Weaving Words, an interview with Ned Haggard

My last spring blossom as part of Couplets: to read other interview and guest blogs during National Poetry Month go to http://www.upperrubberboot.com

I met Ned Haggard at an amazing event held to celebrate National Poetry Month in Chicago where 150 poets read in two and a half hours at the Harold Washington Library. Our friendship has enabled us to tap into the inspiration of our poetry communities  (Chicago for me and Minneapolis for him), proving that poets are a tribe, one to which we belong no matter our location, philosophy or style.

 

Ned Haggard is a prizewinning poet whose work has appeared in numerous literary journals; among them, Potomac Review, Santa Barbara Review, Piedmont Literary Review, Bohemian Chronicle, Kaleidoscope, Maryland Review, Ebbing Tide, Small Pond, and Grasslands Review. His most recent published work, an excerpt from a mystery-in-progress, The Slaughterhouse of Lambs, appeared in a scars.tv publication. His work has been included in the anthologies: Off the Cuffs! (Soft Skull Press: New York City) and The Best of Chicago Poetry 2006 (chicagopoetry.com).  He has a collection of poems in print The Weave of the Sea (EbonyEnergy Publishing: Chicago) with another forthcoming, Soft-Shoe Shuffle and a novel The Companion in Dreams. He is developing a memoir that celebrates the people and events that have informed his life rather than emphasizing personal autobiography. He makes his home in the metropolitan Chicago area and has previously been a resident of New York City.

Q: Do you have a warm-up writing practice?
Not formally, I sometimes write off of paintings at galleries and art museums having initially considered that my practice exercise. However, I liked some of the work realized that way so much that I no longer consider the exercise a practice so much as simply another vehicle for inspiration.

Q: What feeds you as a poet?
It sounds trite and glib but, "Life," in a "L'Chaim" sort of way. Being interested in politics, I am drawn toward political poetry, which is often time dated but done well, can have a transcendent quality. Politics or more precisely political sensitivity, awareness and currently, deep concern, feeds my poetry often.

Q: What other arts do you enjoy?
Music and the visual arts, painting and photography. Music is an extension of literature for me in that I generally gain images from the listening to pure music although I have never tried writing from it the way I sometimes do paintings.

Q: What is the importance of poetry for you personally, and for the world?
Personally, pleasure and release, emotionally but also as a way of sorting matters, whatever those matters happen to be. I find dimension and breath in letters and words and the life within, behind, in front of and around them. Writing is a joy even when the subject at hand is heartbreaking. For the world, different strokes for different cultures, I suspect. I consider poetry the music of the soul, in particular and generally. I believe that is a universally viable statement. If so, that certainly says volumes for the essential place of poetry whether recognized or not.

Q: Have you always written poetry and what inspired you to begin?
Always? No. What inspired me to begin? I don't know, I just liked the intrigue of poetry and wanted to try my hand at it. I surely was not inspired by the classroom experience of poetry. Poetry in the classroom always seemed like a butcher attempting delicate brain surgery; the teacher being the butcher and the students encouraged to mime the practice making a bloody, fatal mess. Although, I completed the then only program in the writing of poetry at Harvard some years back and that was a worthwhile exception but then, it was a writing program, not a poetry survey course. By the way, I understand that program has since been expanded. But returning to your question of inspiration to begin, I think the Beats, especially Allen Ginsberg opened the door more for me than anything else; there was a young person's sense of curiosity; an "oh wow, nitty gritty more 'real' than what I've experienced" attraction that was inspired by, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness...." and it took off from there and ultimately, it drew me back into earlier modern poets. I was ultimately most inspired by Charles Reznikoff. Before poetry, I wrote fiction and Reznikoff showed me ways of combining poetry and narrative. I am not a lyric poet and I am not a formalist poet. I am an objectivist-imagist poet. I actually consider myself a painter with words.

Q: How do you envision the role of e-books?

I believe there will always be both physical and electronic books but I think electronic books will become more prevalent and cheaper. There is a legal case coming up about publishers rigging the prices of electronic books. I just read an article, as I recall it said the ramification will likely be far less cost for e-books. In fact, I believe the case revolves around publishers insisting on, i.e., fixing higher prices for e-books so the market for physical books would not be dynamically eroded. It may well be that eventually physical books will be a novelty. In short, I think physical books will continue but e-books will gain far greater prevalence.

