph was in class with Lidia and me, learning Arabic at Damascus University. He was a married man from Greece willing to start some flirtations with Lydia. He lived in Sha’alon, a neighborhood of Damascus, that is truly next to Solhee’a, where I overheard the salesman say in Arabic we should charge more because he’s American and won’t bargain. You must be willing to bargain in Damascus. Here is the poem:

A question from Jack B. Bedell: Was there a moment working on your current project where you felt like it was a waste of your time? And if so, did an idea or piece or writing lead you out of that pessimism? What was it?

To be honest, the feedback was so good from the get-go on the project, I was getting encouragement from everywhere I went on how it was developing. But I’ve been working on a second manuscript simultaneously the last 5 or 6 years that I have been sending out to various journals. I haven’t gotten a single bite so far. I’m more in that place of pessimism right now as I look at the monumental effort I might need to turn this manuscript around, if indeed my peers do not think it’s worth publication.

The best thing I did for myself during this situation was actually something that I had done in advance to prepare. I always left myself open to writing multiple manuscripts tied to a single theme or style at a time. That way, if I ever felt stuck on one project, I could switch to another. That preparation has made me better able to deal with the fact my second manuscript may need a lot more work or may need to be scrapped altogether. I am very in favor of being honest with yourself and deciding whether you are going down dead ends and need to cut losses. Sometimes, as in individual pieces, you will need to “kill your darlings.”

Which poem in your book has the most meaningful back story to you? What’s the back story?

Probably “Not all Death Comes from War.” It’s about my uncle and his family in Syria. His sister and her husband were taking care of two wheelchair bound family members, their mother from diabetes, and their brother from a car crash. They were poor and lived in the bad area of town. There seemed to be so much pain, but they had amazing resiliency and joy despite the pain. I tried to capture all of this in one poem, but it just wasn’t believable having two wheelchair bound characters in the space of a poem. So, I cut it down to how my uncle used to fix his mother’s hijab when it slipped off in front of me as the only non-immediate part of the family. And that simply was the poem.

My uncle recently passed away, about a week ago. I am updating this now. He was truly a joyous presence in my life, and I’ll always remember his care for his family members.

Which poem is the “misfit” in your collection and why?

I’d say any of the third-person narratives, such as the one that ends the book “No One and Syria’s Struggle to Sleep,” “The Teacher at the Refugee Camp,” “What Prayer Rugs Collect,” and a couple other in there. They sound different and like a misfit. These outcasts do have some friends though.

What was the final poem you wrote or significantly revised for the book, and how did that affect your sense that the book was complete?

It’s so hard to say, both because I have a bad memory and I work on several different manuscripts at the same time. I am constantly revising, re-visiting, sending out for publication, giving it to someone to edit, revising, sending out, etc. There are poems I have published that I am still working on, and many in this chapbook will probably be revised before I put a full-length out. I really rely on other people to decide if the work is acceptable to them. It’s almost never acceptable to me, and I’ll constantly be asking for feedback for years after I started writing a poem.

 Do you have a favorite prompt or revision strategy? What is it? 

I use other poems as models for the poem I write. For instance, the poem “The Silence in Syria,” first published in Poetry International, comes straight from Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Facing It.” I will literally sit with a poem for two or three hours trying to copy every element of it on different words and a different narrative. I want to be able to catch both the soul and embodiment of the model poem. This means matching it for tone, syntax, sound, rhyme, etc., as well as the personal psychology of the persona narrator in the poem. Here they are side by side:

The Silence in Syria

And, via the Poetry Foundation, Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Facing It.”

One other strategy I use is automatic writing. I spent about a 2-year period writing the first thing that came to my mind for 15 straight minutes plus the first thing in the morning. Initially, I did not edit them, but they were so ponderous and big and amorphous that they weren’t working. Lately, I’ve been putting them into iambic pentameter sonnets. That’s really focused them in an interesting way.

Another Surrealist game I play is making a word list and choosing words out of that list to make a poem.

In terms of revision, I like to focus on letting the sounds guide me. While I’m revising, each poem is read aloud and anything that strikes me as clunky or does not seem it fits is gone. I’ll often take lines that are strong on their own but don’t fit into the context of the poem well and make those lines into haiku.

