Writing Process Blog Tour
This is my entry in the Writing Process Blog Tour!
Jackie White invited me to participate.
Jackie K. White is an Associate Professor at Lewis University, and has a Ph.D. in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago where she specialized in Creative Writing (Poetry) with concentrations in Latino/a-Latin American Studies and Women’s Studies. A former editor of the literary journal RHINO for nine years, White also has published numerous poems and translations in such journals asACM, Bayou, Fifth Wednesday, Spoon River Poetry Review, Third Coast, and online at seven bridges, shadowbox, and prosepoem. com. Her first chapbook, Bestiary Charming, won the 2007 Anabiosis Award and her second chapbook, Petal-Tearing & Variations, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2008. A third chapbook of poems, Come Clearing, was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2012. White is also the co-translator of Cesar Miguel Rondon’s History of Salsa and is currently working on a translation of Sherezada Vicioso’s Algo que decir: Essays on Feminist Caribbean Literature.
1. What am I working on?
I am trying to finish a collection of hay(na)kus for Meritage Press. I have written the form for a number of years. Eileen Tabios asked last year if I'd like to put everything together in a collection. I started to do that, but then I finished my collection still. walk. for gradient books, so I put it on hold. The poems in still. walk. are formally experimental, but the hay(na)ku pieces follow the form and are fairly narrative, so I have been editing a lot to get the pieces to hang together as a collection. I tend to work with the entire book of poems in mind, so going back and pulling old pieces along with new pieces has been a challenge.
I am on reset now some as well. Over the last four years, I published three anthologies in the editor role. Two were books of translation, one into Spanish and one out of it. The other book was a book of scholarly essays on Charles Bernstein. After finsihing those major projects, I feel like I am zeroing in on what my next collection will be like formally and thematically.
2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?
I play quite a bit off of what others are doing with innovative poetry, but my work tends to have a heavy lyrical strain that is not always present in work that plays with formal elements.
My work stands in a small segment of the poetry field where poets are pushing at the boundaries of meaning and form. I like to experiement, and often the experiments don't work, so my collections can be quite different from each other. I think of still. walk. as a narrative told through poetry about an alternate universe. The words cover each other (literally in some cases), the poems drift in an out of English, and some pieces are intentionally not poetic. The hay(na)ku collection that I am working on is classically lyrical.
3. Why do I write what I do?
I have to. I feel compelled to write what I do in the way I do. For example, I distinctly remember writing through the first section, "Go-Between," of my book Fragile Replacements. In writing, I felt like I was carried along by the words. When I put the last words on the last poem, it felt like something clicked the section shut in my head, and I did not feel like I could go back and touch it.
That was a distinct example. Most of the time, I edit over and over, and I cut far more than I ever include. Once I have hit on the core idea of a collection, it is just a matter of me figuring out how to get it on the page in the best words and appropriate form, even if it does not resemble something I have ever seen.
4. How does my writing process work?
I write and write and cut and write more. I write far more than I ever publish because I explore what I want to say by writing. I explore forms by writing myriad drafts of them. Two summers ago, I created a form that I thought was interesting, so I wrote through one hundred twenty poems in the form to see if it held up. I only kept around ten of those poems for potential publication.
Beyond that, when I find the basis of a collection, I write towards the collection. I go from section to section until I feel like the manuscript works as a whole.
But let's move on from me. Next week, we'll have another installment of the Writing Process Blog Tour with Eileen Tabios.
Eileen R. Tabios loves books, and has released more than 20 print, three electronic and 1 CD poetry collections; an art essay collection; a “collected novels” book; a poetry essay/interview anthology; a short story collection; and an experimental biography. Her most recent book is 147 MILLION ORPHANS (gradient books, 2014) and forthcoming this fall is SUN STIGMATA (Marsh Hawk Press, 2014). Recipient of the Philippines’ National Book Award for Poetry for her first poetry collection, she has crafted an award-winning body of work that is unique for melding ekphrasis with transcolonialism. Her poems have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Tagalog, Japanese, Portuguese, Polish, Greek, computer-generated hybrid languages, Paintings, Video, Drawings, Visual Poetry, Mixed Media Collages, Kali Martial Arts, Music, Modern Dance and Sculpture. She also has edited, co-edited or conceptualized ten anthologies of poetry, fiction and essays in addition to serving as editor or guest editor for various literary journals. She maintains a bibliophilic blog, “Eileen Verbs Books“; edits Galatea Resurrects, a popular poetry review; steers the literary and arts publisher Meritage Press; serves as Library Director for BIBLIOTHECA INVISIBILIS (an online library that archives conceptualizations of the invisible), and frequently curates thematic online poetry projects including LinkedIn Poetry Recommendations (a recommended list of contemporary poetry books).
