Please tell us about the making of “the only technology worth saving is language.”
“the only technology worth saving is language,” in its first draft, was one long eco-poem—it spanned maybe two, three pages? It is now a single poem in a set of three all using the same title. All of said poems are concerned with, for, humanity and play with repetition and a change in points-of-view. One process-driven goal for my writing this year (2019) is to sit with an image for more than one poem and learn how to revise, re-vision, re-see what something can do on the page.
What are you working on now?
I am currently working on a chapbook that is concerned with noise, humanity, and learning how to exist in a world we, humans, are destroying.
On any given day, how do you begin writing?
I keep a small red notebook on me at all times that my partner gave me. In it, I write gatherings and it is from these gatherings that I begin. I call the first thing that goes into anything I write—a sentence, a line, a thought, an image—a gathering because it is from that sentence, line, thought, or image that a poem, an essay, a vignette, a proposition gathers momentum, gathers itself a body, and later—drafts later—becomes the finished thing.
Name some influences on your writing that are not literary.
Listening to Khruangbin, simon eng, or quickly, quickly. Looking at street photography or nature photography and videos. Thinking about or being next to or near nature. Coffee. Thinking about the ways in which we hurt and heal ourselves and others.
Select an element of craft and discuss how your approach to it has evolved since you started writing poems.
One element of craft that has evolved since I’ve started writing poems is revision. When I began writing, over ten years ago, I would give up after one or two drafts because a piece was not “working.” I believed that I just wasn’t creative or imaginative enough. I used to think that I needed to wait for an idea or inspiration to come. Then, I came across a quote that Octavia Butler once said: “First, forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.” For me, revision is a form of practice. When I learned not to abandon my writing, but instead, allow it to brew and then come back to it later with the desire to re-see what I wrote weeks ago, writing became much clearer to me.
“the only technology worth saving is language,” in its first draft, was one long eco-poem—it spanned maybe two, three pages? It is now a single poem in a set of three all using the same title. All of said poems are concerned with, for, humanity and play with repetition and a change in points-of-view. One process-driven goal for my writing this year (2019) is to sit with an image for more than one poem and learn how to revise, re-vision, re-see what something can do on the page.
What are you working on now?
I am currently working on a chapbook that is concerned with noise, humanity, and learning how to exist in a world we, humans, are destroying.
On any given day, how do you begin writing?
I keep a small red notebook on me at all times that my partner gave me. In it, I write gatherings and it is from these gatherings that I begin. I call the first thing that goes into anything I write—a sentence, a line, a thought, an image—a gathering because it is from that sentence, line, thought, or image that a poem, an essay, a vignette, a proposition gathers momentum, gathers itself a body, and later—drafts later—becomes the finished thing.
Name some influences on your writing that are not literary.
Listening to Khruangbin, simon eng, or quickly, quickly. Looking at street photography or nature photography and videos. Thinking about or being next to or near nature. Coffee. Thinking about the ways in which we hurt and heal ourselves and others.
Select an element of craft and discuss how your approach to it has evolved since you started writing poems.
One element of craft that has evolved since I’ve started writing poems is revision. When I began writing, over ten years ago, I would give up after one or two drafts because a piece was not “working.” I believed that I just wasn’t creative or imaginative enough. I used to think that I needed to wait for an idea or inspiration to come. Then, I came across a quote that Octavia Butler once said: “First, forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.” For me, revision is a form of practice. When I learned not to abandon my writing, but instead, allow it to brew and then come back to it later with the desire to re-see what I wrote weeks ago, writing became much clearer to me.