I also think, if just for practice, poets should write forms poems such as ghazals, sonnets or villanelles.

What advice would you offer to students interested in creative writing?

Carve out a dedicated time in your day to write. If you can find a job that allows you to write on the clock, do that. I cannot stress how deeply I believe it is writing not reading that gets you better. It’s better to read one single poem deeply as you write than to read whole books and not think about them. Of course, reading widely should be part of your practice, but most the advice I got coming up was focus on the reading, and I don’t think enough emphasis was put on dedicating time to writing.

I’d also recommend doing the Writer’s Studio program and going to my alma mater Lesley University. Both places have wonderful programs, and you’ll learn a lot going there.

I do think MFA’s are worth it, but the Writer’s Studio is a low cost option you can do while you have a job.

But I don’t want you to think this is a route you have to take. I studied Middle Eastern Studies in college and took only two creative writing classes. I loaded up on classes where I was interested in the material and the classes were heavy on paper writing. Most Professors in college are publishing, or trying to publish, so they will have a handle on their own writing skills. Classes heavy on paper-writing but a different subject than creative writing will give you lots of material to work with while writing your poetry. My degree certainly came in handy when writing “Voices from a Forgotten Letter: Poems on the Syrian Civil War.”

What question would you like to ask the next author featured at Speaking of Marvels?

What do you think of the re-birth of Romanticism in the era of the Instagram poet?

What’s been the most difficult thing in the promotion process for you? And how did you overcome it?

*

Syrian-American poet Seif-Eldeine has a degree in Middle Eastern Studies from Tufts University and an MFA in Poetry from Lesley University. He won the Chestnut Review Chapbook Contest, an Emerging Poets Fellowship from the Writer’s Colony, and a residency at the Vermont Studio Center. His work has been published in the Massachusetts Review, Poetry Daily, Poetry International, and the Michigan Quarterly Review, among others.

Catherine Pritchard Childress

“All our adult experiences, relationships–and by extension, poems–are guided by our childhoods.”

Outside the Frame (Eastover Press, 2023)

A question from Karisma Price: Do you have any self-care practices you include when writing about something heavy?

I’ve learned that it is necessary for me to be self-aware—to recognize when the work is going to take me to a dark or “heavy” place, then determine whether I have time, space, and energy (physical and emotional) to stay in that place long enough to finish the poem(s). If the answer is yes, then I push through, accept the ugliness that comes, and write. If not, I walk away. It’s risky, though, because sometimes the decision to put a difficult draft aside means never being able to reclaim the initial spark for or energy of the poem—then, the draft is lost.

A question from Sarah Audsley: What is your relationship to the first-person speaker, the lyric “I”?

While most every draft begins with something I, Catherine, experienced, remembered, or witnessed, the resulting poems are almost always separate or removed from that I.  For me, the poem dictates the point of view. In fact, part of my revision strategy is to consider and reconsider point of view until I’m satisfied that I’ve crafted a speaker who best serves the poem’s larger goals. The poet Richard Hugo said, “you [poets] owe reality nothing and the truth about your feelings everything.” I’ve found this to be useful advice when I consider what matters most in a poem. I hope the Is and Yous and Shes in my poems speak for any woman, for all women. And I hope they speak to all readers.

A question from Monic Ductan: Who are your literary heroes? Why?

Literary hero means a few things for me and the lists I offer here are all woefully incomplete. First, women writers like Christine de Pisan, Anne Bradstreet, Mary Wollstonecraft, the Bronte sisters, George Eliot, Phyllis Wheatley—the pioneers—women who insisted upon being heard and helped legitimize a woman’s perspective on the page. Certainly, these women are heroic. Then, I think of those whom I consider masters of the craft—Thomas Hardy and Willa Cather, whose descriptions of place, among other things, are unparalleled, in my opinion; Michael Ondaatje, whose prose is poetry and poetry, prose (in some cases); William Wordsworth, who defined poetry for all of us; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, one of the contemporary masters of the novel. Finally, I think of literary heroes as those who write the books I return to again and again for comfort, instruction, and pleasure—Mary Karr, whose memoirs and poems showed me that my experience can exist on the page; Charlotte Pence, whose first chapbook, Weaves a Clear Night, hasn’t left the easy reach of my bedside table in a decade; Linda Parsons, whose Mother Land taught me to be a fearless writer; and Don Johnson, whose expert attention to every single word in a poem makes his work both a pleasure to read and a necessary instruction manual.

