An interview with Kate Feld

Kate Feld writes short fiction, essays, poetry and work that sits between forms. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies including The Letters Page, The Stinging Fly, The Lonely Crowd, Train and Hotel. A native of Vermont, she has lived in the Northwest of England for many years. She lectures in journalism at The University of Salford, hosts Manchester literary events and leads workshops on creative writing. She is the founder of UK creative nonfiction project The Real Story and co-presents the literary podcast The End of All Things. She tweets @katefeld and maintains a small establishment on the internet at katefeld.com

How did you begin writing, and what keeps you going?

I’ve worked as a journalist since I was 25, so for most of my adult life that’s where all my focus and creative energy went. I had been trained, as a newspaper reporter, never to write in the first person – you have it drummed into you that ‘you’re not the news.’ The self-effacement becomes habitual. And I was a very young woman then, so you could say I relinquished my ‘I’ before I knew what it was. How could I write without that?

It wasn’t until I was about 40 that I became really interested in doing creative writing. Then I was asked to contribute a personal essay to an anthology – I didn’t know anything about it, but I gave it a shot. Writing specifically from my own subjectivity, rather than burying that behind the impartial, observational mask of the reporter – it was thrilling. I loved it. I was good at it. And it just kind of took over, then. It was all I wanted to do.

There is nothing more interesting, more absorbing or more challenging to me than writing. You know that feeling you have when you’re a kid, drawing pictures, singing a song, making a fort, when every part of you is completely focused on what you’re doing? That is what writing gives me. And I don’t think there is anything better than making a fine thing that only you can make, a piece of art that will mean something to other people. Why are we here, if not for that?

It would be easier not to write. I have to rearrange my life to do it, over and over again. Needing to write makes my priorities different than other people’s and complicates the hell out of everything. I mean, I have to earn a living. I have to raise my kids. But I don’t have a choice. This is it. So, it happens. It happens however it can.

Your author biography references your work with the essay and short story forms, as well as works that sit between forms. Do you notice a difference in how you work between different genres, or is it a matter of approach?

There isn’t so much a difference in the way I approach forms as a difference in the way I approach each individual piece of writing. So, maybe a sentence or idea comes into my head, often in a dream or daydream. Sometimes it turns into dialogue or seems to belong to a situation or a perspective, which leads me into a story. I rarely know what’s going to happen with it until I sit down and start writing.

Or I can become aware, after picking away unconsciously at a snag in my thinking – oh, this is probably an essay, because there is something to work out which I don’t fully understand, and my mind is already in a state of attentiveness, casting around for elements that will perform different roles in the piece. Then the components of the essay (experiences, observations, excerpts) begin to talk to each other. It’s like having a party in your head.

A poem is more of an adventure – a murky exploration led by sound and associations and resonance – and this seems much riskier. I’m not able to address that process directly. I feel like I’m blundering around with a blanket over my head.  Or maybe, performing a very specific and complicated maneuver without looking at my hands.

Often, I’ll try something a few ways in different forms before it clicks: part of a problematic essay will become the center of a story, or I’ll realise that the reason a story didn’t work is that it’s a prose poem, and has to be approached differently. I’m really still working all of this out. The thing about writing across forms is it takes much longer to achieve a level of skill and proficiency with each one, but I like that uncertainty. It feels alive to me. The idea of being ‘at home’ in one form makes me squirm.     

What poets have influenced the ways in which you write?

I am drawn to poets who work in prose and whose writing stretches against the perceived boundaries of form. I love Mary Ruefle’s two volumes of short prose, especially The Most of It, which is unlike anything else – generous, hilarious and exacting. Rosmarie Waldrop’s prose poems and sequences have such a weird, ringing power. They’re like spells. And Anne Carson is doing extraordinary things in the place where poetry, essay and fiction overlap. Her work is both warm and daring, and reading it makes me braver. There are many other writers who aren’t poets whose work has changed the way I think: Elizabeth Hardwick, Marguerite Duras, Leonora Carrington and Dorthe Nors for starters.

How important has mentorship been to your work? Is there anyone who specifically assisted your development as a writer?

Because I’ve never studied creative writing in an institution, I don’t have a wealth of great writers to draw upon here. I went to grad school for journalism at Columbia University in New York and my favourite professor, the New Yorker staff writer Cynthia Zarin, turned out to be a poet and essayist as well as a journalist. I think encountering her and responding so strongly to the full spectrum of her work helped me realise that you can do all kinds of writing – you can do great journalism alongside great creative work. I mean, you don’t have to be one thing. What you are will inform whatever writing you undertake. After you have been writing across forms for a while, I think you develop some confidence about your identity and how it is expressed through writing. Though you may choose to speak in many voices, all will be recognisably yours.

