The Habitual Poet: Michelle Bitting

Installment #42

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The Habitual Poet is an ongoing series of contributor interviews. If you are a Poemeleon contributor and would like to participate copy & paste the Q's from below and e-mail your answers to: editor@poemeleon.org. 

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Reading

Q: Where do you prefer to get your books?

A: Village Books, Pacific Palisades. Neighborhood store. A gem. A dying breed.

Q: How many poetry books do you think you own, and what percentage of these have you actually read?

A: Hundreds. 75%

Q: When, where and how do you usually read? (i.e. at bedtime under the covers, cover to cover, etc.)

A: In line.  In the car, waiting for kids. At café’s. In the kitchen. On my reading sofa next to my guitar.

Q: What books of poetry have you read this month?

A: New work by Tony Hoagland, Patricia Smith, Major Jackson, Cathy Colman.

Q: What other books/magazines/backs of cereal boxes have you read recently?

A: American Poetry Review. New Yorker.

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Writing

Q: When, where, how do you write, and why?(i.e. at dusk on a dock, longhand in a notebook, because...)

A: I like to write in the morning and revise at night.  I like to write at a café or in my kitchen. I would like to have a studio or office when I grow up. Living in Los Angeles, I get ideas in the car while driving and have to pull over.

Q: How many first drafts do you think you complete in a week? A month?

A: A couple a week. 8-10 in a month if I’m lucky.

Q: How long do you wait before revising a poem?

A: I try to wait a few days but can’t always.

Q: When do you know a poem is “done”?

A: When I can read it over and over, over a period of time and there’s absolutely nothing more I’d change.  Though that, too, can change if I come back to it, say, months later. But those are usually very minor adjustments.

Q: Have you ever given up an invitation so you could stay home and write?

A:  All the time. It has to be a really good event or party or movie to motivate me into the shower and fresh clothes. I like to stay home and play guitar, read, write, putter with my kids and on the computer.

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Publishing

Q: What is your system for sending out work?

A: These days I have to seriously push myself. Again, I’d rather write. I used to LOVE sending out and relished that activity. More and more I am choosing to submit to a handful of places, online and paper, that have been loyal to me in the past and whose work I really like.

Q: What have you more recently received: a rejection notice or an acceptance? Was it what you expected?

A: Recently someone asked me for a poem and that was nice. I get rejections all the time and the encouraging smattering of acceptances. A respectable number, thankfully.

Q: Where do you generally publish: online, in print, or a mix, and do you have a preference?

A: About half and half.  Tipping towards online.

Q: What is the worst (or weirdest, or best) experience you’ve had with a journal/magazine/press & its editor(s)? (No names, please!)

A: The press that published my first full length were excellent editors and always very upfront. I cannot speak too highly of them.

Q: Have you ever received any fan (or hate) mail? If so, what was that like?

A: No hate mail. Some kind e-mails from writers who’d like feedback on their own poems or were extremely moved by something I wrote.  I’m glad to have made a difference.

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Practical considerations

Q: What is your day job, and how does it affect your writing?

A: My day job has been part time teaching and catering in the past. And taking care of my children, one of whom is autistic, which is a major time suck. I have new teaching prospects lined up this fall and more help from my husband whose acting career is in a better place thus freeing him up to spot me. This is huge, a major shift for me to feel more at ease taking time to write and teach.  We shall see!

Q: How does your significant other’s occupation affect your writing life?

A: Fortunately he’s an artist. I would not be as far along as I am if this were not so.

Q: Have there been periods in your life when you couldn't write?

A: Not for a long time. I have to write something regularly now or I start feeling REALLY not ok.  Like it’s physical.

Q: Do you have a “poetry budget”?

A: No but I should.

Q: Have you ever suffered (or made someone else suffer) in the name of your art? (i.e. picked up your kids late from school so you could finish a poem, forgone lunch to buy a book, left a relationship because the other person just didn't understand, etc.)

A: Yes. I try not to but sometimes I’m a bad mom. I try to make up for it.

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Random nonsense

Q: Do you have any superhuman abilities? (i.e. can you tie a cherry stem in a knot with your tongue, or write a double sestina with both hands tied behind your back?)

A: No.  I’m an awesome dancer, though.

Q: You write a scathing poem about your mother and she learns about it. You

a.) Move to South America and leave no forwarding address

b.) Delete the poem and insist it never existed

c.) Show it to her (she’s already written you out of the will anyway)

d.) Do none of the above; instead you: _____

A: A. Only make it Paris...

Q: If the best medical specialists in the world told you that if you didn’t give up your poetry habit today you would die in six months, would you get your affairs in order or would you leave that up to your family?

A: Affairs should never be orderly--what's the point of that?  And no funerals. Everybody please just party on...

Q: If you could be a vowel, which one would you be and why?

A: O O O O O... for the pleasure of it... 

Q: Finally, what piece of advice would you most like to share with our readers? (This can be on writing, the writing life, or anything else...)

A: When in doubt, describe. Eventually you'll fall down the hole where you need to go.

Michelle Bitting has published work in Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, Narrative, Crab Orchard Review, Passages North, Many Mountains Moving, Rattle, Linebreak, and others. Recently, her work was seen in diode, The Cortland Review, and Sou’wester. Poems have appeared on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. In 2007, Thomas Lux chose her full-length manuscript, Good Friday Kiss, as the winner of the DeNovo First Book Award and C & R Press published it in 2008. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University, Oregon. Visit her at: http://www.michellebitting.com.