FEATURES & INTERVIEWS
On the Poetry of Violence, Girlhood, Fairy Tales, and the Natural World
Interview with Sneha Subramanian Kanta for Parentheses Journal. Issue 9, Summer 2020.
Interview with Sneha Subramanian Kanta for Parentheses Journal. Issue 9, Summer 2020.
One thing I love about both fairy tales and horror movies is that they don’t shy away from that basic fact of our lives. So many fairy tales are built around the idea that girls are in constant danger (even in their own homes) and they try to provide a kind of instruction manual for how to survive these unavoidable perils. Horror movies take those threats and amplify them, turn a woman into a hero just for making it through the gauntlet. A “constant collapse” is a good way to put it. As soon as her feet hit seemingly solid ground, that ground will give way too—so she’s got to keep moving. This is survival mode. And after a while it will begin to transform you into someone or something else—a bird, a deer, a tree, or a monster.
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On the Poetry of Pop Culture, Perfume, and Collage Audio Interview with Kimiko Hahn and Hannah New for U of U Press's podcast. Episode 8: "Poetry with Lindsay Lusby & Kimiko Hahn." Describing scent is a practice in borrowing from the other senses to create some sort of simulacrum…. Another of my favorite things was just the [perfume] ingredients themselves were just these delicious compound words. I'm in love with compound words—preexisting ones and creating new ones, which I feel like you have to be really careful about because not everything works well smashed together. But just thinking about the sonics, how it feels in the mouth, compound words are just kind of like spells to me. |
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On the Poetry of Transformation & the Transformative Power of Poetry
12 or 20 Questions Interview with Rob McLennan on his blog.
All of my poems are about some kind of transformation—but I can’t really say why. I think I’m still figuring that out, piece by piece, with each new poem. I do have a fascination with how women in particular are transformed by violence, via the saints & martyrs of the Catholic church (my upbringing), fairy tales (an obsession), horror movies and true crime shows (another obsession).
On the Symphony of the Book
Audio Interview with Mychael Zulauf for so . . . poetry? podcast. Season 4, Episode 4: "The Symphony of the Book."
On the Symphony of the Book
Audio Interview with Mychael Zulauf for so . . . poetry? podcast. Season 4, Episode 4: "The Symphony of the Book."
I never would have thought of doing any visual poetry but spending time around these amazing creative people just made me realize: Why the hell can’t you? Just do it. Nobody’s looking over your shoulder right now—just do it and see where it goes and if it works for you. Also, my discovery that I could write about the horror movies that I love so much…. So, being around all of these amazing writers helped me to give myself the permission to experiment and push myself in different ways that I feel like has really shaped my voice as a poet now, and who I am as a poet.
On the Writing Desk
"From the Desk of" series on Real Pants.
My enormous copy of Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary is pretty essential for getting any kind of writing done. Research is absolutely central to my process and this tome is my jumping-off point. Sometimes I just dictionary-surf for a solid 20 minutes at a time. Also an adorable sleeping dog is always a good thing to have for motivation and restorative nap-taking.
On the Mother-Beast of a Poem
Interview with Laura Madeline Wiseman on The Chapbook Interview. On Imago.
My chapbook experiment forced me to push past the mystery that I like to leave my poems suspended within. I had to find answers to the poetic questions I posed. The interconnectedness of these poems also made them very dependent upon each other for meaning and context, which meant that they lost some of their potency if presented as individual poems (say in a literary journal or anthology). This could be considered a weakness in the poems, but gathered together in their intended sequence in a chapbook, they seem to form one bigger and stronger poem. That’s what I think the chapbook does best, when it works: assembles a group of poems into one larger mother-beast of a poem.
On the Writing Process
Interview with Laura E. Davis on Dear Outerspace blog.
What color is your writing process?
Green. Definitely green. A poem I wrote a few months ago called "Interlude" ends with the line, "in those quiet degrees of shade." That is my mental writing space. Although I'm typically an indoor cat (doing most of my writing in my bedroom), my mental space is usually a green garden sheltered by an overcast sky. It smells like rain-soaked ivy and basil. A comforting green gloom.