Tina Mozelle Braziel : coda

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

Mend by Kwoya Fagin Maples
The Wounded for the Water by Matt Miller
To Make It Right by Corrine Clegg Hales
Blood Writing by Sean Sexton
Wade in the Water by Tracy K. Smith

Tina Mozelle Braziel : part five

When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?

Yes, absolutely. There’s always one collection that I have to take with me when I travel. That touchstone shifts over time. For years it was Lucille Clifton. For a while it was either Seamus Heaney or James Wright, but my husband has taken to carrying them with him everywhere. Elizabeth Bishop is someone I return to again and again. And lately, I go to Ada Lemon’s Bright Dead Things or Vievee Francis’s Forest Primeval.

Tina Mozelle Braziel : part four

What are you working on?

My husband and I are writing Glass Cabin Diary, a collaborative memoir about how we—husband and wife, novelist and poet—built our home by hand, something we had never done before. It reveals how we cut every board, framed every window, and how we managed to live in the midst of   power tools and sawdust while building the house.  We call it the Glass Cabin Diary because three of the four cabin walls are made of glass discarded from a church. My sections address what it means to build a house as a woman. I’m also writing about how home building has deepened my understanding of the creative process as well as inspired my poetry (I’m including some of my home-building poems). I’m trying to put into words what it feels like to live in such proximity to the natural world—heating our home with a wood stove, making do with a composting toilet and an outdoor shower, and glancing out to see hawks swoop or deer nibbling on foliage.

Tina Mozelle Braziel : part three

How do you know when a poem is finished?

I’m not sure if I ever know that for sure. I find myself continually tinkering. Sometimes, I will give up on a poem, only to totally rewrite it years later.  Some poems seem like they’ll never be done with me.

Tina Mozelle Braziel : 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 read it aloud to my husband first. If it still feels rough I work on it some more. After that, I share it with my wildly talented, multi-genre, writing group. They give the best notes and encouragement. I also exchange poems with other poets via email or in person. Before I send anything out into the world, I have my husband read it. That’s the real test. His ear is more forgiving than his eye. 

Tina Mozelle Braziel : part one

Tina Mozelle Braziel author of Known by Salt (Anhinga Press) and Rooted by Thirst (Porkbelly Press) has been recently awarded the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry, a fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, and an artist residency at Hot Springs National Park. She and her husband, novelist James Braziel, live and write in a glass cabin that they are building by hand on Hydrangea Ridge. Learn more at: https://tinamozellebraziel.com/

What do you feel poetry can accomplish that other forms can’t?

Poetry gives direct access to someone else’s interior world, how their mind moves, how they grapple with being alive, and how they make meaning.