The Prairie Schooner Blog

“What I long for... never actually existed”: A Debut Poet Roundtable, Pt. 1

Prairie Schooner — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 13:53:17 +0000

Last fall the PS blog ran a Debut Fiction Roundtable, and we think it’s time for poets to have a turn! Following that model, five former members of Prairie Schooner’s editorial team—Sarah A. Chavez, Crystal S. Gibbins, Marianne Kunkel, Michelle Menting, and Hali Sofala-Jones—chatted back and forth through email to discuss their experiences sending their first full-length poetry collection out into the world. This is the first half of their conversation, focusing on the theme of lack versus loss as well as practical research tips. Stay tuned for part two!

Marianne Kunkel: Although our books are all quite different, a common thread I see in them is lack—lacking life experience, professional success, connection to ancestors, home, environment, language, etc. Was it cathartic to write these poems? Do you think the lack you wrote about is something that can ever be resolved?

Sarah A. Chavez: Lack, for better or worse, often drives not only my writing choices, but also larger life choices. As a kid in the private school I attended, it was lacking the funds to do/get what other kids’ parents could afford and in my family it was lacking a feeling of complete belonging with the Mexican side and the Euro-Anglo side; those are two lacks fundamentally incorporated into the poems in Hands That Break & Scar (HTB&S). While these poems definitely explore loss and what’s missing, rather than acting as an exercise toward catharsis, writing them was more about merely giving voice, to honor the loss, give it a body and substance, to validate the incompleteness. I think women, people of color, nonbinary, queer, disabled, working-class folk are often encouraged to focus on what they do have, as if we should feel lucky or grateful for whatever the hegemonic world allows us to have and not look outside at what life could be or is for others. In that way, the poems are more about honoring that lack, rather than filling it, fixing it, or healing. Certainly, having the poems published individually and then collected in a book was legitimizing of that reality, which I suppose in a way could be argued is a type of catharsis. However, at least in terms of resolution or something being “put to bed,” in my gut and writer-heart those themes sometimes feel almost equally just under the surface.

Hali Sofala-Jones: I came across the Welsh word hiraeth several years ago,and I often think of it when discussing this topic. It cannot be fully translated but is described as the feeling of mourning the loss of home, but the loss is not just for a home or homeland that is now gone, but rather, the mourning for a homeland that was never there to begin with. It’s such a complicated and sorrowful idea, but it’s one that I relate to quite a bit. My collection, Afakasi | Half-Caste, is, in many ways, speaking to a loss I feel—of both culture and homeland—which will never not be a loss because what I long for is something that never actually existed for me in the first place. I cannot regain it because to do so requires a different reality, a cosmic do-over.

I agree with much of what Sarah has to say on this topic, especially her comment on “giving voice” to losses suffered. As a writer of color, sometimes the only thing you can do is take the power to name what you’ve suffered. And while these issues can never be “put to bed,” I do feel as though I can name the loss, speak to it, and learn to coexist with it. After completing the manuscript and getting it published, it did feel like a turning point, and while nothing is eradicated or fully resolved, I do feel like I can turn to other things. I’m free to write about other aspects of my world, and am not constantly drawn back again and again to addressing the pain of what’s been lost in terms of Samoan culture and homeland.

Michelle Menting: I think it was indeed cathartic to write some of the poems that appear in Leaves Surface Like Skin, but first I always feel an overwhelming sense of embarrassment (it's true!) about revealing something that is too true or too close to something I have experienced and experienced hardship from doing so. But in writing—whether essays or poetry—I adopt a persona, and in my poems the speaker, to me, is a character I just know very well (or sometimes a character/voice whose acquaintance I'm making as I write them). So in writing these poems I have that distance. Lack (or rather loss) of home, of place, of parents and siblings at too young an age—these things I return to in my writing. I grew up poor, but I remember being fortunate enough to feel (and be) full. We lived near public land—a national forest—and so many woods and waters, so for whatever we lacked: electricity, as the power would often go out, or plumbing, as the pipes would freeze (or whatever it was that was up with our septic tank.... I never really knew and was certain some sort of sewer yeti dwelled in the tank), we were fortunate to have these things in full: woods to play in, to take shelter in, and to learn from; lakes to dip in and fish from; and a garden where my mother grew whatever vegetables would grow in the cold climate.

I think the poems in LSLS concern speakers who lack things that they once had access to or are terrified of losing those things that they currently have access to: woods, waters, ability to obtain food from land or lake. (Access—maybe that's it. Access to these things: clean water and air.) These things were so very important to me growing up, and I think sharing that—through character and distant voice—did and does have a cathartic effect. When the poems were assembled in a published book, I felt some relief but also that weird embarrassment (maybe that's impostor syndrome, too)—embarrassment because there are nuggets of experience that ring so true that, as someone who is rather reticent, it's just difficult to share, no matter how many layers of voices separate me from the speakers. The relief I felt was more on the "Oh, there are all my poem-siblings, all assembled in a group home now. Complete and safe." I might have experienced more of a sense of resolution when each poem was individually published. The book was more of a sense of completion.

I don't think this lack can ever be resolved. I know it's not for me as I currently write this. I fear losing access to clean water and air. (I think many people do and many people already don't have access to such things.) I worry about having shelter on a monthly basis. I thought that worry would dissipate a bit, but alas, poetry riches have not quelled that concern! I lost my parents, some siblings, and friends at a young age, so I think I'm always feeling lack that ebbs and flows, especially in my writerly mind.

MK: I love reading everyone’s thoughts on lack. Sarah, Hali, and Michelle, you all use the word “loss,” which is probably more accurate than “lack” as it implies once having something, even something intangible, and losing it. Loss was definitely on my mind when I wrote Hillary, Made Up, which I began the summer after the 2016 presidential election. Here’s a woman, Hillary Clinton, whose ambition for so long has been to be the first woman president, and she came so, so close. My fuel while writing the poems was not just my focus on her loss from my dim viewpoint as an American citizen, but also my own loss—seeing a woman lose out professionally is devastating for any woman invested in her career. The poems in my book speak to that grief, and perhaps to buffer the ache I felt, I wrote to Clinton through the tools that know her well and yet have nothing to do with her intellectual talents—makeup and hair products. I found productive tension in these products’ simultaneous intimacy with her and her likely disinterest in them. All the poems in my book are persona poems told from the perspectives of lipstick, hair spray, nail polish, and anything else you can find at a cosmetic counter, to Clinton. I never did much formal research until writing this book, for which I included a four-page “Notes” section in the back. How much research went into your book and how did you go about finding the information?

Crystal S. Gibbins: Many poems in Now/Here focus on northern places and borderlands, such as Lake of the Woods, the Northwest Angle and islands, and the 49^thparallel—the international border that separates the United States and Canada. I spent a few years conducting primary and secondary research for several of the poems that make up the collection. I gathered artifacts, read historical texts, flipped through old photo albums, explored the landscape, and chatted with folks about their experiences and knowledge of the area. I suppose my research process may have been similar to that of a nonfiction or memoir writer.

In 2015-2016, my father, Danny Gibbins, and I went on several journeys by boat to historical and cultural sites on Lake of the Woods, such as the centuries old pictographs along island rock cliffs, Fort St. Charles, Massacre Island, and Sultana Island Mine. We also visited and spoke with a few historians at the Lake of the Woods Museum in Kenora a.k.a. “Rat Portage,” which provided more information and details about the fur-trade, mining, and logging industries during the 19^thand 20^thcenturies.

My research of Lake of the Woods gave me a deeper understanding and appreciation of the history and culture of this landscape. Many of the poems explore the concept of island dwelling and the nature of island experiences through an autobiographical gaze, promoting, I hope, a more sustainable and satisfying relationship with the natural world, not only on the individual, but also on a communal basis.

Although I lived through one of the coldest and most brutal winters in the late nineties that hit the Red River Valley (and beyond), I also conducted secondary research on the storms and flood of 1997, which was well-documented in the Grand Forks Herald and The Forum. Several poems from the second section of the book are inspired by personal experiences and data gathered from newspaper articles and photographs.

“Flood” begins with an epigraph taken from the Grand Forks Herald and the poem tells the story of The Great Flood of 1997, when the Red River crested at 54 feet and more than 50,000 people were evacuated from Grand Forks, North Dakota, and East Grand Forks, Minnesota, making it the largest displacement of an American city prior to Hurricane Katrina.