Jackie White invited me to participate.
Jackie K. White is an Associate Professor at Lewis University, and has a Ph.D. in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago where she specialized in Creative Writing (Poetry) with concentrations in Latino/a-Latin American Studies and Women’s Studies. A former editor of the literary journal RHINO for nine years, White also has published numerous poems and translations in such journals asACM, Bayou, Fifth Wednesday, Spoon River Poetry Review, Third Coast, and online at seven bridges, shadowbox, and prosepoem. com. Her first chapbook, Bestiary Charming, won the 2007 Anabiosis Award and her second chapbook, Petal-Tearing & Variations, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2008. A third chapbook of poems, Come Clearing, was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2012. White is also the co-translator of Cesar Miguel Rondon’s History of Salsa and is currently working on a translation of Sherezada Vicioso’s Algo que decir: Essays on Feminist Caribbean Literature.
1. What am I working on?
I am trying to finish a collection of hay(na)kus for Meritage Press. I have written the form for a number of years. Eileen Tabios asked last year if I'd like to put everything together in a collection. I started to do that, but then I finished my collection still. walk. for gradient books, so I put it on hold. The poems in still. walk. are formally experimental, but the hay(na)ku pieces follow the form and are fairly narrative, so I have been editing a lot to get the pieces to hang together as a collection. I tend to work with the entire book of poems in mind, so going back and pulling old pieces along with new pieces has been a challenge.
I am on reset now some as well. Over the last four years, I published three anthologies in the editor role. Two were books of translation, one into Spanish and one out of it. The other book was a book of scholarly essays on Charles Bernstein. After finsihing those major projects, I feel like I am zeroing in on what my next collection will be like formally and thematically.
2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?
I play quite a bit off of what others are doing with innovative poetry, but my work tends to have a heavy lyrical strain that is not always present in work that plays with formal elements.
My work stands in a small segment of the poetry field where poets are pushing at the boundaries of meaning and form. I like to experiement, and often the experiments don't work, so my collections can be quite different from each other. I think of still. walk. as a narrative told through poetry about an alternate universe. The words cover each other (literally in some cases), the poems drift in an out of English, and some pieces are intentionally not poetic. The hay(na)ku collection that I am working on is classically lyrical.
3. Why do I write what I do?
I have to. I feel compelled to write what I do in the way I do. For example, I distinctly remember writing through the first section, "Go-Between," of my book Fragile Replacements. In writing, I felt like I was carried along by the words. When I put the last words on the last poem, it felt like something clicked the section shut in my head, and I did not feel like I could go back and touch it.
That was a distinct example. Most of the time, I edit over and over, and I cut far more than I ever include. Once I have hit on the core idea of a collection, it is just a matter of me figuring out how to get it on the page in the best words and appropriate form, even if it does not resemble something I have ever seen.
4. How does my writing process work?
I write and write and cut and write more. I write far more than I ever publish because I explore what I want to say by writing. I explore forms by writing myriad drafts of them. Two summers ago, I created a form that I thought was interesting, so I wrote through one hundred twenty poems in the form to see if it held up. I only kept around ten of those poems for potential publication.
Beyond that, when I find the basis of a collection, I write towards the collection. I go from section to section until I feel like the manuscript works as a whole.
But let's move on from me. Next week, we'll have another installment of the Writing Process Blog Tour with Eileen Tabios.
Eileen R. Tabios loves books, and has released more than 20 print, three electronic and 1 CD poetry collections; an art essay collection; a “collected novels” book; a poetry essay/interview anthology; a short story collection; and an experimental biography. Her most recent book is 147 MILLION ORPHANS (gradient books, 2014) and forthcoming this fall is SUN STIGMATA (Marsh Hawk Press, 2014). Recipient of the Philippines’ National Book Award for Poetry for her first poetry collection, she has crafted an award-winning body of work that is unique for melding ekphrasis with transcolonialism. Her poems have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Tagalog, Japanese, Portuguese, Polish, Greek, computer-generated hybrid languages, Paintings, Video, Drawings, Visual Poetry, Mixed Media Collages, Kali Martial Arts, Music, Modern Dance and Sculpture. She also has edited, co-edited or conceptualized ten anthologies of poetry, fiction and essays in addition to serving as editor or guest editor for various literary journals. She maintains a bibliophilic blog, “Eileen Verbs Books“; edits Galatea Resurrects, a popular poetry review; steers the literary and arts publisher Meritage Press; serves as Library Director for BIBLIOTHECA INVISIBILIS (an online library that archives conceptualizations of the invisible), and frequently curates thematic online poetry projects including LinkedIn Poetry Recommendations (a recommended list of contemporary poetry books).
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