What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?
It’s like corporations and privately funded poetry organizations with huge endowments have set the tone for writing in the age of MacArthur Genius Awards. The competition is stiff. It would follow, for some, that the pressure to write to establishment tastes is grave. Or conversely, the push to make writing uber-strange, to stand out in a crowded field is paramount to increasing one’s chance at licking the money pot. I have to remind myself of the subaltern network of independent publishers and writing that is not looking for literary citizenship. It knows that many of us are born to a republic and “sacred” constitution shot through with racism. In the US, some of our greatest heroes were impugned by Joseph McCarthy and his ilk for leading international movements to expose the racist and anti-working-class interests of the keepers of American law. I would say writing in this age requires you know what’s afoot in the industry while somehow not being consumed or crippled by what might read as corruption or corrupting forces.
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