“Blizzards, 1996-1997,” also contains an epigraph from the Grand Forks Herald and the poem personifies the eight blizzards that struck the Red River Valley during the winter of 1996 to 1997. Like Patricia Smith’s poem “Siblings” from Blood Dazzler, each line of my poem begins with successive letters of the alphabet and personifies storms. Rather than focusing on the quiet and idyllic beauty of the rural, the poems in the second section describe the harshness and hardships of the extreme and highly versatile climate and landscape.

SAC: I am in awe of Crystal’s answer regarding research! Honestly, the only research I conducted for HTB&S was to look up street names in Fresno, California (my hometown and where most of the poems take place) and the surrounding Central Valley. For example, I would realize that I remembered the Mexican-American parade being downtown on Van Ness, but it couldn’t have been on that street because of the way it cuts off and picks up farther north. I looked at maps of neighborhoods and old pictures of the downtown. For other poems, I’d look up store names to see if that was actually in existence during the range of years I had in my head.

My newer project, tentatively titled When Turtle First Began to Carry the Earth, is requiring a bit of research, though. It is a re-envisioning (and expansion) of the Earth origin myth, which states that the world is held up and out of water by a turtle. In wanting to honor North American indigenous traditions, I have been reading all the turtle mythology I can find. In particular, I’m interested in the rhythm and syntax used by the oral storytellers whose words have been recorded in writing.

HSJ: I certainly did not conduct as much research as Crystal for Afakasi | Half-Caste, and I may not have done as much as Sarah either. I did take several trips to the islands during the writing of the manuscript, which allowed me to connect with Samoa in a way I had not before. I did spend a rather amusing afternoon researching glockenspiels and other quirky instruments for the poem “Swan Lake Suite,” so that will have to suffice this time around.

MM: I love Crystal's response! I didn't really conduct much formal research for the collection as a whole. And to be honest, LSLS is a gathering of poems written over many years, although I did research subject matter for many of the individual poems. The idea of research, of small discoveries, is a theme I think that runs through many of my poems, even what I'm currently working on. I wrote a couple Wikipedia poems (ugh, it's true) that did not start out as poems with a Wikipedia entry as the epigraph but were revised with one as sort of a joke (to myself?). In a workshop, I submitted a poem about tardigrades that everyone in the workshop hated. I mean, they really tore into it and and no one in the workshop knew what a tardigrade was and didn't look up what a tardigrade was, so the poem was made moot. The poem was more of an ode to tardigrades. Oh my gosh, I love tardigrades and have since I was a kid. So I wrote a poem about them and brought it to a workshop that was a gathering of Ph.D. students, all of us wanting to impress our very impressive workshop leader. And I wrote a poem about water bears. I put the Wikipedia entry as the epigraph because it was funny and it actually described tardigrades pretty well. Still no one knew what a tardigrade was and one member bought a picture of one up on their laptop, and there was audible gasping and ewwing and still no one liked the poem. So I changed the title and epigraph and made Wikipedia more central to the poem so it became more about all the silly things we learn from Wikipedia (except tardigrades are not silly; tardigrades are awesome). And the poem found publication about a month or so after that workshop, after the poem was written. I might be a little bitter about that workshop. No, I think I was more bitter about the fact that no one wanted to learn what a tardigrade was, especially not through a poem (however bad that draft might have been). No one wanted to learn subject matter through a poem. That made me sad. This poem is in LSLS.

But for most research, especially for my poems, I like to actively observe, ask questions, conduct field research, visit and really dwell in places and with the things I write about (including tardigrades, although you can't observe them with the naked eye, but they are everywhere).

I'm currently researching and writing poems about memory and specifically memories among siblings—how they are formed and shared and stolen. Memories of a place, in particular. Along with this is research concerning changes to a place over time—the physical landscape and culture, yes, but the flora and fauna, the different inhabitants over time, human, plant, and animal. I'm not certain whether a full book will come out of this, but certainly individual poems will result from these investigations.

Sarah A. Chavez's collection of poetry, Hands That Break & Scar (Sundress Publications, 2017), explores the negotiation of bicultural identity, working class subjectivity, and shifting notions of gender and sexuality through the growth of a recurring central speaker and the family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers with whom she engages. These poems navigate ethnic tensions and economic depression alongside the recognition of joyful and transformative moments of light and connection in the California Central Valley. Chavez worked reading poetry for Prairie Schooner's journal and book prize while earning her Ph.D. at University of Nebraska, Lincoln. In the subsequent years, she's had the privilege of teaching creative writing and ethnic American literature in West Virginia and is excited to be joining the creative writing faculty at the University of Washington, Tacoma.

Now/Here blends history, naturalist observations, and experiences about living on both sides of the 49th parallel—the international border that separates Canada and the United States. Other poems in the collection focus on the diversity, struggle, and power of the natural landscape, examining the tensions and oppositions that exist within climate, time, and change. Like the lake waters of the northern wilderness, the power of these poems lies beneath the surface. Crystal S. Gibbins grew up on the islands of Lake of the Woods, Minnesota/Ontario. She is the founding editor of Split Rock Reviewand the author of Now/Here, winner of the 2017 Northeastern Minnesota Book Award in poetry and Honorable Mention for the 2017 Edna Meudt Poetry Book Award. Her poems have been or will be featured in Cincinnati Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Parenthesis, Minnesota Review, Verse Daily,and elsewhere. Crystal holds a Ph.D. in English with concentrations in creative writing, 20^th- and 21^st-century American poetry, and environmental literature from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. She works and lives on the south shore of Lake Superior. For more information visit https://www.crystalgibbins.com.

Marianne Kunkel’s book of poems, Hillary, Made Up (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2018), consists entirely of poems from the voices of makeup and hair products to Hillary Clinton. It spans the beginning of Clinton’s political career to present day, while also investigating the history of the beauty industry and the ways we assume intimacy with political figures (while, like makeup, we often put our own disguise on the truth). For three years she was the managing editor of Prairie Schoonerwhile earning her Ph.D. at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. She currently is an assistant professor of creative writing and publishing at Missouri Western State University, where she directs the creative writing program and is the editor-in-chief of the university’s literary journal, The Mochila Review. Her other books include The Laughing Game (Finishing Line Press) and The Prairie Schooner Book Prize: Tenth Anniversary Reader(University of Nebraska Press).

The poems in Michelle Menting's debut full-length poetry collection, Leaves Surface Like Skin (Terrapin Books), “teem with litany, landscape, literal and figurative image; an awareness of mortality hovers, not so much afterlife as underlife...Menting articulates gorgeous, strange visions of nature inflected by human interference,” writes Sandra Beasley.Michelle is also the author of the chapbooks Myth of Solitude (2013) and Residence Time (2016). She previously served as both senior fiction editor and senior poetry editor for Prairie Schooner. She is currently poetry & nonfiction editor of Split Rock Review. Originally from the upper Great Lakes region where she grew up the youngest of 12 siblings in a small cabin in the woods, she now lives in rural Maine and can be found online at michellementing.com.

Afakasi | Half-Caste is a book about identity and language told through stories of loss and silence. In her debut collection, Samoan American author Hali F. Sofala-Jones writes poems that explore the experience of being mixed race in America and living in the liminal space between two cultures. Hali F. Sofala-Jones is a Samoan American teacher and writer from Georgia. She’s earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Her poems have been published in Nimrod International Journal, The Bitter Oleander, CALYX, Blue Mesa Review, online at The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the Vreeland Prize in poetry, two Academy of American Poets prizes, a Pushcart Prize nomination, and several artist residencies and fellowships. She is currently a Lecturer at Georgia College where she teaches creative writing and serves as an Assistant Editor for Arts and Letters literary journal. Her debut poetry collection, Afakasi | Half-Caste, is forthcoming from Sundress Publications in December 2018.

"Approach everything with humility": an interview with Patricia Engel

Prairie Schooner — Fri, 10 Aug 2018 18:10:19 +0000

by Mac Wall

Patricia Engel is the author of The Veins of the Ocean and her story, "La Ruta," was featured in our Spring 2018 issue.

