Installment #26
: : :
The Habitual Poet is an ongoing series of contributor interviews. If you are a Poemeleon contributor and would like to participate download the questions, input your answers, and e-mail it to: editor@poemeleon.org.
: : :
Reading:
Q: Where do you prefer to get your books?
A: Amazon.com
Q: How many poetry books do you think you own, and what percentage of these have you actually read?
A: About 350 and I’ve read them all, many more than once. I don’t buy them just to have pretty faces on the shelf!
Q: When, where and how do you usually read? (i.e. at bedtime under the covers, cover to cover, etc.)
A: In bed, in the bathroom, in the living room. One poem at a time, unless it’s a new book and the sequence is engrossing, then I’ll read it start to finish like a novel.
Q: What books of poetry have you read this month?
A: Sleeping With Houdini – Nin Andrews; Seven Floors Up – Cati Porter
Q: What other books/magazines/backs of cereal boxes have you read recently?
A: The Elegance of the Hedgehog; Whitman and Lincoln – Daniel Epstein
: : :
Writing:
Q: When, where, how do you write, and why?(i.e. at dusk on a dock, longhand in a notebook, because...)
A: First thing in the morning (when I’m answering these questions). Midday breaks from work, whenever I get an idea, with a small, thick spiral-bound notebook that contains the perfect pen hung inside the spiral, at the ready. In the middle of the night, when an idea wakes me up, on the computer because I can’t turn on a light to write in a notebook. I prefer writing longhand because I can think slow, which my Muse likes. Lately I’ve remembered how well I write in a café, so I’ve started to take my notebook down to a local place for an hour or so almost every day.
Q: How many first drafts do you think you complete in a week? A month?
A: Two to four in an average week. Perhaps an average of ten new poems in a month. In April, I did thirty-three during the National Poetry Month daily poem challenge, and that got my engine racing, so in May I also did daily poems, and then kind of petered out in mid-June.
Q: How long do you wait before revising a poem?
A: At least a week. I have been known to wait a year. I’m impatient.
Q: When do you know a poem is “done”?
A: It’s done when I’ve read it to an audience several times and know it so well that every syllable feels right.
Q: Have you ever given up an invitation so you could stay home and write?
A: Many times.
: : :
Publishing:
Q: What is your system for sending out work?
A: I have a target list of publications ranked in order of: places I’ve published before, the next level of journals in which I’d like to place work, and then journals I like and which are similar to those in which I’ve published. I simultaneously submit a group of four to five poems to three or four journals at a time. I keep at it with that group of poems until all poems have been placed (or until I decide there’s a bad apple in the bunch and relegate it to my mush pile).
Q: What have you more recently received: a rejection notice or an acceptance? Was it what you expected?
A: Rejection notice for a manuscript, and I did not expect it. I’m an optimist; life is more fun that way.
Q: Where do you generally publish: online, in print, or a mix, and do you have a preference?
A: In the past, print only, but in the last four or five years, it’s been a mix of print and online. Several online journals are the literary magazines I read most consistently. Often they are very well edited, provide a visual treat as well as a literary one, are beautifully designed, and sometimes enhanced with voice recordings and even videos. That’s a much richer mix than print can possibly offer, though I do like Rattapallax for its early adoption of multimedia by including a CD of readings with every issue. By the way, I am far more likely now to donate to an online litmag than a print one. I believe the future of poetry publishing (and all other forms of publishing) is the Internet, in some combination of downloadable/visual/multimedia that’s perhaps yet to be invented. (Checks her watch.)
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: I had an editor become irate with me because I didn’t publish with his press, even though he never promised me a contract, and only looked at a few samples and said to get back in touch in the fall. How he construed that as an acceptance that I betrayed is beyond me.
Q: Have you ever received any fan (or hate) mail? If so, what was that like?
A: Yes, and it’s wonderful to get fan mail, to know that a particular poem has touched someone, or that they want to read my books.
: : :
Practical considerations:
Q: What is your day job, and how does it affect your writing?
A: I write fundraising materials for a living, so writing is a constant activity, and it hones my poetry, nonfiction, and fiction writing.
Q: How does your significant other’s occupation affect your writing life?
A: He’s the high earner, so I’d have to say his profession allows me to ease up on my freelance work when I can, and when I have a big writing project.
Q: Have there been periods in your life when you couldn't write?
A: No.
Q: Do you have a “poetry budget”?
A: No, and this is reckless of me.
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
A: I am sure I have. For one thing, my husband says he can tell when I’m writing in my head. I think that translates to: “Stop it.”
: : :
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?)
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: _____
Convince her her friends will have great sympathy for her, and provide her with many social occasions in which to dish her daughter and expand her social circle.
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: I would give up my poetry habit and turn back to art. I’m not an idiot!
Q: If you could be a vowel, which one would you be and why?
A: A – aaaahhhhh! Best pronounced in a hammock.
Q: Finally write a couplet for a collaborative ghazal using the following kaafiyaa and radif: “said the poet”.
The poet’s always right, said the poet.
Poetry is my right, said the poet.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Rachel Dacus is the author of Femme au chapeau and Earth Lessons. She serves as Contributing Editor at Umbrella and is on staff at the online workshop The Gazebo. Her website is www.dacushome.com.