A question from Monica Macansantos: Do you ever find yourself inspired or guided by your childhood in your work?

Flannery O’Conner wrote “Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.” One might easily replace “information about life” with to write about. I suspect that all my work is informed by childhood in some ways. Some of my drafts begin with specific childhood memories, and some poems I only realized the role my childhood played in the writing of them long after they were complete. For example, only after I was deep into writing in the voices of Biblical women did I remember a book on my father’s bookshelf titled Bad Women of the Bible–what I remember most is the alluring woman on its cover. I wonder now, if my fascination with that book, that cover, is bound up in some of my poems. The timing of this question is excellent as I recently had a conversation with a friend about the degree to which, as adults, we are separate from/can escape our childhoods. If my friend is right, then all our adult experiences, relationships, and by extension, poems are guided by our childhoods.

A question from Megan Nichols: what books do you return to when you feel uninspired or disillusioned?

There are many! How about 10? In no particular order:

Weaves a Clear Night, Charlotte Pence

Code, Charlotte Pence (a masterclass in experimental form)

The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje

Secular Love, Michael Ondaatje

The Carrying, Ada Limon (especially “Instructions on Not Giving Up”)

Sinners Welcome, Mary Karr

Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde

Without End, Adam Zagajewski

The Great Fires, Jack Gilbert

My Antonia, Willa Cather

How do you decorate or arrange your writing space?

These days my writing space is anywhere and everywhere. Often, the initial words, lines, or ideas for poems first find form in the Notes app on my phone. However, many of the poems in Outside The Frame were written on the pull-out shelf/desk of my grandmother’s nightstand, which holds a variety of sentimental items: a paperweight inscribed “write your own story”—a gift from my niece; a small paper mâché female bust (a nod to all my writing, both academic and creative, about the body) given to me and signed by my graduate school cohort the day I defended my thesis; the Bible my parents gave me on my 16th birthday, a small silk rosebud in a glass vase with acrylic “water”—a Mother’s Day present from my daughter when she was a toddler. I’ll never forget the careful way she carried the rose to me that morning. She didn’t want the water to spill. And a small glass bottle with dried lily of the valley. Finally, hanging above that makeshift desk is my great-grandmother’s first painting—roses and a double spout jug dated 1907 and one of my daughter’s paintings—a deer skull and flowers along with Whitman’s line “…and your very flesh shall be a great poem.”

Could you share a representative or pivotal poem from your book? Perhaps something that that invites the reader into the world of the book?

            Wife to Wife

My father admonished me

to remember you.

He couldn’t have known

how I would heed

his warning. I don’t

condemn your trespass,

I commend you,

don’t blame you

for wanting to stay

behind in a place

where you had friends,

unstained clothes,

a name.

I imagine your skeptical exit

from the gates of Sodom,

walking toward your life,

the view stinging

your eyes like desert sand.

A clouded image of Lot,

who didn’t fill your needs,

but satisfied his greed

when he pitched his tents.

Looking back was better

than blindly following

a father who offered

your daughters’ virtue,

kept his honor

locked behind doors,

conspired with angels

who lauded his intentions,

grieved his union

with an impure wife.

My father warned me

of the wrath

that changed you

to a pillar, scattered you

throughout that razed city,

but he didn’t know you

were the one

with power to cleanse,

couldn’t fathom teaching me

to remember

just how much you are worth.

Why did you choose this poem?

I chose this poem for a couple of reasons. First, because “Wife to Wife” is the poem that inspired the persona poems in this book, and in some ways—at least in terms of my process—those poems are the heart of the book. I also chose this poem because I think it speaks not only to the roles family and religion play in Outside the Frame, but also to one of my goals when writing these poems—to reconsider what I see as incomplete representations of women. 