For our readers who only know you from what’s been published about you in the Prairie Schooner, is there anything from your life that tends to have an outsized influence on your writing? What you read, where you live, how you spend your day?

First, I want to say that I’m delighted to be published in Prairie Schooner. It’s a magazine I’ve long admired. To your question, everything influences my writing, from conversations I have or overhear, images I take in through landscapes, art, or from my imagination; my heritage, fragments of my identity, my relationships, nature and its exploitation, books I read, music I hear, my hobbies, fantasies, and obsessions.

There’s obviously a connection between the settings of your novels—New Jersey, Florida, Colombia—and your own life. But what’s the connection between you and Cuba? Are you just as familiar with it as, say, Miami? You seem well acquainted with Havana, the setting of the story (“La Ruta”) you last published with us.

My only personal connection to Cuba before writing my novel,The Veins of the Ocean, was that my grandmother was once married to a Cuban man and I grew up with many Cuban friends who were like family. Through them, I heard all about Cuba, but as an island trapped in time, the one their family abandoned decades earlier for a life in exile. Several years ago, I met a Cuban man recently arrived to the United States whose stories of the island since the Revolution were like nothing I’d heard or read before. He was the first to encourage me to go see it for myself. Once I started writing the book, which is set partly in Havana and features a Cuban protagonist, I knew I’d have to go to Havana in order to get the details right. So over a period of about 3 years, I made a dozen or so trips to Cuba and several short stories were born from research that did not make it into the novel. One of those was “La Ruta,” which was inspired by a dear friend of mine in Havana who drives a shared taxi seven days a week.

In a similar vein, how much credence do you give to the classic refrain “write what you know,” i.e. to draw from specific personal experience? Whereas your books usually center on young women of diasporic communities, “La Ruta” centers on a man who plans to stay put in Havana. Was it difficult writing from this perspective, both as a man and as a person committed to staying in a specific place rather than leaving it? It seems the most precipitous change the narrator can expect is moving to a new apartment.

I was raised with the belief that the worst thing is not knowing what you don’t know, so I approach everything, even things in which I have some sort of expertise, with humility and always assume ignorance so that I’m pushed deeper into research and increasing my knowledge in a particular area. I don’t even attempt a voice or a specific character or identity without feeling I can do it justice, and spend a lot of time in preparation to get the nuances of that place or person right. Mago, the narrator in “La Ruta,” is not unusual in that he has no interest in leaving his island and his life revolves around making due each day to be able to provide for himself and his loved ones. This was more or less standard among those I met in Cuba, who complained of but were well adapted to the monotony of their regimented lives. Even so, you would be surprised at how few people actually want to leave their homeland. I think this is one of the great lies of United States media: for every person who emigrates, there are thousands more who you could never tear from their home and loved ones. And those who do leave do so with great conflict and turmoil in their hearts.

I notice the piece focuses heavily on dogs, especially as they pertain to San Lázaro and El Rincón. Why did you choose to feature dogs and this saint alongside the main characters’ own pilgrimage? Does this saint’s story hold any significance to you personally, did you include it as a way to broadly illustrate Cuban culture, or do you just like dogs, period?

There are actually two Lázaros who are often confused and/or conflated. There is the actual saint, who was a bishop, and the other one is Lázaro of the parable whose wounds were licked by dogs and so dogs are believed to be friends to those who suffer, but who was not a saint and, in fact, never existed. But he is the one most widely represented and who has been syncretized with the orisha Babalú-Ayé in Santería. Cuba is overrun with dogs, some well cared for and some are skin and bones. Some are kept as fighting dogs, others wear government tags and are fed by storeowners in Old Havana. I am always touched by the way that animals reveal the society around them—whether through pampering or neglect. The dogs at El Rincón portrayed in “La Ruta” are real and I spent some time with them as it’s one of my favorite places to visit when in Havana. I was touched by the tenderness of the caretakers who saw these dogs are real connections between humans on earth and the miracle-making Lázaro of their prayers.

More generally, as you were writing “La Ruta,” what was going through your mind? Were you inspired by something that immediately brought you to write the story, or had it been percolating for a while?

As I said, I have a friend in Havana who drives a shared taxi and some days I would ride with him for hours just to see who got in the cab and how strangers interacted with one another. Some of the moments in “La Ruta” are from things I actually witnessed, but more importantly, I wanted to show how two people in an imative relationship, like Mago and Flor, can have very different approaches to life and essentially be unknowable to one other despite living together, while two strangers who know very little about each other, like Mago and his passenger, can uncover something profound in the other that has yet to be discovered by anyone else.

Moving on to your other work, your new novel, The Veins of the Ocean, has been out for a while now and has earned some pretty good press. What will PS readers find in Veinsthat’s reminiscent of past work you’ve published with us/your body of work in general? And what’s the most prominent difference between your new book and past work? Was there anything you found especially challenging writing it?

The Veins of the Oceanhas echoes of my other books in that the characters are immigrants at different points in their journey of displacement, and are dealing with a great deal of inner conflict in relation to their family lives and relationships. But Veinsdiffers in that it explores quite intensely themes of incarceration, captivity, intergenerational trauma, suicide, the exploitation of humans and animals, penitence and forgiveness, gendered, racial and cultural inheritances as well as questions of faith in the practical realm.

The book challenged me all the way through, especially the parts that deal with the death penalty, abuse, and abandonment. I had to put myself through an intense psychological and physical regime to write this book and as a result, this book took me a long time to move on from.

Besides teaching, what are you working on these days? Is there another book in the works, or do you have something else in mind? What can we look forward to? And is there anything you enjoy—not literature related—that informs your writing?

I’m working on another novel and always writing short stories. When I’m not at my desk, I spend a lot of time outdoors and have come to view it as an extension of my writing time.

Aspiring writers tend to like advice from those who’ve ‘made it,’ but I’m sure you give enough writing tips during your day job. But what successful authors read is often a window into how they think. So, as a parting gift, is there anything you’ve read lately you recommend to burgeoning writers as an example of great work? Or any particularly enduring work that you come back to for inspiration?

I always come back to Toni Morrison, Clarice Lispector, James Baldwin, Laura Restrepo, Denis Johnson, Héctor Abad, Marguerite Duras, Romain Gary, and Gabriel García Márquez.

Mac Wall is a Summer 2018 Prairie Schooner Intern.

"In a way all stories are about mental health": an Interview with Molly Quinn

Prairie Schooner — Fri, 27 Jul 2018 18:46:36 +0000

by Gayle Rocz

Molly Quinn’s writing has either appeared or is forthcoming in The Iowa Review, Kenyon Review Online, and Post Road. She was recently published in our Spring issue with the short fiction story, “Babies in the Water.”

Gayle Rocz: Your short fiction story, "Babies in the Water," is based around the relationship between a grown, unstable, and distant daughter, Kim, and her mother who is suffering from dementia. Their relationship is rather strained because Kim believes her mother intentionally poisoned her as a child. How did this scenario present itself to you? What were some influences that helped you create this situation between these two characters?

Molly Quinn: I’m interested in relationships between caregivers and the caretaken, and how these roles inevitably blur and sometimes reverse. Sometimes compassion turns into pity. I’ve seen this pattern to some extent in every family system, at the hospital where I work, and in our culture at large. It’s maddening because it’s so hard to call out: those who thrive from others being unwell can hide behind the guise of competence. I knew I wanted to write about Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy—when a caregiver induces illness—because it’s the most extreme example of this kind of scapegoating. Kim’s mother, unable to contend with her own vulnerability, intentionally makes Kim physically weak so she can get her needs met through her daughter. I realized this made the mother too purely villainous, so I gave her dementia. Not only does this show her frailty and humanness, it pushes Kim into the caretaker role, challenging her perception of herself as a victim.

GR: Throughout "Babies in the Water," Kim's mother appears to be completely within her mental illness. However, the two share brief moments of tenderness and clarity. When Kim says, "I know how you made me sick," the narrator states that "Her mother locked eyes with her. Searching them, Kim saw, for an instant, what she was looking for. Her mother knew that she knew." As a nurse, have you experienced moments like this, when people are able to break through the haze of their mental illnesses to find clarity? Why did you choose to include these moments of tenderness and clarity within this story?