In Manchester, where I live, the friendship and support of the city’s community of writers is so important. We all learn from each other – at performances, in collaborations, in writing groups or just talking about reading and writing. That’s a kind of mentorship. But I think independently studying the work of great writers is what I have learned the most from. Reading with attention and seriousness, which takes a lot of time.

What are you currently working on?

I’m working on a novella called Open Mouth. It’s a story about madness, personal mythology, songwriting and solitude. It’s set near where I’m from, in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, which is a really wild part of the world. It’s strange opening a channel to the particular feeling of that place when I’m living here in the UK.

Can you name a poet you think should be receiving more attention?

Geraldine Clarkson, an Anglo-Irish poet whose first full collection should be coming out soon. I’m really looking forward to reading it.
 

Pause Processional

Kate Feld

1.

that was the summer we got lit and joked about it opening windows with fat of shame thick in our mouth. that was the summer face gathered to the surface stove in became subtly. that was the summer: a cloud. that was the summer we felt tenderness for the screenglow banked closer to the little noise spinning. that was the summer oldknown unfolded, peered in at us. that was the summer of scorchmarks on streets from the heat of our ravaging pity, peeling out. that was the summer of splitting bag. that was the summer with suspicion creeping to the top of the measuring jug and the string section rising up the scale. that was the summer the hooks from the eyes came softly apart.

2.

fall came early and we knew it was coming but only theoretical as a not ours as a hers. fall came early with one precise snip at the base of the stem. fall came early and the gag was we’d thought maybe we weren’t a party to this biblical racket though she is born with death coiled sleeping in her bowels little snake of expiry ssssss. fall came early that year which we’ll call the year of our unmaking we had only known making since we were made, since we were made and went on making. fall came early, unlooked for but the rules of hospitality being what they are we thin-lipped we crossed her name off the list so. fall came early now we fall we fall we keep falling until we touch the until we hit the wait where 

3.

but the winter carved pipes from our bones and played that old jingle sound of which makes you tear your eyes out to fling steaming. but the winter unwhiched us; we might have continued passing, looking up, being momentarily. but the winter: clouding, cloud-dark, loud and cowing crowed down our backs herding us to itself. but the winter waned with a wound up wind winding sheets of whole woewhirled world and the word was gone. but the winter we didn’t understand so we frisked ourselves and turned up a few salty fragments. but the winter swept each crumb from the tablecloth with a silver-backed brush and retreated ‒ it was very thorough and very silent.

4.

now, spring. now springs internal yet we can’t make a positive identification. now spring stands up and we pin ourselves to its lapel. now spring and we are ready to, haunches tense tentershooking for first warm gust we are lightening. now spring with a fine worm moon for turning up underneaths or what still lives to peck out of unmaking. now spring because what is an egg but a room without a door or some sly cracked crake come among your crows. now spring swings in beating her rugs raising a cloud and we watch for this new age like a parade balloon floating past upper stories to scattered applause. now: spring! for what is a body but a room you must destroy to leave.

Kate Feld writes essays, poetry, short fiction and work that sits between forms. Her writing has appeared in journals and anthologies including Hotel, The Stinging Fly and The Letters Page.

Train : a journal of prose poems

Issue #3 : Simon Brown Carlie Blume Conyer Clayton Ariel Dawn Kate Feld Mike Ferguson M.W. Jaeggle Aaron Kreuter Amy LeBlanc John Luna Ian Martin rob mclennan Pearl Pirie Adam Strauss Erin Emily Ann Vance

A limited amount of copies will be available for free at the following locations:
Open Books: A Poem Emporium (Seattle WA), Berl's Brooklyn Poetry Shop (Brooklyn NY), knife| fork | book (Toronto ON) and Passages Bookshop (Portland OR).

Includes shipping

Canadian $4.00 CAD American $6.00 CAD International $8.00 CAD

Four-issue subscriptions are also available:

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Simon Brown (1979) is a self-taught poet and interdisciplinary artist from the traditional territory of the Passamaquoddy nation (southwestern New Brunswick) currently based in rural Québec. His French and English texts have been presented in collaborative artworks, performances, collections and artist books, and in magazines such as Lemon Hound, Estuaire, Vallum, Poetry Is Dead, Watts, and The Blasted Tree. As a translator, he has adapted texts by Erin Robinsong, Angela Carr, Danielle LaFrance and Jacob Wren, among others. Recent collections include Grande poussière (with Maude Pilon, squint press, Montréal, 2017) and Outre-flaques (Vanloo, Marseille, 2018).

