Installment #29
: : :
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.
: : :
Reading
Q: Where do you prefer to get your books?
A: I buy a lot of books online, but I like the random browsing of a crowded, slightly chaotic used bookstore, the kind that smells like the attic of your Great Aunt Patty’s house and has cryptic notes written in the margins of all its books. I have a pretty staunchly followed rule that I buy books by living poets new and books by dead folks used.
Q: How many poetry books do you think you own, and what percentage of these have you actually read?
A: Say 200-250. Apart from the odd few and new purchases, I’ve read them all.
Q: When, where and how do you usually read? (i.e. at bedtime under the covers, cover to cover, etc.)
A: I’m a compulsive reader. I almost always have a paperback in my purse to read whenever and wherever. I read on my lunch break, sitting alone in the big corporate cafeteria overlooking an artificial pond full of real fish and wading birds. I read at least one poem every morning while drinking my coffee and snuggling my sleepy seven-year-old. Oddly enough, I very rarely read in bed, but I don’t mind reading in low light, which I’ve heard at least a gazillion times is going to ruin my eyes. It hasn’t.
Q: What books of poetry have you read this month?
A: Ana Enriqueta Teran’s selected poems, The Poetess Counts to 100 and Bows Out (I bought it for the title, but it gets even better than that). Before that I re-read Sonnets from the Portuguese, and I recently finished Richard Newman’s excellent Domestic Fugues. I read a lot of poems online at work (not enough people go to poetry websites to get them blocked by the firewall).
Q: What other books/magazines/backs of cereal boxes have you read recently?
A: Enlightened Sexism by Susan Douglas, Ironfire (an over-the-top historical epic about knights and corsairs), Sherman Alexie’s War Dances, and a very interesting cereal box about koalas. Apparently they have two thumbs on each hand. I’ve also been reading submissions for the soon-to-launch poetry podcast Red Lion Sq. (shameless plug: www.redlionsq.com ), which is edited by me and fellow Poemeleon contributor Jae Newman.
: : :
Writing
Q: When, where, how do you write, and why?(i.e. at dusk on a dock, longhand in a notebook, because...)
A: I always write longhand in a notebook. I don’t know why. It’s too easy to revise on the computer screen, I think, so I don’t get the idea out before I start tweaking it. I also write a surprising amount at work since my job requires me to sit alone in a cubicle staring at my computer most of the day. If I do my “real job” fast enough, there’s a lot of writing time in between marketing projects.
Q: How many first drafts do you think you complete in a week? A month?
A: Even with all that slacking off at work, I am a painfully slow writer. I’d say I average a draft or two per month, but I tend to write several drafts at once then nothing for a while then a few more at a time. I will never be called prolific.
Q: How long do you wait before revising a poem?
A: I tend to carry ideas around in my head for a long time before drafting. I’ll write it in my notebook a dozen different ways. I’ll start over and over. I’ll write the same line in three different notebooks months or years apart. Eventually I’ll have a draft written out longhand, then the first revision is moving the poem from the notebook to the computer.
Q: When do you know a poem is “done”?
A: When I can’t stand to look at it any more.
Q: Have you ever given up an invitation so you could stay home and write?
A: I can’t remember a specific instance, but when I was finishing my MFA, I went M.I.A. for a while.
: : :
Publishing
Q: What is your system for sending out work?
A: People have a system for that? I use Duotrope.com to keep track. I think their system is better designed for fiction than poetry, but it definitely beats the huge, messy spreadsheet I used before. I submit to magazines I like to read or to places where people I admire have published. I tend to submit in batches, which means that my rejection letters usually come in big, discouraging waves, hopefully with an acceptance somewhere in the mix to make it all better.
Q: What have you more recently received: a rejection notice or an acceptance? Was it what you expected?
A: One of the fastest rejections I’ve ever received—about 2 days. I don’t take it personally, and I never expect anything.
Q: Where do you generally publish: online, in print, or a mix, and do you have a preference?
A: I like both. Print is fun because you get a present in the mail—the physical object that contains your work—but online magazines are archived in a place people can access for a long time. There’s a much greater chance of someone new discovering your work online, plus thirty of the whopping forty dollars I’ve been paid for poems came from online publication.
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 most fun acceptance I’ve ever had was an art/poetry show at a gallery for Valentine’s Day. They accepted 14 photos and 14 poems about love and the curator made small art objects to accompany each poem. I’m an art lover, so seeing my poem interpreted as a little ceramic and paper sculpture was really cool!
Q: Have you ever received any fan (or hate) mail? If so, what was that like?
A: Not really. I keep a pretty low profile; I didn’t even have a Facebook page until about a week ago.
: : :
Practical considerations
Q: What is your day job, and how does it affect your writing?
A: I write marketing materials for a famous series of travel guides. It is a good mix of interesting problem solving and monotony, plus I have a little leeway to jot down poem ideas or look up publishing markets between projects. The best thing about my job is that I don’t have to think about it when I go home. It’s not life or death. It doesn’t control the fate of the company. When I’m away from work, I am free to worry about more important things. I am also a part-time adjunct professor at a medical college, so I teach English 101 to nursing students. My job seems to be tricking them into believing essay writing will be important for their futures. It’s not a bad gig, but I can’t imagine doing it full time.
Q: How does your significant other’s occupation affect your writing life?
A: Much more significant than his occupation is the fact that he is a creative person who understands my pursuit of something completely impractical.
Q: Have there been periods in your life when you couldn't write?
A: After my daughter was born, I didn’t write a word for a year. I really was afraid that I would never write again, but doubt is part of the process. I’m always having short periods of literary panic.
Q: Do you have a “poetry budget”?
A: Do student loans count? I have spent money on poetry books that should probably have gone to the cable bill, but that’s about the extent of it. I don’t have money or time for retreats and workshops and I think there’s something a little shitty about charging people to submit their work. I know it’s necessary for contests sometimes, but it feels wrong.
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: Never on purpose. I’ve used the TV as a babysitter a few times.
: : :
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: I can dislocate my shoulders on command.
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: …talk to her about it. You know, like two adults. Seriously, though, I shouldn’t be flippant about this. I know a lot of friends who have had huge blow-ups with their families over poems that weren’t even particularly scathing. I’m lucky to have a family that tries to understand me and, when they can’t, they leave me to myself. But all my really controversial family poems stay in a file marked “For posthumous publication.”
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: My family knows that my poetry habit is just a symptom of a bigger problem, a genetic trait for which there is no cure.
Q: If you could be a vowel, which one would you be and why?
A: E, maybe. If I were a punctuation mark, I’d be a semicolon.
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: This is the only advice I remember from my wedding: if you get in a fight with your spouse that you just can't resolve, clean the house naked. It will probably end the fight, but if it doesn't, at least your house will be clean. Although I never followed that advice, it struck me as very sensible at the time. Of course, the person who gave me this advice divorced a year later.
Amy Watkins is the co-editor and host of the poetry podcast magazine Red Lion Sq (www.redlionsq.com). She and her co-editor Jae Newman have a sestina in the collaboration issue of Poemeleon. Look for her work in Kestrel, LiteraryMama and poem, home: An Anthology of Ars Poetica from Paper Kite Press.