How did you begin writing, and what keeps you going?
I began as a small child, trying to emulate the science fiction stories I loved. I began reading spontaneously at a very early age (a neurological event/arrangement called hyperlexia) so by the time I was 8 or 10 I was reading at an adult level and attempting very ambitious sci-fi tales I wasn’t able to follow through with. (I still can’t!) I also kept journals and notebooks sporadically until age 13, when I began a steady journal practice I still maintain. My poetry emerged from that journaling experience at about 14. I remember suddenly shifting the prose in the notebook to enjambed lines and stanzas, but I don’t recall why it emerged in that way.
What keeps me going? Living my life in the world, deeply involved with it and its beings. The need to write is a constant in my life, but one thing that’s been vital in continuing is to let myself not-write for long periods of time. I have to let my work and my process change, especially as my physical circumstances change, and sometimes this requires a break of a year or more on certain types of writing, or on certain projects, so as to give the changes a chance to happen, to catch up to myself as it were. It’s how I stay loving, if that makes sense.
What poets have influenced the ways in which you write?
Oh boy. I always put Tristan Tzara at the head of lists like this, but I am also connected to the other Dada and Surrealist poets. I read a lot of traditional Japanese poets as a teen/early adult, especially Basho and Ikkyu. In college when I first began writing prose poems I read Merwin’s versions very avidly; I’ve loved him since then. More recently I find myself more engaged in relation (I mean both work & author in conversation) with my peers and other contemporary poets, as my working modes continue to change with me. I think this is what’s most important to emphasize about my poetics: it’s a relationship, always present and always changing, more a mutual engagement than a unidirectional flow. I have always favored poetry in translation, as you can tell from my initial influences, and I’ve done some translation myself. Now that I’m very secure in my poetics, in what I do and how, I find that there is more of a process of mutual recognition than influence happening when I connect with other poets/poetries.
Have you noticed a difference in the ways in which you approach the individual poem over the years? How has this evolved?
The individual poem...not really. My process relies on an attention to the needs of each piece/projec itself as it forms, so no matter how it originates (from a source text or from an interior urge) the individual poem communicates its needs and I help it form. That’s the best way I can put it. The approach is always permission and attention, making space for the poem to happen. What’s changed over my decades of work is the confidence with which I can make that space, and the trust I have in both myself and my work to honor our needs.
There’s more to say about this but it ties in to your next question too, so consider these two parts linked.
Lately you’ve been working on erasures. What do you see as the difference between your visual work and erasures, compared to your work in the lyric mode?
I’d rather address the similarity here, for many reasons. I do countless visually-oriented erasures, for example the ones you’ve been featuring. But some of my erasure projects result in another text, a book of prose poetry (like A New Territory Sought) or stanzaic poetry like Crybaby City or the forthcoming Men & Sleep. The important thing here is that both types of erasure products (book or image) result from the same originating process. That process also relies on the same attentiveness to the project’s needs--whether a whole grouping or long-poem book project, or an individual or serial image derived from painting or drawing over a source text.
That connection also exists between these erasures and my other work (I make video pieces and film photography, as well as collage--and collage-poetry--and other visual art forms). In other words, when I work on things, I do not impose any preconception of the precise form or content of what I make. For instance, if I choose a source text for an erasure project, I am not initially sure what kind of erasure it will be. That gets revealed along the way. I have just completed the second draft of a chapbook-length erasure project based on an antique sewing machine manual. Though that source includes the kind of illustration that often sparks a great visual erasure, it soon became clear that I was uncovering & co-creating--with the text--a compelling piece that needed to remain word-only. When I record video and audio to use in a piece, I don’t have a final form in mind. The video forms itself around what the raw segments suggest when I revisit them in the editing program. Same with my collages--both types of work take a long time, typically characterized by lots of poking and shifting, repeated engagements, and then some kind of unpredictable something! that unites and gives life to the whole.
Honestly, this happens with the unsourced or interior-sourced poems and prose as well. Basically everything emerges out of the same root approach, but some of the specific processes differ from project to project.
How important has mentorship been to your work? Is there anyone who specifically assisted your development as a writer?
I grew up in Buffalo, New York. It’s a big poetry city, but in a sort of “town/gown” way. I was more of the “town” variety, not being connected to the poetics program at SUNY Buffalo. One of the major benefits I had, though, was the example of family friends and friends’ family members who were poets. I can’t remember when I first started going to poetry readings, which tells you how far back it was! Anyway, it was vital for me to see that there were grownups who took this stuff seriously and who were making poetry and sharing it with audiences. Also, when I was a teen, I took part in a youth workshop led by Jimmie Canfield at Just Buffalo Literary Center. That place was then pretty new (this was the mid-1980s), and Jimmie’s now moved on to another world, but I think her instruction and example offered me my first chance and my first tools for committing to my poetry, as a lifeway, and as something I could offer the world.
Truthfully my main mentors now are my friends and peers, other contemporary poets, with whom I collaborate and converse and work toward a better world. I’m also lucky (and old) enough to have a chance to informally mentor some younger/newer poets. Now that my teaching days are ten years behind me it seems it’s paradoxically easier to do that!
Can you name a poet you think should be recieving more attention?
I resist singling out an individual because there are so many undervalued poets! These days I can only talk about where one should search, and for what/whom. So:
●
new/young
poets publishing in tiny magazines or on tiny presses;
●
new/young
poets self-publishing, streaming or doing open mikes;
●
Black,
Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Muslim and Arab poets, particularly
Palestinian, African & African-diasporic & from other
colonially-impacted cultures;
●
working-class
and poor poets;
●
trans poets;
●
disabled
poets;
●
poetry in
translation;
●
poetry
emerging from an experimental process or taking a “difficult” form;
● poets whose lives involve multiple intersections and variations of those above cultures, experiences, backgrounds and circumstances.
Those are the poets who are doing the most exciting work, and
they all need more attention.
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