“The same goes for my poems. I’m always curious as to where they’ll take me, how they’ll unfold, what mysteries they’ll ask me to try to solve…”
River, Amen (Wayfarer Books, 2023)
A question from Noreen Ocampo: What is something that fuels you as a writer, your writing practice, or just you as a human being?
Wonder and curiosity. These are what fuel me both as a writer and in my outdoor pursuits. I love not knowing what I’ll find as I’m riding my mountain bike on a tight singletrack through the woods or talking up a creek in search of brook trout. The same goes for my poems. I’m always curious as to where they’ll take me, how they’ll unfold, what mysteries they’ll ask me to try to solve (knowing full well I won’t solve anything that won’t just lead to more questions). I like to wonder what the world is like through different perspectives and voices and animals.
A question from Caroline M. Mar: What was the soundtrack of your book? Were there specific songs, musicians, or sounds that helped you access your writing?
Music is such an integral part of my writing process. I’m always listening to music while I write, mostly instrumental stuff. For this book, Jeff Parker and Charlie Parr were probably playing the most while I wrote.
How do you decorate or arrange your writing space?
With records, cassette tapes, signed broadsides by Jim Harrison and Gary Snyder, old concert posters, postcards from friends, books strewn everywhere. There are leaves in the corner and dirt from my garden across the floor. It’s very much open to the outside since it’s a room in my garage. I like how it meets my wooded yard and how I can hear the birds and the trains passing by. All of those things help me get into that thin space between myself and whatever it is that I’m writing or exploring. Sometimes I’ll get up and go work on a bicycle or tinker with something on my workbench or flip a record and then sit back down and a line that I had been working on all morning finally takes shape.
What obsessions led you to write your book?
Rivers. I’m obsessed with them. I am mesmerized by them. I spend hours exploring them, wading into them, kayaking on them, and mapping out hiking and fishing trips around them. When I’m not in a river or along its side, I am staring at blue lines on paper or a screen daydreaming about what I’ll find when I reach it in real life.
Also, my family’s relationship to the coal industry along the Kittatinny Ridge and our family history in those forgotten towns of Centralia, Shamokin, and Ashland. As I followed that seam, I grew more and more obsessed with what I came to call the “post-industrial wilderness” and how it has shaped us and what constitutes it as an ecosystem.
How did you decide on the arrangement and title of your book?
The title came from the first and last words of the book. When I saw them, it just fit.
What are you working on now?
I am working on my next full-length poetry collection which is centered around a series of “Dead Elk” poems that started to come to me during my Artist Residency in The Bob Marshall Wilderness Area. I am also querying agents for a young adult novel I’ve written and slowly putting together a collection of essays.
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Michael Garrigan writes and teaches along the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. He is the author of two poetry collections — River, Amen (winner of the Weatherford Award for Poetry) and Robbing the Pillars — and his writing has appeared in Orion Magazine, The Hopper Magazine, Water~Stone Review, and North American Review. His work has been nominated for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize. He was the 2021 Artist in Residence for The Bob Marshall Wilderness Area and he believes every watershed should have a Poet Laureate.
Speaking of Marvels 