I did also apply for teaching jobs. I never heard back from any of the places I applied to teach at. I don’t know if I will pursue professorships in the future. Since I just got here, I am not really thinking about what’s next! Being part of the academic community is helpful mostly because it gives me access to a lot of resources through the library. I  have unlimited access to books and other scholarly material.

Now, tell us a little bit about what you write, how you write, and sources of inspiration you seek out regularly?

I live only 10 minutes away from my office so I can get up at 6:45 and get at least an hour and a half in before I have to hop on my bike. What I usually do is read for a little bit and then work on a low-stakes poetry exercise. I recently moved from Pittsburgh to Harrisonburg and my writing partner from Pittsburgh and I exchange poetry exercises every two weeks. I hate poetry exercises because they force me to go off my plan and try something I wouldn’t normally do. So I actively seek them out. After the exercises, I’ll get to work on the project poems. I also  keep little stacks on index cards everywhere–next to my bed, on my desk at work, in my pannier bag, my purse, my car–so I can jot down things as they occur to me. I don’t know what I am going to do with those cards yet. I got the idea from reading Roland Barthes’ “Mourning Diary.”

My sources of inspiration have always been pretty heterogeneous. Anne Carson is a poet I return to a lot because she also combines other discourses (history, philosophy) into her poems and her poems can straddle the line between poetry and essays. Another book that has been really important to me is The Rape Poems by Frances Driscoll. I think it’s her only book, but it’s a knock out. I read pretty much constantly because I’m also a poetry critic for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. I read about five books of poems a week. So recent books I’ve reviewed that I found inspirational/interesting/challenging: Sarah Fox’s First Flag, Lightsey Darst Dance, Heid Erdrich’s Cell Traffic, and Sun Yung Shin’s Rough, and Savage. My non-work-related book right now is Mary Jo Bang’s translation of the Inferno, but I’m not sure I like it.

“Anabel Chong perhaps killing her porn persona”

I’ve been pretty obsessed with Feminist Frequency recently as well as with horror movies, copshows, and women in pop culture like Coco Austin and Annabel Chong. (So, yes, I have written poems while watching gangbangs. It’s really awful, but I feel like it’s important for me right now to lean into the things I find disturbing and terrible and sad about the way women are treated.

“Anne Hamilton sometimes collaborates with slugs”

A HUGE source of inspiration for me is visual art. I am constantly taking photos in museums(since we don’t have museums here!) or reading art books. I always have a note book with me in a museum. Artists I love are Francis Bacon, Gerhard Richter, Anne Hamilton (I just saw an Anne Hamilton piece that included a vitrine with cabbages being eaten by slugs!), and Louise Bourgeois. Right now I am working on some poets based on Jindrich Heisler photocollagethings. It’s also enormously inspirational for me to read about artists’ processes. For example, seeing the film “Richter Painting” gave me a sense of freedom about relying on instinct rather than intellect. Also I try to write like Daft Punk says they play: “to the very edge of my ability.”

However the MOST important artist in my life right now is my sister Dorothy Hoover,with whom I have collaborated on a performance and a chapbook. She really inspires me because of her conceptual approach.