Lisa Kiernan cordially invited my response to the following questions:
What are you working on?
I’m presently anticipating the release of my third full poetry collection, Later, Knives & Trees (Negative Capability Press). I’ve also been engaged in a response to poems through image.
Over the summer I started two projects: 30×30, in which I’ve been creating 30 second videos overlaying audio excerpts from Later, Knives & Trees. Also a bodily, organic response to collage: 27/24 which may extend itself. The premise of carrying a collage upon the body for 24 hours. What have you learned from the message, the unattached self before the self. Strange illusion. Mostly. Seeking the ‘cosmic countenance’ inside the countenance, asking or responding to the secreted self, “what do you want to do next?”
How does your work differ from others of its genre?
I’m not sure it does. Maybe it shouldn’t. It just is. I’m human, like a snowflake.
Why do you write what you do?
See Tab: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics: space before text.
From a lecture I gave on Peristaltic Googlism and the Metaphysics of Ephemera and a quote worth repeating:
“Once you’ve heard a Maytag wafuuoom-per, wafuuoom-per throwing its never erring voice across the back yard, you’ll understand a knack for making songs. You’ll understand what Hank Williams’ rhythm section was doing at the laundry mat in Texarkana all night, June 1948; the night Hank knocked up Windy Beauchamp after she auditioned as a dobro player. Birds speak dialects, as people do. Dolphins use sound as a weapon. Crickets won’t answer recordings of their own voices. Even a small fish like an anchovy can hemorrhage, hearing nothing, a silence finally loosing substance.” — Walter Lab
Whether it’s the Maytag’s wafuuoom-per or a hemorrhaging silence, disparate elements endlessly congeal to form the delicate architecture of a poem. Why ask why? Ask, why not.
How does your writing process work?
I’m not much of a cook. I seem to think there is only one heat level: HIGH. I write like I cook. Sporadically, intensely, quickly. I try to enjoy it. Always wish I did it more. I’m probably best around a fire pit. I’m comfortable with both the raw and refined.
For additional responses from incredible thinkers I’ve asked Sarah Maclay, Nikia Chaney, Elena Karina Byrne, Sparky Campanella, Nic Sebastian, Lauren K. Alleyne, Cati Porter, Christina Cook, Marcia LeBeau, Farrah Field, Jared White, Bethany Ides, Linnea Ogden, Cynthia Arrieu-King, Cindy Rinne, Prageeta Sharma, Anna Leahy and others.
Inlandia: A Literary Journey 