MQ: Often with mental illness, there is no haze. Sometimes people are acutely aware of what they’re going through, which can make suffering particularly painful. Even when someone’s perception seems bizarre or absurd, I try to remember that my view of the world is only a perspective. People whose minds work differently have a unique window we can learn from, and those who have lived through the worst trauma often have the most wisdom.

In cases of dementia, I’ve experienced many moments of connection with my patients. When logical conversation isn’t an option, emotions are communicated through eye contact, facial expression, and body language. I wanted to capture this kind of tenderness in the story for the sake of tension, to show there’s a relationship of sorts at stake. Even in her resentment, Kim recognizes her mother is just a human being who must navigate confusion and fear at the end of her life. When Kim confronts her, I dangle the possibility of a genuine reckoning between them. Even if her mother does grasp what’s happening, she chooses not to admit it, leaving Kim retraumatized without hope of resolution. This moment of clarity lays the ground for Kim’s cruelty. Making her rage and frustration palpable implicates the reader when she acts them out at the end of the story.

GR: I also read your short story, "Little Red Mouths," that was published in the Kenyon Review Online. I noticed some similarities between the two stories, mostly in that they deal with mental illness. The main character in this story seems to be dealing with anxiety. Why do you feel compelled to write stories that deal with mental illnesses? What is your goal in writing these stories?

MQ: Between my family history, my own struggles with anxiety, and working in a psych ward for fifteen years, it was inevitable that I would end up writing about mental health. In a way all stories are about mental health because all stories are about human minds, but there’s a lot of fear around admitting this because of stigma. Having witnessed many healing processes, including my own, I believe the most essential piece is realizing our common humanity: understanding that we’re not alone in our suffering, that it’s a part of life. I hope these stories do some small part in normalizing mental health issues and inspire others to tell their own.

GR: Are there any other writers or pieces of writing that have influenced your writing style or subject matter?

MQ: I’m sure they have but it’s not something I keep track of. Figuring out my style seems self-limiting. Instead I try to cultivate curiosity—I read as much as possible and see what comes out. Voices that are always in my head include Zadie Smith, Carson McCullers, Stephanie Vaughn, Jhumpa Lahiri, Anne Enright, and Roddy Doyle. Nobody writes about mental health like Elizabeth Strout; her observations are so sharp and honest. Lesley Nneka Arimah’s What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky is the most delightful and imaginative collection I’ve read in a while. Right now, I’m finishing Sheila Heti’s Motherhood, and it’s inspiring me to spend even more time alone than I already do.

GR: Finally, what are your current projects? Will your upcoming collection of short stories be similar to the two previously mentioned?

MQ: I’m getting close to completing this collection, which I’m calling “A Danger to Ourselves” after my piece that was published in the Iowa Review. I think this is the right title because it addresses the misconception that people with mental illness are violent to others, when in reality they’re much more likely to hurt only themselves. The entire collection is themed around mental health. Many of the stories are set in the psych ward where I work, and some are interconnected. Others are about those coping with issues like alcoholism, chronic pain, and sex addiction outside of the hospital. I’ve also started outlining a novel, which I won’t say much about except that the protagonist is a nurse.

Gayle Rocz is a Prairie Schooner intern.

"Poems as an outlet for shock and grief": an Interview with Marianne Kunkel

Prairie Schooner — Fri, 20 Jul 2018 17:52:47 +0000

by Kelsey Conrad

Marianne Kunkel is Editor-in-Chief at Missouri Western State University's national undergraduate journal, The Mochila Review, and has been published in several journals including the Missouri Review, the Notre Dame Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, and Rattle. She is the author of The Laughing Game, and her book of poetry, Hillary, Made Up will come out in September.

Kelsey Conrad: Your book, Hillary, Made Up, is set to release in September. The book seems political by nature, but one thing that I found particularly interesting is how much it seems to revolve around makeup, and the idea of putting on a face. When during the writing process did that idea start to emerge, or was it one that you started with?

Marianne Kunkel: I’ve always liked persona poems, and poems that make me laugh, so the kookiness of the project—an entire book from the voices of makeup and hair products to Hillary Clinton—stemmed from the poetry I like to read. The topic of makeup specifically, though, emerged from a more serious place. The morning after the 2016 presidential election, I was scheduled to conference with students at the university where I teach, and something about putting on my makeup felt eerie. For me, I connected the loss of a woman candidate seeking the highest office in American politics with the tightrope of femininity and masculinity she had to walk—I saw in my own application of makeup an intent to hide flaws and to look more approachable and pleasing to the eye, and I felt sad for myself and for Clinton that our professional duties are tied up in this particular artifice. Now, that’s not everyone’s experience with makeup—I celebrate that some find it empowering, an artistic expression, and more. But it was mine that morning, and in Clinton’s recent book What Happened, she expresses her own frustration about the many hours she spent in the campaign makeup chair before meeting with voters. After that morning, I couldn’t shake the poetic potential I saw in makeup; I’d never read many poems about makeup, and certainly not a catalogue of persona poems from the voices of each product. There’s tension in the notion that these little items have such direct access to such a powerful woman, and yet she and many makeup-wearers don’t feel much personal attachment to them; all makeup, after all, is disposable. So I started to think: what would they say about her, about all women? What stories do they know about beauty standards and the history of the beauty industry? Are they fundamentally kind, shallow, jealous, encouraging, or something else? In the end, the poems took on many different attitudes that reflect the dizzying spectrum of feelings that Americans hold toward Clinton.

KC: What does this book mean to you? What was the process of writing it like?

MK: This book is about my own grief watching a woman aspire to the highest American political office and lose. I’m sure I’m not alone in saying Clinton’s loss was symbolic of every professional setback I’ve experienced that feels tinged with sexism. Once I formed the idea for the project, the poems came very quickly—almost one a day last summer. One reason for my fast pace was that I knew that time was against me because with the speed of our country’s news cycle, a book about the 2016 election wouldn’t be relevant for too long. But more than that, I found myself hungering to write the poems as an outlet for my shock and grief. I had attended the Women’s March, and soon after got involved in my local chapter that we named Persisterhood, and the poems kept me in a headspace of political activism; the same summer I wrote the poems, I also helped create a local directory of LGBTQ+-friendly businesses and fundraise to plant trees along our city’s parkway. So the writing process led to a more public life of trying to make peace with Clinton’s loss and mobilize with other women to bring good into the world, and that public life in turn led me back to my desk and writing the poems.

KC: Do you think that art is innately political?

MK: I grew up hearing in many wonderful women’s studies courses that “the personal is political,” so, yes, more art than we realize is political. Yet the poets I really admire these days are bringing politics to the forefront of their work. I think, with all the divisiveness and bigotry in our country right now, we need poems that shock us back into our humanity and connection with each other and that remind us of the worth of meaning-making and awe. For me, I dove into the subject of makeup because I saw in our society’s treatment of Clinton an assumption that we know her even as we expect her to disguise herself in makeup, hair products, designer clothes, and gender-coded speech and mannerisms. Clinton’s makeup, for all its direct access to her, is, like us, concealing her as it looks upon her, and that’s what I hope to get across with these poems—that the more disguise we demand of someone, the harder it is for her to deliver herself to us as genuine, which is what’s so frustrating about holding any woman to gender-specific, time-intensive, and often complicated, expensive, and racist beauty standards.

KC: You previously worked as a managing editor here at Prairie Schooner, and are now Editor-in-Chief at Missouri Western State University's national undergraduate journal, The Mochila Review. Do you think that your experience working at these journals has changed the way that you write and submit your work?

MK: Definitely! I’d be lying to say I don’t get discouraged when my work is rejected, but I try to roll with the punches because I’ve seen just how many submissions journals get and how competitive the publishing market is. Working with literary journals also helps me to see the standard of writing that’s getting published and to know what the styles and trends in content and form are right now; when I was writing the poems for this book, I often went to literary journals I liked to get inspired. Literary journals give readers access to the most current writing—even more than books, which have a longer draft-to-publication timeline. Mostly, my experience working with literary journals has inspired me to keep producing poetry and encouraging others to do the same; it’s invigorating to see how many thousands of writers are coming up with new ideas and new words for old ideas.

KC: Are there any writers that you think have influenced your style or subject matter?

