Melissa Eleftherion : coda

Why is poetry important? 

Poetry presents new syntaxes with which to reimagine and reshape the world.

Melissa Eleftherion : part five

How important is music to your poetry?

I’d say it’s very important. The cadences emit meaning of themselves and I try to be awake to what’s inside. Perhaps that’s why I have a hard time writing when I’m in the thick of daily life chaos; it’s too loud for me to hear the music.

Melissa Eleftherion : part four

What other poetry books have you been reading lately? 

Whereas by Layli Long Soldier; Calling a Wolf a Wolf by Kaveh Akbar; New & Selected Poems of Cecilia Vicuna; at sea by Melissa Benham.

Melissa Eleftherion : part three

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry? 

Finding time to write. Having time to revisit half-finished poems that got interrupted by daily life & being able to get back in touch with their meanings and musics.

Melissa Eleftherion : part two

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 often get my best ideas in the shower. When I was commuting an hour and a half to work everyday, I also got ideas while riding trains or buses. Perhaps its the combination of movement and stream-of-consciousness thinking that help me catalyze creative concepts. Sometimes it’s a line, sometimes just a word that leads somewhere, perhaps a poem. Sometimes it feels like words move through me, and if I’m lucky enough to stop and write them down, I might have something. 

Melissa Eleftherion : part one

Melissa Eleftherion is a writer, librarian, and a visual artist. She grew up in Brooklyn, dropped out of high school, and went on to earn an MFA in Poetry from Mills College and an MLIS from San Jose State University. She is the author of field guide to autobiography (The Operating System, 2018), & six chapbooks: huminsect (dancing girl press, 2013), prism maps (Dusie, 2014), Pigtail Duty (dancing girl press, 2015), the leaves the leaves (poems-for-all, 2017), green glass asterisms (poems-for-all, 2017) & little ditch (above/ground press, 2018). Founder of the Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange for San Francisco State University, Melissa now lives in Mendocino County where she manages the Ukiah Library, teaches creative writing, & curates the LOBA Reading Series. Recent work is available at www.apoetlibrarian.wordpress.com.

What are you working on?

I just finished a 30/30 project called The Poeming where myself and 30 other poets wrote 31 erasures based on the work of Seanan McGuire. Since I enjoy the playfulness and the serendipitous nature of found poems, I decided to keep up the daily praxis by writing more erasures, this time based on James Salter’s A Sport and a Pastime, a book that angers me deeply for its subjugation of women. Found poems can have the uncanny ability to strike at the core of the unconscious tenor of what’s happening, whether in the world, the mind, or the body. I like experimenting with the treasures resonant in someone else’s language.