What was the final poem you wrote or significantly revised for the book, and how did that affect your sense that the book was complete?

The final poem I wrote for this book wasn’t actually written for this book at all! I have been fortunate to work with an outstanding team at Eastover Press—particularly my editor and project manager, Jennifer Miller (check out her own fine poems!). Jen made so many invaluable suggestions, and one of them was that the third section of Outside the Frame was missing something—something we couldn’t easily identify. Ultimately, that something was “Sōkhenet,” a poem written long after I thought this manuscript complete, but one that needed to be part of the story all along. I’m grateful to Jen for leading me to that decision.

Do you have a favorite prompt or revision strategy? What is it?

If I’m struggling with a draft, I try to force it into some kind of form—a sonnet or syllabics, for example. These constraints almost always take the poem to a place I wouldn’t have otherwise arrived. For me, it’s a good way to move beyond what Hugo calls the “triggering subject” to what really matters in a poem. I suppose I should say here that as often as not, I take the draft out of the form in final revisions. 

What are you working on now?

I’m at the stage of my writing process that I most dread—revision, revision, revision. I have both a digital folder and a physical notebook—each filled with drafts in various stages of completion. Some need final revisions, some are still images, thoughts, and ideas that need to be made into poems, some are somewhere in between. Now that I’ve released (and that’s more an emotional state than a literal one) the poems in Outside the Frame, I’m ready to get into those poems, drafts, and notes with an eye toward a second collection.

What question would you like to ask the next author featured at Speaking of Marvels?

Which came first, an idea for the book that you wrote towards, or the individual pieces that ultimately revealed themselves as a cohesive collection?

*

Catherine Pritchard Childress lives in the shadow of Roan Mountain in East Tennessee. She teaches writing and literature at Lees-McRae College. Her poems have appeared in North American Review, Louisiana Literature, Connecticut Review, The Cape Rock, Appalachian Review, Still: The Journal, Stoneboat, and drafthorse, among other journals, and have been anthologized in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volumes VI and VII: Tennessee and North Carolina and Women Speak, Volumes VII and VIII. She is the author of the poetry collection Other (Finishing Line Press, 2015).

https://catherinepritchardchildresspoetry.com/poetry/

Taylor Byas

“I was constantly asking myself how I could push against the boundaries of form, how I could look the book’s central concern in the face and take back my power.”

(Shutter, Madhouse Press, 2022)

Could you tell us a bit about your growing up and your path to becoming a writer?

Growing up I was a bookworm, you could always find me with my head buried in a book. I’ve always loved reading and loved English in school, and I always said that whatever I was going to do when I grew up, it would have something to do with books. By the time I was in high school, I felt pretty certain that I wanted to be a writer, but when I would tell people that, I would get the typical “Well how will you make money/survive?” questions, and I let it discourage me for a while. I went into college as an English major on a pre-med track, because I thought I would just be a doctor like my mom instead. I quickly realized that I would be miserable in medicine, and writing was what I needed to do. And I haven’t looked back ever since.

How do you decorate or arrange your writing space?

It depends! My office space in my apartment is pretty organized most of the time. I try to keep it as uncluttered as I possibly can because clutter makes it hard for me to work. But a lot of the times, I write in my bed, and my bed is essentially this huge pillow fort. So I’d say my writing spaces are tidy and comfortable.

Could you share a representative or pivotal poem from your book? Perhaps something that that invites the reader into the world of the book?

I think a representative or pivotal poem from the book would be “Resting Bitch Face”:

Why did you choose this poem?

I chose this poem because I feel like it’s central concern really captures the essence of the book. This is a poem that confronts the entitlement of the male gaze, how that gaze shapes the very fabric of how I exist in this world as a Black woman. The collection is an attempt to fashion a poetic self that has strength, agency, the ability to talk back to these violences. The voice of this poem is probably one of my favorites—the speaker is a bad ass.

What obsessions led you to write your book?

My obsession with finding different modes of resistance within my writing. Whether in my creative or scholarly work, I’m obsessed with strategies of resistance in the writing of writers of color. So in writing this book, I was constantly asking myself how I could push against the boundaries of form, how I could look the book’s central concern in the face and take back my power.