MK: I’ve been on a Bob Hicok kick for the last several years, and the twists and turns in his poems, the quick mood shifts from head to heart, intellect to raw emotion, inspired a lot of the risks in my book. I read Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky with Exit Wounds with my poetry class the semester before I began writing the book, and his powerful political content gave me courage to write my own. Also, Grace Bauer’s and Julie Kane’s anthology Nasty Women Poets: An Anthology of Subversive Verse, one of the first post-election anthologies to be released, featured a poem from my book and showed me other women writing their way out of that historic election. Other beloved influences include the poetry of Natalie Diaz, Hadara Bar-Nadav, and Nikki Giovanni (whom we brought to our campus last spring!). Also, my book features seven sonnets in Shakespearean sonnet form, so of course Shakespeare was an influence. Finally, a major influence was Clinton herself; I did a lot of research to fill in gaps in my knowledge of her political career and understanding of her personhood—so much research that I ended up writing a four-page “Notes” section that appears in the back of my book.

KC: What's next? Are there any upcoming projects that you're looking forward to, or are you focused on your book release?

MK: I’m learning that to really send out a book properly into the world, there’s a lot of advance work. Every day this summer I’ve been trying to do one thing to promote my book, while also focusing on new writing and a move to a new house. I’m pleased that most of my marketing efforts are paying off, and that so far I haven’t felt too pushy in my coordination of book readings and pre-order sales; time will tell! My dear friend Johnathan Loesch made the beautiful cover for the book, and he’s been so helpful in brainstorming artistic marketing strategies; right now we’re working on customizing crayons to give away at readings so attendees can color in Johnathan’s black and white sketch of Clinton that’s featured in the back of the book. Also, I had fun working with a graphic design student at my university, Sarah Zahari, on a book trailer. I feel buoyed in my marketing of my book by the fact that the poems point to Clinton’s tireless advocacy and leadership throughout her political career; it’s easy to get excited about bringing attention to her historic achievements, as well as to the wacky and mesmerizing world of makeup.

Kelsey Conrad is a Prairie Schooner intern.

Alberta Clipper: 6/27/18: "On Friendship and Maxine Kumin" by Alberta Arthurs

Prairie Schooner — Wed, 27 Jun 2018 19:27:34 +0000

by Gayle Rocz

On June 27, 1693 the first women’s magazine was published in London. Titled Ladies’ Mercury, it was a spinoff of John Dunton’s The Athenian Mercury. This “magazine” filled one sheet front and back, and was mostly made up of an advice column aimed to attract both women and men. Admittedly, Ladies’ Mercury was no feminist crusade. It only lasted for about four issues and it was published by a man. However, it was the first time anyone thought that women might need or want a specialized publication.

Fast-forward 325 years to the first women’s march in Lincoln, NE on January 21, 2017. Thousands of people braved the 24° Fahrenheit weather in order to show their support for women’s rights. Since then, there has been a second women’s march held in Lincoln on June 8, 2018. Thankfully, a more welcoming temperature of about 70° Fahrenheit greeted the marchers this time around.

It might be an understatement to say that many things have changed for women between 1693 and 2018. From women being granted the right to vote in 1920 after decades of fighting, to the revival of the fight for gender equality during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, there have been many advancements for women. In the Winter 1997 edition of Prairie Schooner, Alberta Arthurs wrote about her experience as a female professor in the 1960s. Alberta and her friend, Maxine Kumin (Max for short), experienced gender inequality in the workplace, which is still a hotly-debated issue to this day. Here’s an excerpt from Alberta’s essay:

“We were teaching, she and I, and two or three other women, in the Tufts English Department. She had been recommended by John Holmes, the Tufts poet/professor, and I had edged and elbowed my way into the classroom from my administrative job at the university. We are there, with our Master’s degrees, teaching mostly part-time, mostly freshman English, mostly male students. We share offices in the attic of the English department, and we have no parking spaces or restrooms, no telephones, no help with the typing, although the men do. I remember that we were very grateful to be there at all, and the men felt very generous for allowing us to be there at all. That’s how I met Max.

There was nobody leading the way for women back then; in fact, we turned out to be the leaders, others lacking. Our expectations were domestic. We were credentialed by skirt lengths, car size, cooking skill. Even then, I was awed by Max. She was already publishing her poems and her children's books, despite the system. She was meeting regularly with a group of poets- John Holmes was their mentor-who inspired each other, dared each other, with critique and competition and comradeship. Probably her great gift for friendship stems from the inspiring that took place then and from the faith that her friend John had in her. Max in the early nineteen sixties was already a fierce and loving teacher, a fierce and loving friend, and perhaps the first woman I ever met who could be called a feminist.”

Prairie Schooner, Vol. 71, No. 4 (Winter 1997), pp. 111-116

The Alberta Clipper is an occasional gust of history—brushing the dust off of a piece from our archives and situating it in the current events and local Nebraskan weather reports of days gone by. Explore the Alberta Clipper archives here.

"Read. Read read read read read.": an Interview with Carmen Maria Machado

Prairie Schooner — Fri, 15 Jun 2018 19:23:38 +0000

by Sarah Fawn Montgomery

Our Creative Nonfiction Essay Contest is open for submissions. Want some insight into what this year's judge, Carmen Maria Machado, is looking for? Read on!

Your most recent book, Her Body and Other Parties, is a collection of short stories; your forthcoming book is a memoir. How do you conceptualize genre? Much of your work resists arbitrary borders, bending boundaries as part of craft—how does the construct or fluidity of genre influence your choices as a writer?

I think about genre and form all of the time: the negative space around them and the boundaries alongside them and their histories and iterations and strengths and weaknesses and tropes; the way they inform each other. It gives me an entry point into my writing, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction. Sometimes I abandon or submerge this entry point once I’ve gotten into something; other times, I embrace or even center it. It just depends on what the project demands.

Your next book is described as “an experimental memoir told through a sequence of rotating narrative tropes.” How do you approach structure in this book? How does form help create the meaning? Are there any memoir constructs you resist or rewrite?

I’m still working on it, so it’s hard to say! The structure is in flux. But the narrative tropes help by giving me a framework to explore specific elements of my memory, and that is both fruitful and satisfying.

Your use of experimentation and alternative reality complicate our understanding of nonfiction as a genre defined by fact. Why is questioning, rewriting, and complicating truth necessary for writing? For nonfiction, in particular? Do you see your craft choices making larger commentaries on our current social and political realities?

There’s a really beautiful memoir by Kevin Brockmeier—A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip—about his seventh-grade year. In the middle of the memoir, time freezes, and Kevin’s young self finds himself having a conversation with his adult self. It’s obviously a fictional gesture, but it does important work for the memoir. Similarly, Brian Blanchfield’s Proxiesis a book of short essays on certain topics which he is writing entirely from memory; the final essay is comprised of corrections for all of the preceding essays. Sofia Samatar also has some beautiful essays that use speculative elements. There’s definitely precedent within nonfiction to push the boundaries of how reality is portrayed, and I’m very interested in those boundaries.

What works have you turned to while writing your memoir? What besides reading the works of others (music or travel, for example) has shaped your process and prose?

Alongside the memoir I’m reading (or re-reading) Hilton Als, Maggie Nelson, Mary Ruefle, Alice Bolin, Brian Blanchfield, and Sofia Samatar. I’m also influenced by film, television, and video games.

Cultural hierarchies like the idea of high and lowbrow culture, for example, are becoming less stratified—what does that mean for the essay? What cultural spaces do you see the essay occupying?

I recently devoured Alice Bolin’s essay collection Dead Girls, which just about took off the top of my head. She writes beautifully about true crime and detective novels and crime shows and teenage witch guides and shows us how all of culture—from our most beloved literary novels to our tawdriest shows and everything in between—echoes connected ideas about gender and bodies and violence.

Her Body and Other Parties was released to wide critical acclaim, but what struggles did you face during the writing? What advice can you offer writers who are struggling?

My main struggle was that I was writing an utterly unmarketable book. Weird gay feminist short stories of uncertain genre are not precisely a best-selling formula, and every step of the process—publishing individual stories, finding an agent, selling the book—was difficult and almost didn’t happen. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel confident in my work—I loved my stories—but rather I had no idea I’d be able to do anything with them. Luckily, everyone who told me “you only need one”—one magazine editor, one agent, one publishing house to believe in your work—was totally right. The advice I’d give is to not compromise your vision and write the stories you want to read in the world. Don’t worry about anything else.