INSULAR REFLECTIONS

After, "Woman before an aquarium, 1921-23" Henri Matisse

Contemplating, eyes wide,

settled on the water globe

world of gold fish, the

woman's arms folded

beneath

her propped chin

sees? Sees what? The swim

of foreign life, the

soothing of fin

fanned water gently

swirling, all but

motionless? Wondering;

their lives and hers?

Mystery swims in her

face, quietly

fascinated

                       -----Ned Haggard © 2012

Couplets: Crossing Genres with Iris Dunkle

Iris Dunkle is the only poet during this series of interviews and blogs hosted by www.upperrubberboot.com that I have never met, either in person or through cyberspace, but I discovered that we both had chapbooks published by Finishing Line Press. Iris Jamahl Dunkle teaches writing at University of California, Santa Cruz and Napa Valley College. Her manuscript Alphabet of Bones was a finalist for the Four Way Books Levis Prize in 2011. Her chapbook Inheritance was published by Finishing Line in 2010. Her poetry, creative nonfiction and scholarly articles have appeared in numerous publications including: Fence, VOLT, The New Guard, LinQ, Boxcar Poetry Review, Weave, Verse Wisconsin, Talking Writing, Yalobusha Review and The Mom Egg. Her blog is here: http://momma-phd.blogspot.com/

On Being a Hybrid Writer  by Iris Jamahl Dunkle 

Up until 2003 when I started my dissertation, I never expected to write anything besides poetry. But developing a 200+ page document helped open up my writing process to include longer texts. These days, ideas come to me as poems, creative nonfiction, articles and novels. Writing a poem has always been how I have thought through ideas. Poems would come frequently, but usually one at a time. For me, writing poetry has always been a way to enter a subject and think through the emotional residue that surrounds it, a way to immerse myself associatively in the images and rhythms a particular thought or idea opens up to me.

But, after I completed my dissertation something in me had shifted. The researcher that had been lying dormant inside me came to life and I discovered that I was inspired to take on larger subjects: topics that inspired me to write series of poems. I began researching local history and writing poems about the forgotten voices and events that had been brushed under the rug of history. As I discovered more and more stories, these projects became bigger and bigger. I just didn’t feel like I had completed the project even once I written 30 – 40 poems. This is when I began to write lyric essays and eventually even fiction. It was a liberating moment in my writing life the day I became a hybrid writer. Prose, which was once the genre I wrote essays and articles for school or work in, became a place where I could remain my poetic self. Prose became a place where I could linger longer in the exploration of a topic. Writing prose requires more research, more adherence to sentence structure and grammar, but it can still remain lyric and imagistically and emotionally driven. It provides a longer period of time to dwell and try to understand the stories, ideas or even characters you’ve found.

An example of a project that began as a poem, then became a series of poems, a lyric essay and finally a novel was my project on an oil boom town in Oil City, PA. Last winter my family and I moved to Western Pennsylvania for a job I took teaching at Clarion University in Oil City. The town was filled with dilapidated Victorian houses and our school’s library had an interesting special collections on the oil history of the area. Turns out, Oil City and its environs was where oil was first found in the United States. During the 1860s a huge oil boom took place in this area. As I was desperately trying to find inspiration in this new place I stumbled upon a book in the library’s special collection all about a local boom town named Pit Hole. I mean really, who wouldn’t be intrigued by a name like that? So, as I taught that semester, I read my way through the special collections and wrote poems about the characters I encountered who had once lived in Pithole. I wrote lyric essays about visiting the historic site where the town once was and I wrote poem after poem about the place.

As it turns out, my family and I decided to return to California just six months later, but though I’d written over 40 poems and two lyric essay about it, I couldn’t shake Pithole and its history. The characters I’d found out about: a girl who was imprisoned in sexual slavery who escaped by slipping a letter through the cracks in the whorehouse where she was being held (the letter was found, and sent to her mother in New York who rescued her shortly thereafter) and a laundry woman who ran her well dry helping to put out a fire at a nearby hotel only to find that the next morning her well had filled back up with oil instead of water. How could I let these characters go after just writing a short poem about each of them? Well, I couldn’t. And when National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) rolled around, I rolled up my sleeves and wrote my first novel. The project, which had one been a single poem had become so much more.