What’s the oldest poem in your book? Or can you name one piece that catalyzed or inspired the rest of the book? What do you remember about writing it?

Oh, this is a great question. Funny enough, the oldest poem in this book is “First Wednesdays,” and I wrote that poem as a part of my Masters Thesis. So I hadn’t even yet thought of this chapbook yet, but it seems that the male gaze has been a poetic concern of mine even before I recognized it. I’d actually forgotten about this poem until I was putting the book together and when I rediscovered it, it helped me to solve a problem I was actually having with the ordering. I love it when things fall into place in that way.

How did you decide on the arrangement and title of your book?

The arrangement was definitely a sort of trial and error process with some of my closest friends and with Jill Mceldowney at Madhouse, who was so wonderful to work with. The title actually came from another poem of mine, a longer poem-essay that I wrote that was titled “Shutter.” Length-wise, the poem was too long for the chapbook, but it was very much within the same vein of the book’s concerns and I felt like that title really fit the book. And so Shutter was born.

Which poem in your book has the most meaningful back story to you? What’s the back story?

I love the inspiration for “Resting Bitch Face,” and I always talk about it if I read the poem during a set. The poem came into being because I was thinking about the pandemic, and how the one positive thing that came from the pandemic was that men were no longer telling me to smile because my mouth was covered by my mask. And the thought of that was both funny and infuriating, because why do men do that?! That entitlement they feel to my smile, and the fact that I only got a break from it because of a global pandemic? Sickening.

Which poem is the “misfit” in your collection and why?

I don’t think I have a misfit! I think the poems all feel like they belong. Maybe “First Wednesdays” just because it wasn’t written when the rest of the poems were and because I added it in from another project. But other than that, I don’t know if I’d name any poem a misfit.

Could you share with us a glimpse of your writing practice or process for this book?

I don’t have a regular writing practice. I have to kind of let the poems come to me. However, there have been a few times in the past few years in which I’ve tortured myself and done poem-a-day for a month. A lot of the poems in this collection came from poem-a-days, when I was forcing myself to be disciplined enough to write a poem every day. Maybe that’s saying something! Maybe I should be writing a poem a day (jk, who has that kind of time). But I also think that practice of writing every day allowed me to subconsciously write towards an obsession. It gave the project the space to bloom.

 Do you have a favorite prompt or revision strategy? What is it? 

My favorite revision strategy? Sending my work to my very loving but very honest beta reader friends. They will tell me when the poem is working and they will very gently tell me if I’m completely off the mark. Having that system that I can trust has been life changing for my writing, and has honestly made editing much easier for me. I’m more willing to make drastic changes when people I trust can tell me what they see the poem is asking for. I want to give the poem what it wants.

What are you working on now?

I just finished my dissertation (my second-full length) and I think I’ve just recently written the first poems of full-length number 3! I’m also working on a YA novel in verse that I’m excited about.

If you could choose another artistic path (painting, music, dance, etc.) what would it be and why?

Oh god, painting. I love painting so much and I hope I will have more time to paint once I graduate from my program.

*

Taylor Byas (she/her) is a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she is an Associate Editor for Cincinnati Review and an Assistant Features Editor for The Rumpus. She is the 1st place winner of the 2020 Poetry Super Highway, the 2020 Frontier Poetry Award for New Poets Contests, and the 2021 Adrienne Rich Poetry Prize. She is the author of the chapbooks Bloodwarm and Shutter, and her debut full-length I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times will be out with Soft Skull Press in August 2023. She is represented by Rena Rossner of the Deborah Harris Agency.

https://www.taylorbyas.com/

Monic Ductan

“I write a lot about family strife and loneliness, and perhaps these stories will remind readers that they aren’t alone in their troubles.”

Daughters of Muscadine (University Press of Kentucky, 2023)

A question from Anna Laura Reeve: Do you understand your role in society—as a writer—to be influential, critical, observant, or something else?

Great question. I hope my writing will inspire readers and influence other writers. I write a lot about family strife and loneliness, and perhaps these stories will remind readers that they aren’t alone in their troubles. I also think every fiction writer must be observant and deeply curious. 