Similarly, we often dispense advice to “beginning” writers, though much can be applied to writers at any stage of their careers—what broader advice do you have for writers?

Read. Read read read read read. You cannot enter into the literary conversation unless you know what the conversation is.

Finally, Prairie Schooner receives and publishes a wide range of essays—memoir, personal essay, literary journalism, lyric and experimental essays. What are some of your favorite essays? What kinds of stories or craft choices grab your attention? What might you be looking for in the submissions?

I love the perfume writing at The Dry Down, Lia Purpura’s “Autopsy Report,” JoAnn Beard’s “The Fourth State of Matter,” Andrea Long Chu’s “On Liking Women,” Sarah Marshall’s “Remote Control,” Sofia Samatar’s Monster Portraits & "Meet Me in Iram,” Brian Blanchfield’s Proxies,Maggie Nelson, Jenny Zhang, Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, Samantha Irby. I want beautiful sentences, formal experimentation, being taught something I didn’t know before, intelligent criticism, bodies and their nightmares, humor, risks. That essay you’ve been sitting on because you’re wondering if it’s too weird? I want that essay.

Carmen Maria Machado's debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Kirkus Prize, LA Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, and the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize. In 2018, the New York Times listed Her Body and Other Parties as a member of "The New Vanguard," one of "15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century." Her essays, fiction, and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Granta, Tin House, VQR, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, The Believer, Guernica, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Michener-Copernicus Foundation, the Elizabeth George Foundation, the CINTAS Foundation, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She is the Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania and lives in Philadelphia with her wife.

Sarah Fawn Montgomery is the author of Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir(The Ohio State University Press 2018), and the poetry chapbooks Regenerate: Poems from Mad Women(Dancing Girl Press 2017), Leaving Tracks: A Prairie Guide(Finishing Line Press 2017), and The Astronaut Checks His Watch(Finishing Line Press 2014). She has worked as Prairie Schooner’s Nonfiction Assistant Editor since 2011 and is an Assistant Professor at Bridgewater State University.

"But I prefer to answer zero questions about it": An Interview with Terrance Hayes

Prairie Schooner — Fri, 30 Mar 2018 20:15:28 +0000

by Ilana Masad

A few weeks ago, I received an advanced reader copy of Terrance Hayes's new book, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, out June 19 from Penguin Poets. I set up an interview with the poet through his publicist, and then sat down to research everything I didn't know about him. Of particular interest was this video from the MacArthur Foundation, where I discovered that Hayes is a visual artist and musician as well as a poet. Imagine my surprise when, after writing to Hayes with my questions, he responded with a question of his own: since this is a blog, he wondered, would he perhaps be able to incorporate images in his response? I told him he absolutely could, imagining he may use one or two to illustrate his points or to give examples of something else he was working on. Instead, Hayes apparently used a snowy day to, as he put it, "engage with" my questions. Oh, he engaged with them, all right, and the result is something quite unlike any interview we've published before. Plus, he provided a video of what can only be termed performance art, with zero context, and indicated he would rather not give it any. To see the video for yourself, click here, then, please enjoy the following interview...

QUESTIONS/ANSWERS

1. Your sonnets in this book engage with so many themes, where words like "assassin" can take on so many meanings, from the person you see in the mirror to assassins remembered by history to the stranger on the street who can shoot you for no reason. What made you think of this term, assassin, when you set out to put together this book?

ANSWER: C1 / C2 / C3

2. I noticed in the sonnet index at the end of the book that each sonnet grouping is 14 lines, so that the first lines of each 14 sonnets make up their own kind of sonnet. You're known for this kind of formalistic play. What interests you about form, and how does it inspire you?

ANSWER: D4

3. There are several refrains in this book: But there never was a black male hysteria is one, and Probably all my encounters are existential jambalaya is another and The names alive are like the names in the graves is a third. How do you choose what lines to repeat and how to repeat them? Is it the sounds, the rhythm, the meaning you find in them?

ANSWER: B4

4. In general, there's a lot of linguistic play in your work, but particularly in this book. There's no attempt to hide the way you play with sound and language, the way words sound together and make rhythms and sometimes rhymes. Perhaps this question is too broad, but what do you love about language play?

ANSWER: A3

5. You're a visual artist and a musician as well as a poet. What do different forms do for you? Are they all in service of poetry, or does poetry serve your musician and artist self?

ANSWER: B

6. You often engage with masculinity in your work, and there's a line in this book that took my breath away, especially as a queer person: "...men like me / Who have never made love to a man will always be / Somewhere in the folds of our longing ashamed of it". Can you tell me more about this line?

ANSWER: B

ANSWER KEY

So You Wanna Win a Book Prize?

Prairie Schooner — Mon, 05 Mar 2018 00:27:48 +0000

In honor of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize (open now!), we've revived our interview series about publishing the first book. This week poet Stephanie McCarley Dugger, winner of the 2014 Vella Chapbook Contest, talks about letting go of deadlines, dashes vs. white space, and the importance of feeling connected to a larger writing community.

How many books have you published, and where?

I have one full-length collection, Either Way, You’re Done (Sundress Publications), and one chapbook, Sterling (Paper Nautilus Press).

Describe the process of constructing your first manuscript. How did you conceive of ordering the collection?

It took me about ten years to write the poems for the collection. I didn’t write with the manuscript in mind; I was just writing poems—most during my grad programs. Once I had enough to consider putting them together, I went through countless drafts. I landed on the poems that became Either Way, You’re Done, but struggled with ordering them. Nearly every friend I have has had these poems strewn out over their living room floor at one point or another, us shuffling and reshuffling and scooting around on all fours to reach this paper or that one. Eventually, I realized the poems were about journeying; that was the lightbulb. I was able to see the two sections clearly (“home” and “leaving home”), and then the order came fairly naturally from there.

Did you notice poetic tics once you’d put the poems together? How did you decide which tics were fruitful (interesting in that they accrued throughout the collection in a meaningful way) and which were not?

I did! I’m sure there are many that I haven’t noticed, but one that I found pretty early on was an overabundance of dashes. There must have been at least three or four in every poem. I figured out that I was using the dashes as space filler, indicating some pause or deep breath. Once I caught on to that, I replaced many of those dashes with white space, which helped me better understand the form for the poems. There are still a lot of dashes, but I cut them down quite a bit.

Someone pointed out that several poems had qualifying phrases associated with voice/speaking (“I should say…,” “What I should have said…”). At first, I tried cutting those phrases, but they were necessary to many of the poems. Once I realized how much the collection was about voice—about needing to speak and not being allowed or able—I decided to go with it. I also ended up mentioning a lot of kids’ games in the book, which wasn’t intentional. I still haven’t completely worked that one out.

How did you decide which poems to include in the collection?

That was one of the hardest parts of putting together the manuscript. I had this vision of what I wanted to include, and it certainly didn’t turn out that way. I was having trouble finding cohesion in the poems. I shifted the order around over and over, kept writing new poems, but I couldn’t find the thread. Then I decided on a whim to enter a chapbook contest. I think it was helpful that I hadn’t planned it and didn’t have time to obsess over it. I picked a handful of poems that I thought spoke to each other and worked to create an arc. Once Sterling was published, I realized I actually had two different arcs—one larger (that became Either Way, You’re Done) and one smaller (the chapbook). For the full-length collection, I pulled out the poems that worked with the larger narrative, wrote some new poems, and that became Either Way, You’re Done. It broke my heart because I had to cut some poems that were important to me, but they served a better purpose in the chapbook, and I’m happy with that.

How did you decide where to submit the collection? How many places did you submit?

I have two very different experiences with submitting. Sterling, the chapbook, was an anomaly. I sent it to two contests; it was a finalist in one and won the other. But I submitted the full-length collection to almost 50 presses (most of them contests) for about 5 years before it was really ready. I submitted to the presses that were publishing my favorite authors, publishers that I knew from submitting to journals, and any press that offered free submissions (submissions are expensive! Especially for students). Once the chapbook was published, I heavily revised Either Way, You’re Done and then only sent it to a few places. It was a finalist in a contest, but ultimately it wasn’t through sending it out that the book got published. After I had given a reading one evening, an editor at Sundress approached me and asked if I had a manuscript. I sent it to them, and they decided it was a good fit.

