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Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Long interview just up--

A long two-part interview with me conducted by Suzanne Brazil is now up at The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Blogcritics, and will be at the interviewer's own website. The interview came about after Suzanne Brazil wrote a review, also at The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Blogcritics. (As for the interview itself, I'm not quite sure why the Seattle paper sub-titled it with "poet and writing instructor," as I seldom do workshops, and we talk about Glimmerglass and other novels as well as poetry, but that's okay by me--I'm grateful to be with them.) It's a very long interview, and Suzanne asked interesting questions, so take a look...

The interview was conducted over a long period of time, each new question coming after the answer to a prior one. So this is the first time I have seen the whole series as one large interview and had a sense of what was talked about as a whole. I was horribly honest, so there might be some things you find curious or intriguing.

But now that I see all the questions together, I wish we had talked about collaboration with artists as something I value deeply, particularly my collaboration with Clive Hicks-Jenkins. Maybe that's the subject for another interview! It would be fun to do a three-way interview with Clive and me and Suzanne Brazil... Hmm? I also think it would be fun some time to do something about the collaborations with Paul Digby on poetry videos. I have done other collaborative projects as well, with Makoto Fujimura and others. It's an interesting topic...
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
part 1 and  part 2
and Blogcritics  part 1 and part 2
Suzanne Brazil will be re-posting on her website, Suzanne Brazil: Living the Writing Life, and on her Facebook page as well.

7 comments:

  1. Your interview idea on collaboration sounds wonderful! Fortunately, I do think we linked to the beautiful artwork in the original book review. As for the subtitles, I'm afraid that might be my doing as I was stuck on our discussion of "advice" and your poetry students. I'm guessing your workshops would be sold out if you had more time to give them! Thank you again for your time, thoughts and words. Truly a memorable experience.

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    Replies
    1. Suzanne,

      Mmm, don't think so--or not entirely--because the Blogcritics one makes it clear that we're talking about a novel as well.. and that was first. I think they just snipped it a little bit on reprint. Do we call it reprint online? What do we call it, I wonder? Share?

      It was really fun, and if you ever do want to do one about collaborations, I think that would be really good too. You ask great, thoughtful questions.

      Delete
    2. And of course, the people I collaborate with are so bright and entertaining!

      Delete
  2. As someone who has been on both sides of the interview process, I remain split on which person has the more difficult challenge: the person doing the interview, or the person being interviewed. With 20/20 hindsight, people realize that there are always questions that either should have been asked or should have been skipped. Were their questions you would have rather ignored?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Suzanne was clever with the questions, and we had already decided to let each question grow out of the ones previous, so that made for variety and unity...

      Delete
  3. Very nice! Both questions and answers were clever. I think it's a fair cop to call you a poet, even when discussing your novels. Your prose is something more than novelistic writing. I don't like that sentence, but I'm leaving it. Also, ta so much for mentioning my book.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I like that sort of interview where questions grow naturally out of prior conversation...

      Yes, I expect you are right--I can see lots of ways that I am tilted toward poetry, from dislike of novel "fat" to a pronounced love of rhythm and sound.

      You are welcome!

      Delete

Alas, I must once again remind large numbers of Chinese salesmen and other worldwide peddlers that if they fall into the Gulf of Spam, they will be eaten by roaming Balrogs. The rest of you, lovers of grace, poetry, and horses (nod to Yeats--you do not have to be fond of horses), feel free to leave fascinating missives and curious arguments.