I’m honored to be reading twice this summer in the County. If you are around, please join me!
Wednesday June 12 at 7 pm for the Emily Dickinson Poetry Series. 10341 Water Street, Ephraim Wisconsin. I hear there is an open mic after the reading, so bring your originals!
Sunday, July 21 at 3 pm, I’ll be reading a new poem for the Midsummer’s Music Series based on a mysterious piece of chamber music that will be played by talented musicians. Kress Pavilion. 7845 Church St, Egg Harbor, WI 54209
I will be reading at Eat Local :: Read Local on Tuesday, April 23, 2019 at 7 PM – 9 PM at Pizza Man 2597 North Downer Avenue, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53211.
and for the Schlitz Audubon Nature Center at Boswell Books in Milwaukee on April 25 at 6:30 pm.
Nature poetry invites us to look more closely at the world, both large and small. In celebration of National Poetry Month and Earth Day, we’ll host Wisconsin poets Brenda Cardenas, Susan Firer, Alessandra Simmons, and Angela Sorby. They will read from their work and discuss the evolving landscape of nature poetry, navigating the intersection of ecology, poetry, eco-justice, and our deep connection to the land. After the reading, stay for a meet & greet with the authors and book signing. Books will be available for purchase. Thanks to Boswell Books for their support of this event.
Members: $15 | Non-Members: $20
What do you write and how to do you write it?
Most of what I write these days is poetry. Or that’s how I think of it. I take zillions of notes while tromping, stumbling and floating through life, scribbled in little notebooks whose outsides and insides tend to look something like this:
Also, I collect items that have enticing bits of language on them and put them in the toppling pile of notebooks and notes that I keep on the corner of my desk:
“Plunder and Take Notes” — Amy Gerstler
(the image above, for example, is the foil top from a brand of canned fruit soda a friend likes to drink, which got saved due to its possible useable-for-poem motto “TAKE THE MOST DELIGHTFUL WAY THERE.” I also borrow or otherwise acquire books, magazines, pamphlets, etc. to plunder and take notes from for ideas/language/diction/images etc. that might get woven into poems.
Can you tell us a little bit about your job(s)/role(s) and how you got there?
My current job is as a university professor. I got such a position through wild luck, and through the invaluable help and support, over time, of many generous teachers and fellow writers and others, too many to mention here. It’s an odd job for me to have for many reasons, but one of the huge perks is getting to have contact with writer- colleagues and with brilliant younger writers, and being given the opportunity to share resources, finds, obsessions, and discoveries with them…that fertile sharing is very much a two-way street, meaning that I learn a ton from my fellow teachers and students.
How do these job(s)/role(s) challenge/influence/inspire/intersect your writing life?
Unless money isn’t an issue in your life because you’re the favorite niece of a billionaire or something like that, I think that for any kind of artist in America, particularly an artist who wants to devote themselves to practicing one of the, shall we say less funded artforms, (such as poetry, in which you pretty much have to take as a given that supporting yourself and your work is not ever going to be via your writing) making a living while being productive making art also is a real challenge. How and where will you work to obtain sufficient money to live decently and still have time and energy to write? How will you essentially live at least two lives simultaneously: have a working life to support yourself financially, and a maintain a vital writing life, keeping writing and all you need to do to feed yourself as writer and artist central to your life? How will you balance these things and not drive yourself and others crazy? Can you find a writing-related job that you actually like and could be good at? Or do you want to find a job that isn’t writing related, because you want to keep a protective separation between what you do for money and what you do as an artist? Can you find a job where you feel you are doing important work, work that maybe helps others, does good in the world? How do you claim and guard your time to make art? How do you struggle with these issues across different phases of your life? I know very few writers and artists of any age, at any stage in their lives/careers, who aren’t perpetually wrestling with these questions in some form…
“The mess of my desk at home. I also work a lot at various libraries.” — Amy Gerstler
Thanks for inviting me to participate in your blog, Alessandra!