What does current-you wish you could have told past-you about the whole process?

I’d tell her to be patient. I spent so many years thinking I had to get a book out right away (and it had to be done a certain way), that I was running out of time. Maybe it’s because I’m older and came to this whole process later in life, but the closer I got to 40, the more I felt like I had to catch up to something (I don’t know what). It was only after I decided to be slow down that things finally came together.

And I want to tell her to trust her voice. I struggled (and still do) with understanding if and where my work fits in with the larger writing community. I think much of that comes from where and how I grew up, and it’s something that can paralyze me—has sometimes kept me from writing, submitting, or reading, even when I was feeling pressure to beat that ridiculous self-imposed deadline. But then an editor heard my poems, found value in my work, and published the collection. That was a dream-come-true (I know that’s cliché, but it’s accurate), and it was very far from the rigid process and timetable I was imposing on myself. And it proved that I was part of this community that I so fiercely admired. I wish I could tell the younger me that there is a magical outcome to all that work.

Has publication of individual pieces in the collection changed your writing or manuscript construction processes?

Yes. I have done some of my best (and most aggressive) revising after publishing a poem in a journal. I might be the worst person about revising. I have a hard time knowing when something is finished. I think it’s done, send it out, and then it goes live or arrives in print, and I suddenly find all sorts of problems with it.

But as true as that is, I also think it undermines the purpose and joy of publishing. I do love publishing individual pieces and it’s a very important part of the process for me (outside of revision). Getting to read a poem of mine alongside other writers’ and artists’ work gives me a new perspective on my own work. I can see where a poem might move within a manuscript or where it might help another poem in the collection. But I think more importantly, it helps me see value in my poems. It took me a very, very long time to call myself a writer. It’s something that was so far out of my reach when I was younger that I wouldn’t even consider taking on that label, so I often have a hard time believing my poems have value to anyone other than me. Publishing individual pieces reminds me that this work is part of something much bigger than my own writing space.

What did you do when you heard it was accepted?

It’s all a blur, but I had several celebration dinners over the next few days. The first was with my friend, Susan, who was in the office with me when I found out. She’s the one who got to see me nearly fall off my chair. There was an email that included a list of comments the editors made after they read the manuscript. They were encouraging and uplifting and all-around beautiful, and I remember thinking that I would need that list in the coming months to remind me that this was actually happening and that the book really was deserving of publication. I read those comments to Susan and we gushed about them, then I printed the list and used it as my tether for the next year while the book was in the editing phase.

Stephanie McCarley Dugger is the author of Either Way, You’re Done (Sundress Publications, 2017). Her chapbook Sterling (Paper Nautilus, 2015) was winner of the 2014 Vella Chapbook contest. Her work has appeared in The Boiler Journal, Gulf Stream, Heron Tree, Meridian, The Southeast Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and other journals. She is an assistant professor at Austin Peay State University and is Assistant Poetry Editor for Zone 3 Press.

So You Wanna Win a Book Prize?

Prairie Schooner — Fri, 23 Feb 2018 19:41:34 +0000

In honor of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize (open now!), we've revived our interview series about publishing the first book. This week poet Ángel García, winner of the 2018 CantoMundo poetry prize, talks about resisting the expectations of the first book, the usefulness of self-imposed limitations, and eavesdropping on your own poems.

How many books have you published, and where?

Teeth Never Sleep is my first book, forthcoming from University of Arkansas Press in the Fall of 2018.

Describe the process of constructing your first manuscript. How did you conceive of ordering the collection?

The manuscript has changed dramatically over the years. With every contest cycle, something about my editing process has changed. But when I graduated with my MFA, my thesis was a mess. It was just poems I threw together, to be honest, without much thought about its sense. I knew I would do this work after graduation. But because I hadn’t thought too deeply about it, I didn’t know how or where to begin. I kept expecting something magical to happen, like I would wake from a dream and the structure would appear to me. For many years, I fluctuated between stagnation or mostly tinkered with poems. But really, I didn’t know how to do to work. Most of my educational experience has been to make and think about singular poems. But a manuscript was foreign to me. It wasn’t until I realized what kind of narrative I wanted to tell that I begin to arrange poems. Essentially, the order of the manuscript starts at the end and ends somewhere in the middle. I didn’t want to rely on the arc of birth to death (even though I’m clearly alive). I wanted to start somewhere else. Really, I wanted to fight against the narrative(s) and expectations of the “first” book. I wanted to think about my manuscript as different or new. But this too was a myth I had to dismantle, and it wasn’t until I was able to do that that the manuscript became more realized.

The tics helped me think more deeply about the manuscript and what eventually gave me some order or sense of what the manuscript would be. I made lists of tics or threads. While writing through some of these threads, I found that some were going to work while others weren’t. But the poems revealed this for me. I set up a criterion, initially, of writing ten poems in a series. It was an arbitrary number, but it was a good starting place. Depending on how these poems worked together or how they worked in conversation with each other, I’d keep them. If I could only write one or two poems, I’d abandon the series. But this really helped me think of poems in partnership, or how they converse with one another. I have a series of mirrored poems, and this was another way for me to recognize patterns and order poems.

How did you decide which poems to include in the collection?

This was one of the more difficult challenges I faced. I kept thinking about revision not as a process, but as a way to save the poems I “liked.” I would highlight titles in red, I would put them in separate piles, I would tell myself over and over again that I would make certain poems work. Eventually, after I had a mentor read the manuscript, he made suggestions for initial cuts. That made it easier. He told me this poem or that poem don’t really work. But so often, this was something I already knew or suspected. But trusting myself is something I had to learn how to do. Slowly, I began to take out more and more poems because they just weren’t doing enough work in the manuscript. It became easier to omit than try to save a poem. The poems that are in the manuscript now (possibly with a few exceptions) don’t need me to save them. They are doing just fine on their own or in conversation with other poems. I’m now just that person eavesdropping, knowing they can hold their own while speaking for themselves. Because I’m empowered, I think the poems too, are empowered.

How did you decide where to submit the collection? How many places did you submit?

The main (but not the only criteria) I had for submitting the manuscript was to submit to presses that made beautiful books. But the more I learned about the process and the more I read, the more presses I included. More presses; more money. After years of submitting, I began more and more to send to first-book contests, and only submitted to a few “open” contests. But again, I was considering what press, what kind of books they made, and what contests are advocating for or are open to underrepresented populations. Since the Fall of 2015, when I began seriously submitting, I’ve probably submitted to more than 40 contests.

What does current-you wish you could have told past-you about the whole process?

I would tell a past me to be more patient and more deliberate. There was this sense of urgency to make a book happen—a mixture of getting older, feeling like I had nothing or little to show for years of work, and a sense that everyone and everything was passing me by. But had I had a book picked up in 2012 or even 2015, it would not have been ready. I’m certain of that. While there is still doubt about the current manuscript, and I think there will continue to be doubt, the book is better because it’s more realized. I’ve made deliberate choices and deliberate moves to create a whole. More importantly, though, I would tell myself that the process of the book becoming more and more real is an emotional process. I've spoken with other poets like Sara Borjas and DaMaris Hill (whose books are coming out soon) about how emotional (fluctuating between depression and anxiety and a slew of other emotions) the realization that a book will be out in the world can be. I don’t know that I had ever heard anyone talk about that, or at least talk to me about it. As elated as I am, I’ve had to deal with doubt, fear, insecurity, etc. and that has been taxing. It’s labor, of an emotional sort, that I wasn’t really prepared for.

Has publication of individual pieces in the collection changed your writing or manuscript construction processes?

The most useful thing to think about when individual poems were published was to think (even just initially) of those poems as “done.” It cleared my mind to work on other poems and to keep making new poems. Eventually, most everything has been revised, but in my mind it helped me compartmentalize work and keep pushing forward.

What did you do when you heard it was accepted?

