Bad Mouth Online in the Meantime
Thanks to Rebecca Aronson for inviting me to read for Bad Mouth!
Memorious
Poetry Spotlight: my interview with Michael Bazzett on his new book, Our Lands Are Not So Different
Memorious
Poetry Spotlight: my interview with poet Eamon Grennan on his new book, There Now.
Memorious
The First Time: Anna Ross on Galway Kinnell & Her First Time at the Podium
Guernica
Between a Riddle and a Charm
Guernica
The Consequences
The Next Big Thing (2012)
Many thanks to the generous and talented Jason Gray for inviting me to take part in this The Next Big Thing interview series. Thanks, Jason!
What is the working title of your manuscript?
If a Storm
What genre does it fall under?
Poetry.
Where did the idea come from for the book?
As most of the poems are, in one way or another, drawn from my life, I guess that’s the short answer. But in a bit more detail: marriage; traveling in Eastern Europe, Central and South America, and Montana; miscarriage; infancy; parenthood; weather.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Partially cloudy, with a chance of earthquake.
How long did it take you to draft your manuscript?
A few of the poems in the manuscript first existed in my MFA thesis, which dates them to 2003/4. The rest accumulated haltingly until about 2011. (This question makes me feel like an obsessive tortoise.)
Who or what inspired you to write it?
My family inspired (prodded?) most of the content within the poems. After much trial and error, the poems eventually coalesced into a before/during/after narrative of marriage, loss, and birth. When I imagine the book, it is in the shape of a galaxy with a dense rock at the center flinging arms of poems around itself (my publisher didn’t go for this presentation, sadly). My early and insistent poetry infatuation with Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, Seamus Heaney, and W.B. Yeats finds its way into much of the language of the poems, and my many teachers are in here too--among them Richard Howard, Lucie Brock-Broido, Eamon Grennan, Timothy Donnelly, Mary Jo Salter, and innumerable other friends and mentors.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
If a Storm won the 2012 Robert Dana – Anhinga Press Prize for Poetry and will be published by Anhinga Press in 2013.
What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
William Powell and Myrna Loy (because I’d like people to imagine me always in a satin, fur-trimmed dressing gown quaffing martinis). And my kids would play themselves because no Hollywood casting director would ever be able to find children as charming and talented as they are (and they, rightly, would never forgive me for cutting them out of starring in a movie with William Powell and Myrna Loy).
What else about your manuscript might pique the reader’s interest?
It’s all based on a true story.
Thanks to Rebecca Aronson for inviting me to read for Bad Mouth!
Memorious
Poetry Spotlight: my interview with Michael Bazzett on his new book, Our Lands Are Not So Different
Memorious
Poetry Spotlight: my interview with poet Eamon Grennan on his new book, There Now.
Memorious
The First Time: Anna Ross on Galway Kinnell & Her First Time at the Podium
Guernica
Between a Riddle and a Charm
Guernica
The Consequences
The Next Big Thing (2012)
Many thanks to the generous and talented Jason Gray for inviting me to take part in this The Next Big Thing interview series. Thanks, Jason!
What is the working title of your manuscript?
If a Storm
What genre does it fall under?
Poetry.
Where did the idea come from for the book?
As most of the poems are, in one way or another, drawn from my life, I guess that’s the short answer. But in a bit more detail: marriage; traveling in Eastern Europe, Central and South America, and Montana; miscarriage; infancy; parenthood; weather.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Partially cloudy, with a chance of earthquake.
How long did it take you to draft your manuscript?
A few of the poems in the manuscript first existed in my MFA thesis, which dates them to 2003/4. The rest accumulated haltingly until about 2011. (This question makes me feel like an obsessive tortoise.)
Who or what inspired you to write it?
My family inspired (prodded?) most of the content within the poems. After much trial and error, the poems eventually coalesced into a before/during/after narrative of marriage, loss, and birth. When I imagine the book, it is in the shape of a galaxy with a dense rock at the center flinging arms of poems around itself (my publisher didn’t go for this presentation, sadly). My early and insistent poetry infatuation with Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, Seamus Heaney, and W.B. Yeats finds its way into much of the language of the poems, and my many teachers are in here too--among them Richard Howard, Lucie Brock-Broido, Eamon Grennan, Timothy Donnelly, Mary Jo Salter, and innumerable other friends and mentors.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
If a Storm won the 2012 Robert Dana – Anhinga Press Prize for Poetry and will be published by Anhinga Press in 2013.
What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
William Powell and Myrna Loy (because I’d like people to imagine me always in a satin, fur-trimmed dressing gown quaffing martinis). And my kids would play themselves because no Hollywood casting director would ever be able to find children as charming and talented as they are (and they, rightly, would never forgive me for cutting them out of starring in a movie with William Powell and Myrna Loy).
What else about your manuscript might pique the reader’s interest?
It’s all based on a true story.