Congratulations are in order for two former 9-5 contributors Paula Carter and Geoffrey Hilsabeck! Hip Hip Hooray! This year they both published their first books! Paula Carter’s flash-nonfiction memoir No Relation and Geoffrey Hilsabeck’s poetry collection Riddles, Etc. have been garnering great reviews around the interwebs, so I thought it was time to reach out to both of them and see what they have been up to since we last spoke on the blog.
From Paula:
I don’t think it is a secret that writing and then publishing a book is a long process. This book – No Relation – has been in the works for a number of years. There is a piece in the book that I wrote in one of my graduate workshops, which was 10 years ago! After spending so much time with these words, I was both excited and nervous to send them out into the world. Partly because the book is a personal story about my experience falling in love, getting to know my partners two children from his first marriage, and then leaving the relationship(s).
Naoko’s graphic poems kept appearing in my facebook newsfeed and I got curious about what was happening over there in her world since our last interview (which took place four years ago…has it really been that long?!). Here is an up-to-date interview with graphic poet Naoko Fujimoto. You can find more of her work on her blog and instagram account: @graphic.poetry.trans.sensory.
What do you write?
I am currently translating my poems into graphic poems. My project is called Graphic Poetry = Trans. Sensory. My entire collection will be published by Tupelo Press in the near future under the title “Glyph: Graphic Poetry = Trans. Sensory”. I am currently finishing up some of my works. My progress can be seen in my Homepage, Blog, or Instagram.
Recently, I published five graphic poems in Tupelo Quarterly Issue 13.
Can you share a little about your project process? Continue reading
For some reason, when I post interviews I always want to recount how I met the interviewee. In this way, this blog has also become a catalogue of first impressions. I met poet Caitlin Scarano my first day at my PhD school in my lit seminar. I was entirely intimated. (Am I smart enough to be here?) Except for Caitlin and myself, the room was entirely male. These men liked to drop theorists’ names and wanted to “create knowledge.” (Actual quote.) The first day of class we went around the room and introduced ourselves and our discipline. When I learned that she was also a poet, I was like, um, why isn’t she smiling at me. I later learned it is because she is Caitlin.
Through multiple weeks of class, starting an orchard on campus, and running beside a river with a dog who is afraid of water, we became friends. She has just published her first book of poetry, Do Not Bring Him Water, by Write Bloody Press, out of Los Angeles, CA. Here is our interview.
Freesia McKee is a working poet. She is a part of the Milwaukee scene — present, attentive and welcoming at poetry events and rallies alike. Her words have appeared in the Huffington Post, Gertrude, Painted Bride Quarterly, Burdock, and Sundress Press’s Political Punch anthology. She co-hosts The Subtle Forces, a weekly morning show on Riverwest Radio in Milwaukee. I met Freesia in at the Public House, a co-operative bar that also serves as a community center for poets and other residents of Riverwest. A mutual friend introduced us by way of saying “If you two don’t know each other, you should.” I am so grateful to have met Freesia before she leaves Milwaukee for an MFA program next year. Though Milwaukee will miss dearly, I’m also excited that she will be entering into an MFA program and that I will get to read all the new poems she will write! I’m also grateful that she took the time answer a few questions about the intersection writing, life, the artist’s responsibilities.
What do you write? How do you write it?
I write poems in small notebooks on the bus, at the kitchen table, in bed when I first wake up, on walks in the city. I “write everyday,” but sometimes a lot, sometimes a little. I keep a couple of notebooks running with notes, observations, ideas, and then I translate those into actual poems usually on the computer. Writing is difficult and it always feels like an accomplishment to finish a draft of a poem.