Nowadays, whenever I come across a subject I always write a poem first, but my experiences have taught me to keep my options open because, as I’ve experienced, you never know what form your work will expand into.

Poetry Temptations, an interview with Diane Lockward

As part of the Couplets National Poetry Month  blogtour hosted by www.upperrubberboot.com
Check their website for other interviews and guest blogs. 

I met Diane Lockward via the internet, a list serve of women poets called WOM-PO. Her voice as a poet is intimate as she captures our daily world in gestures that are passionate, humorous, and courageous.  “Something like grief washes through me, something like joy.” from Eve’s Red Dress echoes my life’s journey exactly. It’s a small world after all!

Diane Lockward is the author of three poetry books, most recently, Temptation by Water. In 2006 What Feeds Us received the Quentin R. Howard Poetry Prize. She is also the author of Eve's Red Dress and two chapbooks, Against Perfection and Greatest Hits: 1997-2010. Her poems have been included in such anthologies as Poetry Daily: 360 Poems from the World's Most Popular Poetry Website and Garrison Keillor's Good Poems for Hard Times, and have been published in such journals as Harvard Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Prairie Schooner. Her work has also been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer's Almanac.  Diane has entered the ereader age: Twelve for the Record is now available as an ebook and can be downloaded.

Diane sends out a monthly newsletter with reviews and tips, prompts and suggestions which you can sign up for via her website. The website is packed with reviews, videos and other places to read her work.  She lives in northern New Jersey. www.dianelockward.com

1. Do you have a warm-up writing practice?

I make myself a cup of ginger tea. Then I show up at the kitchen table and read poems from a book or journal. That gets me in the mood and thinking like a poet. Often while I’m reading someone else’s work, I’ll be struck by a line, a word, an image—something that speaks to me and asks for a response. When that something presents itself, I begin freewriting. I just try to keep writing without worrying about whether it’s good or bad. Later I go back and pull out the weeds.

2. I admire the use of humor in poetry and find it hard to achieve. How do you write with humor? Any tricks you can share?

I know what doesn’t work—trying to be humorous. There’s something spontaneous about humor. If I’m writing a line and it makes me laugh, that makes me happy. But is it really funny?

If I go back repeatedly to that poem and the line continues to make me laugh, I can be pretty sure it will get a laugh from readers. On the other hand, I have several times had the experience of getting a laugh from something I hadn’t realized was funny—there’s the not trying principle at work. But I don’t consider myself a particularly humorous poet. It’s not what I aim for though I’m happy to hit it occasionally.

3. What feeds you as a poet? What other arts do you enjoy doing?

I read a lot of novels and memoirs. When I was teaching full-time, I watched almost no TV. Now I do have shows I like and sometimes they prompt a poem or provide a line or image. Daydreaming is good. Walking is good. Cooking is good.

4. What was different between the first, second and third books in the process of getting them published, out to the public and reading from them?

The first book took about six years of submitting before it found a home. Then oddly, the publisher found me instead of the other way around. My publisher, Charlie Hughes, used to be the editor of Wind Magazine where I’d once had two poems as finalists in the journal’s yearly contest. Apparently, Charlie continued to look for my work elsewhere. Then when he went into book publishing and wanted to branch out beyond Kentucky where his press is located, he contacted me and asked if I had a manuscript for a first book. I was just about to revise the manuscript one more time. Once I did, I sent it to him and he accepted it. The next two books he also accepted. I feel very fortunate to have a publisher who takes subsequent books. Not all publishers do. I’ve done the same kind of work getting all three out to the public. I keep a mailing list and an email list. I have a website and a blog and I send out a monthly poetry newsletter. I work hard to line up readings and am willing to travel for them.

5. The trailers: They look like fun but also a lot of work. What tips or advice can you give about how to use your time wisely in creating trailers?

They are fun. You’re right, though—they are a lot of work. But it’s the fun kind of work. I begin with an idea of what I want the finished product to look like—that’s quite different from my approach when writing a poem. Then I gather photos from Photoxpress. I have a folder on my computer for video clips. I get these from sites that offer them for free. I won’t pay for them.

