How does your work first enter the world? Do you have a social group or writers group that you work ideas and poems with?
I share some of my WIP work with two of my closest friends, but writing tends to be a solitary act for me. I need silence, to be alone, and a blank Microsoft Document. I do wish that my process was a little more romantic though, like a walk in the woods and the first draft scribbled on the pages of a leatherbound notebook.
What other poetry books have you been reading lately?
I’m waiting for my copies of Chen Chen’s Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, and Leigh Chadwick’s Your Favorite Poet, to arrive. In the meantime, I’m revisiting Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s Lucky Fish.
How do you know when a poem is finished?
I think of a poem as finished when it is telling the story I wanted to tell, in the way I wanted to tell it. I think of it as really finished when it has been published and I can’t realistically make any further changes. Overall, I’d say it’s instinctual; based on gut feel.
How does a poem begin?
Often as a resurfaced memory, weird dream, or conversation. Sometimes, born of a line or imagery that comes to me from out of the blue and refuses to go away until I turn it into a poem.
What are you working on?
I’m putting together my first chapbook, with the goal to start sending it out by January of next year, if not sooner. I’m excited, but also semi-terrified, because my poetry is inherently very personal, and having so many pieces in such proximity to each other, conversing with one another, inspires different sentiments depending on the kind of day I’m having.