I took the call when I was in my TA office, so there wasn’t much room to celebrate. I did get emotional and while walking home I made calls to my partner and then one of my best friends. As great as it was to hear and share that I had won a prize and that my book was going to be published, the elation lasted only for a short while. As usual, shortly after, the fear and worry began to settle in. But there was something too about not being “home” to share and celebrate with other friends and family. This past December my brother, Juan, hosted a dinner and that was special. My family (not all) and friends (not all) were there. That resonated more closely to heart. Later, we went out and I drank and danced in celebration and that, or the hangover, was when things felt realized.

Ángel García is the proud son of Mexican immigrants. Born in Texas and raised in Southern California, he is the author of Teeth Never Sleep, recipient of the 2018 CantoMundo Poetry Prize which will be published by University of Arkansas Press in the Fall. His work has been published in The American Poetry Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Huizache, among others.

So You Wanna Win a Book Prize?

Prairie Schooner — Sun, 11 Feb 2018 01:13:45 +0000

In honor of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize (open now!), we've revived our interview series about publishing the first book. This week poet Kristi Carter, author of Cosmovore, talks about the importance of becoming familiar with the agendas of presses, wearing out your obsessions, and the surreal feeling of having two books picked up in the same month.

1. How many books have you published, and where?

I've had two collections published, both in 2017, Daughter Shaman Sings Blood Anthem (Porkbelly Press) and Cosmovore (Aqueduct Press), and one that is forthcoming this year from dancing girl press.

2. Describe the process of constructing your first manuscript. How did you conceive of ordering the collection?

Cosmovore was the first and the ordering was something I returned to about six times throughout its gestation. Perhaps there were even more that I'm forgetting! In the beginning, it seemed logical to focus on the relationship between the ex (a triangle-playing "you") and Cosmovore (the speaker of the poems shares her name with the title). However, as I went down the line the priorities of the manuscript shifted in such a way that while the weight of the ex-partner's abuse didn't become unimportant, poems that seemed more wistful about that failed relationship took second-place to the hateful thunder of the others, as those poems are where you really see what Cosmovore is capable of.

3. Did you notice poetic tics once you’d put the poems together? How did you decide which tics were fruitful (interesting in that they accrued throughout the collection in a meaningful way) and which were not?

Us poets, and all writers and artists, are a really obsessive bunch. It was liberating for me to learn during grad school to lean into those obsessions, to really wear them out. Because Cosmovore is so transparently about consumption and reproductive rights, there was a pull toward the litany form that isn't as obvious now as it was during the construction. The use of dry humor was another concern, and when I re-read the manuscript I think it gets buried because of the rage that dominates the louder poems.

With Daughter Shaman Sings Blood Anthem, the voice of the speaker was a major preoccupation. Since that manuscript isn't constructed around the use of a persona, like Cosmovore, the tics I noticed were some I hear about from many writers, mainly trimming the bookends of the poem. That and finding ways to make sure the reader knew who the poems were addressed to, without brow-beating it into them, were formal concerns I returned to consistently.

4. How did you decide which poems to include in the collection?

For Cosmovore, it was very simple which to include as the poems erupted in a short amount of time and were so clearly demarcated from the other things I was writing which weren't in the voice of that persona. I did also try to create a mirror series of poems from the perspective of Celeste, Cosmovore's opposite of sorts, but that didn't pan out.

It was a different story with Daughter Shaman Sings Blood Anthem. I was working on a few different series during that time so I had to consider which poems should be kept separate and why. This was difficult as DSSBA carries that tradition of many poet's first books in that it functions somewhat like a poetic (auto)biography. I'm obsessed with the body and the confines of gendered experience, but what made poems ready for DSSBA was if they were about motherhood or daughterhood in some regard. Many of the poems that do this but didn't make it into DSSBA are in the full-length unpublished version (wink) or in the chap coming out from dgp later this year, as those focus on sexual orientation and gender performance.

5. How did you decide where to submit the collection? How many places did you submit?

Oh my. Well, embracing uniqueness and the reinvention failure can provide, here are the statistics as my best record-keeping seems to depict, with the inclusion of withdrawals, presses folding, etc. Cosmovore was sent to 14 places over the course of 5 years, with a submission hiatus of three years between 2013-2016, which I get into the why of in the answer to the following question. DSSBA I sent to 29 places over the space of ten months.

As for how I decided, I always look at the mission and the track record of presses and contests with attention to diversity and description of aesthetic agenda as well as artistic politics. It's no small accident that all three of my manuscripts got snatched up by feminist presses. I consider it an honor to participate in the continuation of those establishments and all the productive disruption they continue to bring.

I am also really excited that both manuscripts were embraced by presses that had interest in the content as part of their specialties, again that whole matter of aesthetic agenda as well as artistic politics. Porkbelly Press is feminist and queer inclusive with interest in the mythical and the body, so DSSBA made sense to Nicci Mechler (the editor there). Cosmovore plays with reality a lot, so Timmi Duchamp and the other editors saw potential in that aspect within the context of the press's other titles.

6. What does current-you wish you could have told past-you about the whole process?

Keep going! I got some interesting ink on Cosmovore that discouraged me at the time before it found a venue with Aqueduct Press. There are more than a few peculiar things about the book, editors would respond to them while also telling me some form of "we don't know what to do with this," and those often felt more like setbacks than flags of interest cropping up. I returned to it when I started working on DSSBA because the spark was reignited plus it was fun to alternate between two very different manuscripts. I started getting ink and tiered rejections on DSSBA much sooner, and I'm glad I trusted the encouragement that lent me. As of now the extended version is getting personal rejections, finalist positions and that sort of thing too, so I'm persisting as best I can.

7. Has publication of individual pieces in the collection changed your writing or manuscript construction processes?

This question is cool and pretty necessary in the recent streak of politically themed call for work. Political as I am, I have been so refreshed seeing that movement grow after surviving many experiences with the guard that wants to pretend art and life do not overlap. It's always encouraging to have an individual piece find a place to fly its flag out in the world before the manuscript it belongs to is published. I'm always writing about a lot of things, so sometimes the thematic calls get a faster response. That said, getting any acceptance is important to the continuation of the production at some point—writers don't write in solitude in that sense. All I can say is I'm grateful, and luckily, stubborn.

8. What did you do when you heard it was accepted?

Quite freakishly both of these collections were taken in the same month, though submitted at different times, frequencies, and far apart. During that time my partner and I were both navigating the last throes of our PhDs (I do not recommend this), so there was a sense of being stunned, a surreal sort of detachment that the acceptances forced me to look at. You see, when you're toiling day in and day out like that then someone comes and says, "Hey great job, we think this is pretty much done," you feel some sort of opposite pull is happening. Because of that, I did not know how to promote myself and my work, nor did I make the time to do so I wish I had. The books landed and everyone around me said, "What? You had a book taken—wait, two!?" So don't do that; instead blast it to the world that someone wants to make your book real. As soon and as much as possible, to bearable extents. The community-building most writers are participating in online makes this possible, but it requires good judgment and manners.

And of course, more than anything, before and after I shared the news, I was thrilled and honored.

9. If your book was a landscape, what would it be? How would people navigate it? [Editor's note: As a former Prairie Schooner Book Prize Coordinator, Kristi used to conduct this interview series. As part of our interview, I asked her to choose a question she used to enjoy asking other writers and this was her choice!]

With Cosmovore there is obviously the galactic element, but there is also a rapid-fire vacillation between urban and suburban ruins as well. It isn't that the book is set in a dystopia, it's just that the feminist themes allow regular dystopic tropes of everyday life to shine through! Like many books, it forces the reader to trust the poems, but I know it comes on more hot and heavy even in a predictable aspect of the reader-writer relationship like that.

As for DSSBA, there are so many trees. Yew, birch, unnamed—all those trees create this dark, intimate space that's scary as well as nourishing and full of potential, much like relationships, such as motherhood. I would recommend entering the darkness of that forested area with a strong stomach and hungry eyes to get the most out of it. Maybe the reader can find there's a clearing with a fire somewhere inside.

Kristi Carter is the author of Daughter Shaman Sings Blood Anthem (Porkbelly Press) and Cosmovore (Aqueduct Press). Her chapbook Red and Vast is forthcoming from dancing girl press. She holds a PhD from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and an MFA from Oklahoma State University.

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So You Wanna Win a Book Prize?

So You Wanna Win a Book Prize?

So You Wanna Win a Book Prize?