Considering what a poet earns, I just don’t think it makes sense to pay $75 or more for a 5-second clip. But my folder is pretty big now. I put the photos into iMovie, do the timing and transitions. Then I look for a music track—again, it has to be a freebie. My one big tip is don’t let your trailer go much over two minutes in length. Most viewers will bail out if you go longer than that. Another tip is to make sure that any text you use is shown long enough and big enough for the viewer to read it.

6. The reviews: I am amazed at the number of reviews you have been able to get. What is your secret?

I don’t have a secret, but I think that part of it has to do with being visible and doing readings, keeping the website and a blog, responding to emails, and doing some service for other poets. That last actually might be the secret. I don’t think poets have a right to expect to get reviews if they’re not willing to do some themselves. I do write some reviews for journals and at my blog.

So perhaps the universe is paying me back.

7. Have you ever felt that someone misinterpreted a poem in their review?

A few times the reviewer has talked about me when he or she should have been talking about the speaker. It makes me uncomfortable when a reviewer talks about my work as if it’s autobiographical. There is some autobiographical detail in my poetry, but there’s also some invention. For example, a few reviewers have talked about my poem, “My Husband Discovers Poetry,” by saying something like “Lockward experienced the breakdown of her marriage.” I did?? In fact, I’m still married to my first and only husband.

8. I am impressed by your generosity in promoting other poets and sharing information about writing tips through your newsletter. What has been the best part of doing the newsletter?

It keeps me on my toes throughout the month as I’m now always on the lookout for material to include. Beginning the Craft Tip feature has been the most exciting part of the newsletter. Each month I invite a different poet to contribute a tip. This has put me in touch with a number of different poets from far and wide. Almost all of the poets I’ve invited have accepted. The poem with prompt is also fun and that too has put me in touch with most of the poets whose poems I’ve used. Then it’s nice to hear from my subscribers that the prompt resulted in a poem they didn’t know they had inside them.

9. The discussion continues about the future of poetry, the debate about ebooks, language being influenced by texting and sound bites, and page poetry and/or stage poetry (slams etc). Where do you think poetry is headed, what do you envision in say, 10 years?

I’m not interested in poetry that’s been influenced by texting and sound bites. But I do think that we are headed towards more and more ebooks whether we like it or not. The invention of the ereader has made a new way of buying and reading poetry viable. I still want my own books in print and I still prefer to read from print books, but I can see lots of benefits to the ereaders. They are a boon to someone who travels a lot or someone who has limited storage space in the home. While we poets seem to be resisting ebooks, they may very likely help us to reach more readers and new readers. I imagine that someone will soon compile some statistics on this. Many publishers of print poetry books now also make those books available in ebook format. My publisher recently did that for my third book, Temptation by Water. I am sure, too, that we’ll be seeing more publishers who do ebooks exclusively.

10. What is your next project?

I’m working on individual poems, hoping to get a fourth book together in a year or so. I’m also working on a craft book.

11. On a personal note, when you write about your family, what is their reaction? Do they come to your readings?

My family generally doesn’t read my poetry so their reaction is not much of a problem. I would never knowingly write a poem that hurt any of them. But I also don’t ask for permission about what I can write. My husband and kids have come to a few readings and much to my surprise and delight have enjoyed them. I think they are very proud that I’m a poet., but they don’t feel compelled to read everything I write.

Pastiche for a Daughter’s Absence

It all comes down to what’s physical,

this missing her – her face, voice, and skin.

I imagine my daughter dancing in Madrid, Barcelona,

and Seville, climbing the mountains of Andulasia.

I had not imagined how far away faraway would be.

Happiness, unhappiness – the same,

my sweet Zen master says,

and I wonder if the top of my head

supports heaven, or is this a migraine

coming on?

I circle back to the place where precision

and ecstasy meet, remember how I carried the tadpole

of her body, long before the first flutter, holding her

like a secret inside me.

I wake in the night missing

a body part, my arm stretched across the ocean,

hooked to the past, and I wonder,

as Achilles’ mother must have,

which part of you did I not dip in the water?

Heavy with absence, I hang curtains in her windows,

yards and yards of delicate Irish lace.

I hide behind the door, ear pressed to the wood,

and watching my daughters life – her evening paseo,

late dinners in Saragossa’s village square.

The room fills with the smell of gazpacho, paella, sangria.

Something like grief washes through me, something like joy.