Dear Readers, You must forgive me. I have been withholding a wonderful interview from you of the poet Amelia Martens, who just published a collection of prose poems with Sarabande Books. I’ve not been holding back on purpose. You see it is the end of the semester. Grades are due for my composition students and so are my own research papers. At the same time, I had to find a sublease for my apartment, back all my belongings into a basement storage unit, and get sedatives for my cat to prepare for our move to an island three hours north of Milwaukee. I write this not to complain, as I am grateful for all these things: to be a PhD student at UW-Milwaukee, to have found a summer job on in an idyllic place, and I am grateful for Amelia Martens taking the time to do an interview with me. I tell you all these things because for a long time this blog has only been about writers who write and work in nonacademic fields. However, as I’ve just (about) completed my first year in PhD-land, I’ve re-learned that the work/life/write balance is just as mythical as it was when I was working as freelance writer and at a desk job, which is why I first reached out to Martens who teaches at composition at a community college in Kentucky. As someone towing the line between academia, raising children, and writing, I wanted to get her insight into the process. So without further ado, Amelia Martens:
Amelia Marten’s new collection, The Spoons in the Grass Are There to Dig a Moat, is as beautiful outside as it is inside. As I prepared to write this introduction, I thought to myself, well, there is just too much good here, I’ll just write about my favorite prose poem: But then I couldn’t decide between “Baggage,” about Jesus working the airport X-ray machine, or “In the First World,” recurring poems that turn the mundane into the absurd or “We Will Be Long Gone,” one side of daughter-mother bedtime conversation. These three poems, however, give a sample of far-ranging themes Martens packs into unifying tightly-woven prose poem form. Jesus, daughters, terrorism are all recurring characters as are irreverence, humor and tenderness. But you don’t have to take my word for it, poet Catherine Bowman called this collection “Wise, joyous, keen tender, she shows us the divine in the most unexpected places.” And you don’t have to take you Bowman’s word for it, you can read it yourself!
Amelia Martens’ interview is just as wise and tender. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do:
Poems. Mostly prose poems have been arriving for the past few years (although I’ve also recently written four book reviews). I write at a giant desk, rescued from the IU surplus store. It sits in our laundry room, right in front of window looking onto our backyard willow trees. I write on a Mac laptop, though most of my poems start now at notes written down in a rush in a little-Nancy-Drew-like notepad (there’s even a tiny pen that slips into the side!). I write in the small in-between moments; now that our girls are older (3 and 5) they go off and have their own adventures together—so I write until someone needs a Band-Aid, new pants, a snack.
Rachel’s desk.
She took time this week to share about her life and what it looks like to be a managing editor, fiction writer, and person generally excited about the world. I hope you will enjoy this interview as much as I did.
I write essays, news & politics coverage, and lifestyle advice for Autostraddle.com, where I’m the managing editor, as well as writing fiction. My actual writing time is usually interspersed with lots of other job tasks — editing other people’s work, soliciting people, managing a team, etc. Starting around 9:30 or 10 am, I sit at my desk in my home office (or on my couch, if it’s chilly and I need a blanket) with my MacBook. I use Google Docs and WordPress for my day job, and usually Scrivener for fiction (with a Google Docs spreadsheet to keep track of where I’ve submitted my work). I usually take a break around 6 pm or so to make dinner and hang out with my husband, and then do a bit more work and wrap up around 9 or 10 pm.
Can you tell us a little bit about your job and how you got there? Continue reading
Lana shared with us from her wells of wisdom a little over a year ago. Since then she’s been published in several journals. I wanted to learn more about what was fueling her so I asked her a few questions. And I’m so glad I did. Her honest self-reflection and love for the craft is mesmerizing and inspiring. Please read on and enjoy!
What have you been up to since the last time we spoke?
I’ve been swimming in flash fiction ideas. And every time I finish a new piece, I overhear a conversation between two octogenarians in the street or recall a summer-camp incident from my childhood, and off I go to start a whole new piece.
I’ve had twelve publication acceptances in the last year—mostly flash fiction—and this has increased my confidence in working with the genre. Acceptances and kind words from editors energize me to no end. I wish that approval seeking were not such a fueling force for me. I’m working on this. But for now, approval seeking is one of the reasons I continue working on pieces that become too hard. And I’m thankful for this impetus, because regardless of my motivation in sitting down to write, once I am actually writing I end up forgetting myself and exploring human emotion in the most genuine way I know.
I’ve noticed recently that when I spend a chunk of time working on a string of flash pieces, I do start to miss longer stories. I miss existing within their settings. I miss exploring the characters within the spaces of their homes and then following them to churches or bars or watching them sit on the tram and gaze out the window.