Carlie Blume is an emerging writer of fiction and poetry.  Her writing centres around deconstructing myths about sexuality, motherhood, and mental health. Her work has been featured in The Maynard, Loose Lips and Pulp Mag. She lives in Surrey and is currently working on her first collection of poetry, as well as a novel.

Conyer Clayton is an Ottawa based artist who aims to live with compassion, gratitude, and awe. Her most recent chapbooks are: Undergrowth (bird, buried press), Mitosis (In/Words Magazine and Press), and For the Birds. For the Humans. (battleaxe press). She released a collaborative album with Nathanael Larochette, If the river stood still, in August 2018. Her work appears in ARC, Prairie Fire, The Fiddlehead, The Maynard, Puddles of Sky Press, and others. She won Arc's 2017 Diana Brebner Prize, and writes reviews for Canthius. Her debut full length collection of poetry is forthcoming.

Ariel Dawn lives in Victoria, British Columbia. She spends her time writing, reading, and studying Tarot. Recent work appears in canthius, (parenthetical), Foxhole, Room, and is forthcoming in A Furious Hope anthology.

Kate Feld writes essays, poetry, short fiction and work that sits between forms. Her writing has appeared in journals and anthologies including Hotel, The Stinging Fly and The Letters Page.

Mike Ferguson is an American permanently resident in the UK and widely published in online magazines. His most recent print collection is the sonnets chapbook Precarious Real [Maquette Press, 2016] and he edited with Rupert Loydell the music poems anthology Yesterday’s Music Today [Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2015]. A retired English teacher, he co-authored the education text Writing Workshops [Cambridge University Press, 2015].

M.W. Jaeggle is a poet from Vancouver, currently living in Montreal. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Dalhousie Review, CV2, Existere, in the anthology Refugium: Poems for the Pacific, and elsewhere. He was longlisted for the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize.

Aaron Kreuter is the author of the poetry book Arguments for Lawn Chairs (Guernica Editions, 2016), and the short story collection You and Me, Belonging (Tightrope Books, 2018). I have had my work appear in journals and magazines such as The Puritan, Grain, Arc, Poetry is Dead, The Temz Review, and other places.

Amy LeBlanc holds a BA (Hons) in English Literature and creative writing from the University of Calgary. She is currently non-fiction editor at filling Station magazine. Her work has appeared, or is scheduled to appear in Room, Prairie Fire, Contemporary Verse 2, and EVENT among others. Amy won the 2018 BrainStorm Poetry Contest for her poem 'Swell'. She is the author of two chapbooks, most recently Ladybird, Ladybird published with Anstruther Press in August 2018.

John Luna: I am a dual Canadian-American citizen born of Mexican + American expatriates. Besides writing, my practice is as a visual artist whose background includes painting, sculpture and installation, and a teacher working in the areas of art, design and art history. I currently reside on an island off of the west coast of N. America. Previous publication of written work in art criticism and poetry has appeared in Ditch, Canadian Art, Border Crossings, Canyon, Cordite, and Matrix, among others. A first collection of poems, Listing (Decoupage Publishing, 2015) was released through a small independent press with the help of a crowdfunding campaign. A second book-length manuscript was recently (2017) shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry.

Ian Martin is nobody's mom. Ian's work has appeared recently in where is the river, Bad Nudes, Plenitude Magazine, and Pretty Owl Poetry. Ian has published 4 chapbooks, most recently PLACES TO HIDE (Coven Editions, 2018) and YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO KEEP THIS UP FOREVER (AngelHousePress, 2018). When he's not writing, Ian develops small games and complains online. [http://ian-martin.net]

rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles include the poetry collections How the alphabet was made (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018) and the forthcoming Household items (Salmon Poetry, 2019) and A halt, which is empty (Mansfield Press, 2019). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com

Pearl Pirie writes in Quebec's countryside. She has 3 trade collections, most recently, the pet radish, shrunken from Book*hug. http://www.pearlpirie.com

Adam Strauss lives in Louisville, KY.  He is the author of one full-length collection: For Days (BlazeVox). Most recently, poems of his appear in Fence, Interim, The Tiny, and the Brooklyn Rail.

Erin Emily Ann Vance’s work is forthcoming in Coffin Bell Journal, Augur, Post Ghost Press, and Bad Nudes. She is a contributing reader and writer for Awkward Mermaid Literary Magazine. A 2017 recipient of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts Young Artist Prize and a 2018 Finalist for the Alberta Magazine Awards in Fiction, she completed her MA in Creative Writing in August 2018, and will complete an MA in Folklore in 2020. Erin's debut novel, Advice for Amateur Beekeepers and Taxidermists will be published by Stonehouse Publishing in 2019.