I slip into the waves, feel the ebb and flow of her,

my water sprite, my sea nymph, remember the way

she glides through a room, the low-tide

of her voice, how she leaves us,

breathless, all fish at her feet.

                                    —from Eve's Red Dress (Wind Publications, 2003)

Ojibway Poet Heid Erdrich and the Craft of Writing

Couplets: part of the National Poetry Month celebration at www.upperrubberboot.com

The first time I heard Heid Erdrich read, I felt her quiet centeredness contained a powerhouse of energy and emotion. Her poems speak of the natural landscapes of the earth and our own bodies to widen our awareness of the intricate ways we are connected and that that connection has been severed by lack of reverence. Poetry, I believe, is one way to reweave that connection again. 

A member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibway, Heid Erdrich grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota. She earned degrees from Dartmouth College and The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. A recipient of Minnesota State Arts Board fellowships, awards from The Loft Literary Center, the Archibald Bush Foundation and elsewhere, Heid E. Erdrich is author of four poetry collections, most recently Cell Traffic: New and Selected Poems from University of Arizona Press. National Monuments from Michigan State University Press won the 2009 Minnesota Book Award. Heid directs Wiigwaas Press, an Ojibwe language publisher. Heid teaches writing workshops and has one coming up in May on Madeline Island

(www.madelineartschool.com )

that will focus on the similarities between fine craft, such as beadwork, embroidery, quillwork, sewing, and the craft of writing.

To read more about Heid, including her reading her poems: www.heiderdrich.com

How does your heritage influence your poetry? Did you grow up with poetry?

My parents were both teachers so they valued writing, and both encouraged art of all kinds.  Dad would memorize poems and encourage us to do so as well.  I loved acting things out and putting on plays with my younger sister.  I think my poetry came from those early childhood experiences and from being a reader for Catholic Mass for many, many years. My Ojibwe grandfather was a great storyteller, so I had some of that influence as well.

Can you talk about the intersection between art and poetry?

It is all intersection these days--visual art, dance, poetry, music.  But I am not a painter, musician, dancer or other type of artist other than a writer, so I can only script these things. Collaboration is where I live now and I am so thrilled to be working on a large project with lots of artists who have influenced me.  Yes, there will be films.

Can you share how you will interweave crafting and the craft of writing?

Confession of a failed crafter: I am lousy with a needle.  My interest in handwork is in the way picking up a design is like poetry or good prose.  At some point the artist forgets the plan and goes the direction the materials take her.  I think this happens with writing, too. 

What makes your style of teaching unique?

Well, I do not take anything too seriously and I ask the participants to lead.  I'm open to change of plans and I make sure we move around, eat, do goofy exercises and otherwise appreciate one another as humans who do something other than write most days.

What is your greatest joy in mentoring other writers and are there any surprises?

There are always surprises, yes! Working with writers in an intense week-long setting is like mother love.  I am intensely drawn to each person, curious, motivated, determined to see where each one's work is headed. But then it is over.  A few folks stay in my life, but the vividness of each encounter fades quickly. Only the meaningfulness remains.

What is your next project?

Right now I am working on Artifact Traffic, a multi-disciplinary show that arises from collaboration with visual artists, film makers, poets, dancers, the whole shebang.  And I am writing a cook book from indigenous foods activists.  And I am starting a new book of poems on technology.  Happy times!

Last Snow

Dumped wet and momentary on a dull ground

that’s been clear but clearly sleeping, for days.

Last snow melts as it falls, piles up slush, runs in first light

making a music in the streets we wish we could keep.

Last snow. That’s what we’ll think for weeks to come.

Close sun sets up a glare that smarts like a good cry.

We could head north and north and never let this season go.

Stubborn beast, the body reads the past in the change of light,

knows the blow of grief in the time of trees’ tight-fisted leaves.

Stubborn calendar of bone. Last snow. Now it must always be so.
                             ---from The Mother's Tongue (c) 2005 Heid Erdrich 

Upper Rubber Poet: Couplets preview

Tomorrow's Poetry Blossom as part of Couplets: Heid Erdrich

A member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibway, Heid Erdrich grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota. She earned degrees from Dartmouth College and The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. A recipient of Minnesota State Arts Board fellowships, awards from The Loft Literary Center, the Archibald Bush Foundation and elsewhere, Heid E. Erdrich is author of four poetry collections, most recently Cell Traffic: New and Selected Poems from University of Arizona Press, National Monuments from Michigan State University Press won the 2009 Minnesota Book Award. Heid directs Wiigwaas Press an Ojibwe language publisher. Wiigwaas published its first mono-lingual Ojibwe language book, Awesiinyensag, written by a team of Ojibwe speakers, scholars and students in 2010. In 2011, Wiigwaas published Daga Anishinaabemodaa by Dennis Jones, illustrations by Aza Erdrich.