A question from Megan Nichols: what books do you return to when you feel uninspired or disillusioned?

Wow. Almost too many to name. Two of my favorites are Bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison and Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody. I am always in awe of the strength of those two protagonists. I also enjoy re-reading the opening chapters of Outer Banks by Anne Rivers Siddons. As for short stories, I love “Third and Final Continent” and “Hell-Heaven” by Jhumpa Lahiri. I like to return to individual poems like “Scheherazade” by Richard Siken and “Won’t You Celebrate with Me?” by Lucille Clifton.

Could you tell us a bit about your growing up and your path to becoming a writer?

I was raised working-class in northeast Georgia. My paternal grandfather was completely illiterate, and my parents didn’t finish high school. I was one of those students who was supposed to not do so well in school. I was supposed to be a statistic. We definitely have to help at-risk youth. They have so much to fight against. I believe the best thing I did for myself was to ignore statistics. My parents believed I’d make it to college and my daddy put a considerable amount of pressure on me to do well in school. I majored in English all the way through my PhD program, and I knew I wanted to become a writer when I was about twenty years old in undergraduate school. It’s taken me over twenty years to realize my dream of publishing a book. I’ve always been a reader. For me, books have always been there for me, regardless of the troubles I’ve had.

How do you decorate or arrange your writing space?

I get most of my writing done while sitting on my living room floor with my laptop on a bench in front of me. I have a china cabinet with some of my teacups in it. When I write at work, I use my office at the university. Because I’m scoliotic, I have a heating pad there in case my back cramps. I also keep a few other comforts like a blanket slung over my chair and bottles of water in my mini-fridge. I like to suck on candy sometimes when I write, so my desk will sometimes have Lemonheads or Life Savers in it.

What obsessions led you to write your book?

I’m from a small town in Georgia, and I love reading books about everyday people. My book is a collection of nine linked stories about working-class Black people in rural Georgia. Two events hold the stories together: a lynching and a drowning. For instance, the first story is told by the great-grandson of the lynching victim, and the second story is told by the high school basketball teammates of the girl who drowned. Some characters appear in multiple stories. It’s overall about the residents of a small town called Muscadine, Georgia.

How did you decide on the arrangement and title of your book?

I initially wanted to name the book after a story in the collection, but my editor suggested we find a different title. I suggested a few, and he liked Daughters of Muscadine best. I was really lucky to have Silas House as my editor. He’s great and gave me so many good suggestions. He also made suggestions for how to arrange the stories in the second half of the book.

What has the editorial and production experience with your publisher been like? To what degree did you collaborate on the cover image and design of your book?

University Press of Kentucky is an amazingly supportive publisher. They asked me for suggestions for the cover. I showed them some designs I liked, and they had the beautiful cover made by a cover artist. I was even allowed to suggest some editorial changes. I always got the sense that they wanted me to be happy with the finished product.  

What are you working on now?

I write in different genres. I’m working on a novel about a Gullah woman and her white boyfriend. They uncover police corruption in their Southern town. I also have a collection of essays I’ve been working on since forever, a memoir about growing up working-class and Black in the South. My in-progress poetry collection is tentatively called Man Sold Separately, and it’s mostly about romantic relationships but also a strained relationship between a daughter and her family. 

What advice would you offer to students interested in creative writing?

Try to write a little bit every day. I know you’re busy and you have classes to study for and friends to hang out with and jobs to work, but the only way you will improve is to throw yourself into it by getting some words on the page.

What question would you like to ask the next author featured at Speaking of Marvels?

Who are your literary heroes? Why?

*

Born and raised in Georgia, Monic Ductan now lives in Tennessee and teaches at Tennessee Tech University. Monic’s book, a loosely linked collection of stories called Daughters of Muscadine, focuses on working-class Black women, estrangement, race, and family life in rural Georgia. Monic’s writing has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Kweli, Shenandoah, Oxford American, Appalachian Review, and storySouth. Her essay “Fantasy Worlds” was listed as notable in Best American Essays (2019). She is at work on her first novel, a book about a Gullah girl and a police scandal in a small town.

https://monicductan.com/