How important is music to your poetry?
Incredibly. I find a lot of inspiration in Karen Dalton, Joni Mitchell, Lucia Williams, Gillian Welch, Vashti Bunyan, Cat Power, Nina Simone, Marissa Nadler, Stevie Nicks, Devendra Banhart, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Hozier, etc. A great deal of Hindi classical music. Old Bollywood tunes my Ma and Dad love.
When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?
I read Meditation at Lagunitas by Robert Hass daily. I also am endlessly inspired by Paul Celan, Marina Tsvetaeva, Cecilia Vicuna, and Anne Carson. Here are texts I’ve read possibly over ten times: Ariel by Sylvia Plath; The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson; Odes by Sharon Olds; Late Wife by Claudia Emerson; What the Living Do by Marie Howe; Where Now: New & Selected Poems by Laura Kasischke; Orbit by Cynthia Zarin; Bright Dead Things by Ada Limon; & Certain Magical Acts by Alice Notley.; Hidden Water by Frank Stanford; On Walking On by Cole Swensen; After Nature by W.G. Sebald; The Apple Trees at Olema by Robert Haas; One With Others by C.D. Wright.
What are you working on?
I am almost finished with a chapbook called, “In the Primate Room With the Beloved” which integrates poems from the perspective of Lord Hanuman from The Ramayana, with poems about evolution, climate change, and our relationship to this planet as human and more-than-human.
Why is poetry important?
Poetry reminds us that we are cellular beings composed mostly of emptiness, and at our best, the potential of another elsewhere that resides inside of us. I recently found in The Paris Review the Italian poet, Antonella Anedda said, “I write to intensify reality and at the same time to undermine it.” That is very similar to my negotiations of wanting to write poetry and devote myself to the craft. However, on a level of being a reader, poetry, especially with the way pronouns, and other mechanics of the medium, such as enjambment, allow us a type of embodiment and intimacy.
Photo credit: Jordan Finlay
How does a poem begin?
Poetry and dreams are obvious bedfellows for my practice. Writing is a complex sensory experience. I often observe the poem in what I can best describe as my “mind’s eye,” and then seek to find the most precise linguistic textures and music for that particular image. I often position myself as a poet as someone who also trained as a painter and performer, but found poetry to be the best craft and medium by which to share a phenomenon that happens quite naturally.
