“The dead baby birds
that still live inside my head and want to be re-born, even if they’re tiny and
broken.”
Thank you very much to Susan Yount for inviting me to
participate in this Blog Tour Interview regarding my writing process and
related thoughts (and peculiar brain based entities that can be positioned into
a straddling stratosphere of semi-edible, semi-grotesque poem creatures).
*
What I’m working on - Trying to stay on top of my own poetry
writing and submitting – along with publishing and promoting poetry chapbooks
through my one-woman indie press, Blood Pudding
Press – along with the
monthly update of my blog style online literary magazine, Thirteen Myna
Birds – along with reading
other poetry – along with creating poetic visuals via painting/collage art
hybrids – and more…
This year, my
Blood Pudding Press has published three different poetry chapbooks – “House on
Fire” by Susan Yount, “Stick Up” by Paul David Adkins, and “They Talk About
Death” by Alessandra Bava. You can read and see more about each of these unique
collections at the Blood Pudding Press shop here - https://www.etsy.com/shop/BloodPuddingPress .
Also, a new
poetry chapbook of my own, “RED DEMOLITION”, was very recently published (in
August) by Shirt Pocket Press (http://shirtpocketpress.wordpress.com/catalog/) and includes
fourteen poems inspired by dissolution, discord, divergence, and instability along the lines
of (non)long lasting romantic relationships
and ongoing questioning about the definition of love.
Also, a
collaborative poetry chapbook by me and Robert Cole, “MUTANT NEURON CODEX SWARM”,
which was accepted for publication over a year ago by Hyacinth Girl Press, is
coming closer & closer to publication, closer to the end of this year.
I’ve been working on collaborative
poems with a few other poets too, especially j/j hastain, with whom I’ve assembled
about thirty poems and we are still working on more – writing new ones,
revising old ones, submitting many of them, organizing some of them into
chapbook format...AND, while I was in the middle of completing these blog tour
answers, j/j and my collaborative chapbook manuscript, “Dive Back Down”, was
just accepted by Dancing Girl Press, to be published next year!
I’ve been submitting my own second full-length poetry manuscript (on & off, with various subtractions, re-visions, and additions) for about four years now – and occasionally find myself wondering if it doesn’t fit in anywhere; if I don’t fit in anywhere ON A LARGER SCALE.
I’ve been submitting my own second full-length poetry manuscript (on & off, with various subtractions, re-visions, and additions) for about four years now – and occasionally find myself wondering if it doesn’t fit in anywhere; if I don’t fit in anywhere ON A LARGER SCALE.
Then again, versions
of the manuscript have made it as far as being a Semi-Finalist in the
Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize in 2012 and a Finalist for Imaginary Friend Press
in 2013, so I guess it comes close to somewhere/something.
Sometimes I
wonder if my poetic content is too repetitive. Other times, I wonder if its
content is not thematically linked enough for most presses to consider on a
full-length scale. Even though its content strikes ME as thematically linked,
the poems were not all written in a short span of time, focused on one set
theme - and sometimes I get the feeling that's where the primary interest lies
these days – a collection of poems purposely based on one theme - rather than my
kind of ongoing similar thematic content for YEARS.
*
Why my work is different – Because it emerges from my own brain and I’m
not aiming to fit in to anyone/anywhere else in particular. I am not some easy
to understand cliché. I’m a
contradictory mess with semi-repetitive streaks. My brain is a mental mini-semi with multicolored
darkness. I care deeply about my creative expression, but it’s not aimed in any
one concrete direction or at any one group.
It’s a misshapen rotating circular flow.
It does appeal
to me when my poetry receives attention, since my poetic expression is truly
important to me and since I do direct lots of my time, focus, mental energy and
genuine passion in the realm of poetry – but when I’m working on the writing,
I’m not trying to make it fit in anywhere in particular or appeal to anyone in
particular. I
don’t think of myself as particularly mainstream, or purposely outsider, or overly
academic, or too genre-esque. I think of myself as ME.
Also, my works’ content is somewhat different than
it used to be, because my
brain is somewhat different than it used to be. This is partly due to stylistic
changes, but also due to an actual brain disorder/disability.
At the beginning
of 2010, less than 3 months after I had turned 37, I had an unexpected carotid
artery dissection - which led to an aneurysm - which led to a stroke, which
caused me to lose some parts of my brain.
I am technically
disabled with mild aphasia, ongoing small word issues, and other uncanny side
effects. I think it was my long lasting passion for unique words, reading,
writing, and poetic expression that seriously upgraded my recovery process and
helped my brain to neuroplasticize itself.
My reading is
still considerably slower than it used to be though, and requires more
concentration. I’ve
always been poetry-focused in terms of my own writing but now I am even MORE
poetry focused in terms of writing AND reading.