Heid teaches writing workshops and has one coming up in May on Madeline Island that will focus on the similarities between fine craft, such as beadwork, embroidery, quillwork, sewing, and the craft of writing.

MISA.com The Fine Line: Poetics as a String of Beads. This workshop is described as a way to create new poems inspired by the similarities between fine craft and the craft of writing! But you need to sign up for this class ASAP. 

Introducing Community Activist/Poet/Playwright Bryan Thao Worra

Part of the www.upperrubberboot.com series for National Poetry Month:
First let me introduce Bryan Thao Worra by telling you that the first time we met, his book On the Other Side of the Eye was about to be released and we were reading for the Open Book Gallery Café  poetry series. I was impressed by Bryan’s style and ability to be flexible when I asked if he minded interweaving our voices. His book release party was a full-blown fiesta, with guest poets, a book cover cake, and door prizes. He is known in the Twin Cities for his engagement with poetry on all levels: not only a prolific writer himself but mentor, networker, promoter, and gatherer of like-minded spirits. His reflections on contemporary issues of identity and finding a voice are profound and throught-provoking.

Bryan Thao Worra was born in 1973 in Laos during the Laotian civil war. He came to the US at the age of six months old, adopted by a civilian pilot flying in Laos. In 2003, Thao Worra reunited with his biological family during his first return to Laos. Today, Bryan Thao Worra works actively on issues of community development, refugee resettlement and the arts.

A poet, short story writer, playwright and essayist, his prolific work appears internationally in anthologies, magazines and newspapers, including Bamboo Among the Oaks, Contemporary Voices of the East, Tales of the Unanticipated, Illumen, Astropoetica, Outsiders Within, Dark Wisdom, Hyphen, Journal of the Asian American Renaissance, Bakka, Whistling Shade, Tripmaster Monkey, Asian American Press and Mad Poets of Terra.

He has a unique impact on contemporary art and literature within the Lao, Hmong, Asian American and transcultural adoptee communities. Thao Worra curated numerous readings and exhibits of Lao and Hmong American art including Emerging Voices (2002), The 5 Senses Show (2002), Lao’d and Clear (2003), Giant Lizard Theater (2005), Re:Generations (2005), and The Un-Named Series (2007). He speaks nationally at colleges, schools and community institutions. You can visit him online at http://thaoworra.blogspot.com

Q: How has your family story influenced your poetry?

I grew up as a transcultural adopted child of a pilot from a country few had heard of. Few knew our convoluted history as the most heavily bombed nation of the 20th century. This taught me how words shape identities. Some call Laos a quiet, peaceful Shangri-La, a tiny landlocked Eden, but Laos is also the size of Great Britain and bigger than Minnesota, whose conflicts left more Lao living outside of Laos than within it. So make of that what you will.

I’ve said an adoptee’s life must always be written in pencil, never ink, because at any moment, everything you know about yourself could be changed. Yet, as Hermann Hesse said, a person’s true profession is finding their way to the center of themselves.

This affects my poetry because there were so many barriers in finding out who I was, who my families were, what intersected, what was alien, certain and merely possibility of ‘truth’.  I often tell students to experiment writing a summary of their lives with a word processor. Gazing at the finished results, how much is underlined in red? How much do you have to train your own computer to stop seeing the names of your cities, your family and friends, your food, your greetings, your word for ‘love’ as a mistake?

Much of my poetry can’t employ the narrative approach and subjects that others use easily. If I wrote a poem about my father’s death during the war, what happened to the truth of that poem when I discovered him very much alive, living nothing close to the life I was told for thirty years he’d led? If I wrote about the man I met in Laos who claimed he was my father, what happens to that poem when my mother reveals, no, he’s just a monk who was once her best childhood friend? This doesn’t mean I don’t still make efforts to write such things, but I approach it with a particular consciousness of uncertainty.

