Krystal Languell : part five

Why is poetry important?

 

I struggle with this question sometimes. At its best, poetry is about connection through imagination, and can also give readers the experience of recognition—what today we call “feeling seen.” I think Muriel Rukeyser’s “(I lived in the first century of world wars)” nails it, though: “We would try by any means / To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves, / To let go the means, to wake.”

Krystal Languell : part four

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

I am so resistant to change that the impact of certain poets and teachers takes years for me to absorb. It’s a slow process. Workshops I’ve taken with Hoa Nguyen, Ronaldo V. Wilson, and Evie Shockley (all through The Millay Colony) have had a lasting impact on me. Most fundamentally, Ronaldo’s engagement with video loosened my grip on the page in a way I’m still reckoning with. I have some footage of a rollerblading flash mob in Paris I have yet to do something with, and I’m interested in the consequences of the disruption when poets cross genre boundaries or mix media.

 

Krystal Languell : part three

How does your work first enter the world? Do you have a social group or writers group that you work ideas and poems with?

Since I moved to Chicago a year ago, I’ve been part of more poem-a-day email threads and NaPoWriMo 30/30 challenges than in my entire lifetime previously. Some of those folks are my colleagues at The Poetry Foundation and some are not. Those threads are a really supportive space to try things out in poems, where I feel free to experiment with little pressure to be perfect.  

Krystal Languell : part two

Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?

I began a long time ago. In the early days, I used poetry as a place to envision utopian thinking, how things should be, the future I wanted. Then I shifted more into documenting injustices large and small, systemic failures and limits, and I think I am still writing in this vein. Recently, I’ve challenged myself to read and write love poetry, which is not easy.

Krystal Languell : part one

Krystal Languell lives in Chicago, where she works for the Poetry Foundation. She is the author of three books: Call the Catastrophists (BlazeVox, 2011), Gray Market (1913 Press, 2016), and Quite Apart (University of Akron Press, forthcoming 2019). She has also published six chapbooks. Since 2010, she has helped coordinate the activities of Belladonna* Collaborative while publishing the feminist poetry journal Bone Bouquet. New and forthcoming work can be found in Colorado Review, Black Warrior Review, Fence, and elsewhere.

What are you working on?

My third book of poetry is forthcoming in early 2019 from University of Akron Press, and I’m finalizing the manuscript this minute and thinking about cover art. But in terms of writing new stuff, I have a handful of poems in a thus-far short series of sonnets in iambic pentameter after significant pop songs from my childhood. They double as elegies since thus far most of the folks whose work I’m writing after are no longer with us. I can’t mention this without acknowledging the influence of Hanif Abdurraqib’s music writing on me to more directly engage the soundtrack of my life.