I’ve always felt
like a mixed up, mixed bag, mixed feeling mini-deluge in one way or another –
but those traits combined with brain loss and love loss/marriage loss/divorce
exactly one year after the stroke (causing me to question real love and anything
long lasting) seem to have escalated my realization that supposedly meaningful
things can suddenly and unexpectedly change.
I was lucky to
live through my stroke, but instead of making me feel more positive, the
experience caused me to feel somewhat more negative and “what is the
point”? I don’t mean that in a depressed
sort of way. I am very glad I am still alive,
because life speed races way too fast, as it is. But still, what is the overall point? I don’t think there is an overall broad scale
point; I think there are just small but interconnected individual points (or other
shapes or flows or coagulations). Individuals can either give up on
encountering anything meaningful OR choose to believe in what is important to
them and focus on that while they are alive. For some people, that focus is
family and raising kids; for me that focus is unique personal expression and
poeticism. I’ve never really related to un-passionate
adults, bored adults, adults who don’t seem to have any particular focus or
anything to do with their time. Time is
extremely fast paced and limited and could very suddenly end. While you still have
time remaining, why not choose your own point, space, shape, flow, force field
or whatever you want to call it and focus on it while you still can?
I don’t want to
hide myself, overly privatize myself, or overly focus on pleasing others. I want to be myself, express myself, and give
myself freely to whomever/wherever I choose. My own point, space, shape, flow,
force field, “spiritual state” is expression-based, hoping that some of my
words will last longer than my body-based life. I’ll never have enough time to
get enough done – and a lot of people won’t be aware of me in any way – and even
some people who are aware of me will not really understand or relate to what I’m
doing - but I will keep working on what often
feels meaningful and passion inducing to me.
*
What I write about – I derive from odd impulses instigated
by my own experiences, memories, thoughts, and feelings. I coagulate them into my
own individual hybrids of realistic, abstract, emotional, extremities, and/or
repetitions reshaped and rearranged. Ongoing mental disorders regarding self,
relationships, breaking down, hurling, rebuilding, questioning.
An amalgamation
of individual womanhood fused with horror. The dead baby birds that still live
inside my head and want to be re-born, even if they’re tiny and broken.
*
My process – Expressing myself rather than repressing
myself. I feel like I will never be anyone’s favorite thing and that hurts my
feelings, but that does not mean I have any desire to be less than I am, act different
than I feel, or hide the real me.
I’d rather
express my qualms and flaws and uncertainty and unease instead of keeping it
all inside myself, keeping myself hidden, secret, semi-fake, and feeling as if the
real me barely exists. I’d rather reveal myself, even if many don’t relate to
my sorts of expression. For me, extraction of negative brain
waves via poetic/artistic expression is far preferable to keeping such feelings
hidden. Expressing deviation or darkness can be empowering; can release space
for temporary light.
Up until the
last few years, I almost always started my writing process by hand, on paper, lying
on my stomach on the floor. I didn’t start typing a poem in progress on the
computer until it felt pretty close to being done. In recent years, since I’ve been more focused
on collaborative writing with poets who aren’t physically near me, most of my writing
process has been online – and frankly, I haven’t even been spending enough time
on the ground with my own poetry.
Also, in
recent years, it has crossed my mind quite a few times that perhaps I should abandon
(or at least put on hold for a few years) my Blood Pudding Press publishing endeavors,
since that takes up a significant amount of my time and energy – and that in combination
with the fact that I have slower reading skills than I used to, has caused my
own writing and reading to fall farther and farther behind. I have hundreds of unread books on my floors
and feel like I’ll never come anywhere near to catching up unless I focus on
spending substantially more time in that direction – and the only way I can do
so is if I spend substantially less time in another direction.
I do think it
is meaningful and important for poets to focus significantly on other poets;
not just themselves - but my Blood
Pudding Press has now existed for almost 8 full years – so maybe it’s time to
take a break and focus more directly on rebirthing my own process again.
This is not
an official announcement, because I haven’t decided the exact details or time
frame yet, but I’m tentatively thinking I might keep the press alive for another
year and then after 2015, put my press on hiatus for a few years, and then
start a new press a few years later, with a somewhat different process associated
with that new press too.
*
Tag, you’re slithered in
between (or underneath) my sequins (whichever way you like it) - I wish to read the answers to these interview
questions by the following unique and extraordinarily slithering poet creatures
(and please tag me somewhere in there so I know when your answers are up and
readable/edible/in-edible/a delightfully horrid amalgamation of delicious
poison treats etc…)…
(ALSO, if anyone
has any questions related to any of my answers, please feel free to ask me.)
Alessandra Bava, Paul David Adkins, Lora Bloom, John Burroughs, j/j hastain, and Margaret Bashaar!