Q; Do you have a warm-up writing practice?

I approach it with a zen consciousness: A waking, writing meditation where I examine the object before me, and in a single burst attempt creating a condensed verbal snapshot in ink. A sense of mind, body, spirit, ink, breath, paper, subject and time as one. After a few of these, I begin working towards creating more layered, deliberate works. To be fair, though, this does not always work. But art is one of the only callings where even 'failures' can still be interesting.

 Q: What has been your greatest joy in mentoring Asian-American poets?

Understanding that we’re creating something that has not been there before. Watching something unfold, particularly among Southeast Asian-American voices, that would previously only have been created by and for ruling elites of many of their societies. But now, the people themselves are speaking, connecting themselves to one another because they choose to. They found something they want to express to others. After nearly a century of wars that stole generations of voices, the brutal erasure of dreams and memory, I think the journey of Asian-American poets to recover and rebuild is a joy to behold. I’ve been privileged to mentor many of them as they discover art’s potential to transform lives.

Q: The discussion continues about the future of poetry, the debate about ebooks, language being influenced by texting and sound bites, and page poetry and/or stage poetry (slams etc). Where do you think poetry is headed, what do you envision in say, 10 years?

 We’re going to see more experimentation and diversity being reflected within collections and classrooms. There will be new technologies and experiences, but I suspect we’ll also see a greater emphasis on a return to a tactile, physical participation with poetry and the world. This will emerge from burnout regarding constantly plugged-in lives, a surfeit of reality media and social networking, a constant barrage of images that’s inducing synesthetic disconnect.

We’ll also see more literary voices from veterans as they come to terms with their experience. Shorter forms will reflect the influences of twitter, texting, and the ongoing compression of available time for artists and their audiences to share with each other.  Spambots will start putting together even better poems that will give flarf, fluxus and found poems a run for their money.

All assuming we’re not in the middle of a war with the newts and salamanders or something like that. Then all bets are off.

 Q: What do you think is the poet’s responsibility in turbulent political times?

 What a poet’s responsibility has always been, to serve as a mechanic of language and the soul, exploring the uncertainties and chaos of the world, but not be paralyzed by it.  To be more than an unflinching eye.

 I’d remember Brecht, who said, “In the dark times will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing. About the dark times.” Or note the example of Otto Rene Castillo, who, in his poem “Apolitcal Intellectuals,” believed poets will be asked “What did you do when the poor suffered, when tenderness and life burned out of them?” One should write prepared for such a question.

 

Q: What is your next project?

I have few books of poetry I’m putting together. One is set in haiku format, reviewing classic movies while also serving as a memoir of my experience as a transcultural adoptee, while another examines intersections between the Japanese and Lao American experience.

I’m interviewing Minnesota poets in verse for the Twin Cities Daily Planet centered on the premise that when poets interview other poets, it’s done journalistically, rather than in the form poets work in most, which struck me as peculiar.

I’m also finishing edits on an anthology of Lao American speculative art with another Lao American writer, Saymoukda Vongsay, to examine how imagination, memory and technology intersect with diaspora and reconstruction in the Laotian antebellum.

Tomorrow's Interview for Couplets

Tomorrow stop here for an interview with Asian-American poet Bryan Thao Worra as part of the Couplets celebration of National Poetry Month. Later, I will be interviewing Diane Lockward and host guest blogger Iris Dunkle.

Bryan Thao Worra was born in 1973 in Laos during the Laotian civil war. He came to the US at the age of six months old, adopted by a civilian pilot flying in Laos. Today, Bryan Thao Worra works actively on issues of community development, refugee resettlement and the arts. In 2003, Thao Worra reunited with his biological family during his first return to Laos. A poet, short story writer, playwright and essayist, he is a prolific writer.  He has a unique impact on contemporary art and literature within the Lao, Hmong, Asian American and transcultural adoptee communities, particularly in the Midwest. Thao Worra curated numerous readings and exhibits of Lao and Hmong American art including Emerging Voices (2002), The 5 Senses Show (2002), Lao’d and Clear (2003), Giant Lizard Theater (2005), Re:Generations (2005), and The Un-Named Series (2007).

For more interviews and guest poets on our blogs: http://www.upperrubberboot.com/