As part of the launch of our Spring/Summer 2018 issue, Let Us Gather: Diversity and the Arts, we sat down with contributors to talk about their work in the issue and more. The following interview is part of this series. Please visit our website to see the complete list of contributors to Let Us Gather, to purchase the issue, or to subscribe.

Tell us a little about your work in Let Us Gather: Diversity and the Arts: what inspired it, how you came to write it, etc.

My piece “Physicians in the Dark” was written at the beginning of a virtual correspondence and acquaintanceship between me and a young father/teacher from Gaza who was trying to rebuild a community library after the last Gaza/Israel war/battle/exchange of fire (I’m not really even sure what to call it). In fact, we never discussed how the library happened to be destroyed. But that summer, Gaza was without electricity and we in Tel Aviv were trying to set up a reading in which he would skype in, to raise money for his library.

After the successful reading/fundraising, we kept in touch. We skyped. We showed one another our streets with the video camera. It is very very difficult for Israelis and Gazans to communicate, and this man has been very brave. But with very limited electricity, people were falling sick. His very young daughter fell sick and was hospitalized. He was desperate for medicine–the hospitals were out.

Do you have a favorite line, image, or scene from this work?

The title comes from Wallace Steven’s “Of Modern Poetry” in which the poem is an artist who is also a “metaphysician in the dark.” In the case of my friend, this line was warped into “physicians in the dark.” For that is his reality, hospitals running on limited generators, and his reality changes mine, too.

I draw on Wallace Stevens because, since living in Israel, seeking out difficult encounters and maintaining them, forces you to rethink everything–as in the poem “of modern poetry.” But when you move ideas into a different physical space and physical reality, when your very building material for the world changes, so do your ideas.

Today it was the time of year to teach Wallace Stevens again. One of my students came up to me later and said, “Wallace Stevens wouldn’t write that like if he weren’t white. He’s a wonderful poet. but he’s a very white poet.”

I see what he means.

But my favorite line from the poem is:

“for metaphysicians in the dark are busy moving

sets behind the scenes,”

What is your best piece of advice for aspiring writers?

The advice I’d give young or beginning, or old, or continuing, or middle aged or mid-career writers is exactly the same: read a lot and take public transportation, take walks, observe the life around you.

Tell us something fun, strange, or interesting about yourself. It can have to do with writing—or not!

The other thing about this poem–and the “strange/funny/interesting” thing about myself (it’s a strange thing to be asked–to name a “strange/funny/interesting thing. “The most basic things about myself people find strange or interesting–my growing up on a rice farm in Texas. To me it was neither strange or any more interesting than anything else). But anyway, one of the major leitmotifs of this poem was inspired by the Prague Black Light Theater. Where stage hands dressed in black move scenery around with the lights off, so it looks like the objects are floating. I translate from Czech. It was both my parents’ mother tongue, though now they speak English.

What’s on the writing horizon for you/what are you working on now?

Currently I am translating two Israeli poets–Eli Eliahu and Sharron Hass. And I’ve completed a memoir in flash called “Drawn that Way” about translating fairy tales, growing up on a farm, and religious conversion. I’m also trying to get a collection of octava rima poems published. They were written while riding public transportation and running along the river every day.

Marcela Sulak’s poetry includes Decency and Immigrant. She’s co-edited Family Resemblance: An Anthology and Exploration of 8 Hybrid Literary Genres. Her fourth translation, Twenty Girls to Envy Me: Selected Poems of Orit Gidaliwas nominated for the 2017 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. She hosts the podcast “Israel in Translation,” edits The Ilanot Review, and teaches at Bar-Ilan University.

As part of the launch of our Spring/Summer 2018 issue, Let Us Gather: Diversity and the Arts, we sat down with contributors to talk about their work in the issue and more. The following interview is part of this series. Please visit our website to see the complete list of contributors to Let Us Gather, to purchase the issue, or to subscribe.

Tell us a little about your work in Let Us Gather: Diversity and the Arts: what inspired it, how you came to write it, etc.

“George Pearson” is one of the Meditations on Art and Artists which belong to a recent collection entitled “A Mountain on Jupiter”. I simply came across an article about the movie (directed by Pearson) in a Spanish newspaper, along with an image from it. These “Meditations” seek to explore my personal relationship with different artworks. Without even seeing the movie at hand, I explored the notion of leaving a movie unseen.

Do you have a favorite line, image, or scene from this work?

I like how the giant red tulips sort of interrupt a black and white poem.

What is your best piece of advice for aspiring writers?

To be aware of all the poems we write when we’re not writing. I’ve met wonderful poets who have never written a poem; and many who have but, in my humble opinion, I don’t really consider them poets.

Tell us something fun, strange, or interesting about yourself. It can have to do with writing—or not!

I’m also a photographer and have had several shows in Spain. One of my discourses is called “Moments of Glass” which is my passion for the reflections and juxtapositions glass often provides. Instead of stealing the token museum shot of a Vermeer painting, for example, I’ll focus on the window the painting has been next to, possibly for centuries, establishing a relationship between the painting and its
“real” source of light.

What’s on the writing horizon for you/what are you working on now?

I’ve just published my debut collection of poetry, “Suicide, 1964”, available on Amazon. I documented the performance/presentation too, available on YouTube.

As part of the launch of our Spring/Summer 2018 issue, Let Us Gather: Diversity and the Arts, we sat down with contributors to talk about their work in the issue and more. The following interview is part of this series. Please visit our website to see the complete list of contributors to Let Us Gather, to purchase the issue, or to subscribe.

Tell us a little about your work in Let Us Gather: Diversity and the Arts: what inspired it, how you came to write it, etc.

As we all know, inspiration can shine through any slat in the fence if we are open to receive it. The inspiration for my poem, Life, Death, and Breakfast, came when I pulled into my driveway and opened the car door to find this leaf perfectly and impossibly balanced on the pin tip of a succulent. It was too impossible not to be a message. I managed to snap some pictures. The image stayed with me until it crystalized into this poem.

Do you have a favorite line, image, or scene from this work?

This line is my favorite, since it was the launching point of the poem:

But I know how a fallen leaf can / hang in the balance for a lifetime /on the pin tip of a succulent.

You were a finalist in the Francine Ringold Awards for New Writers, which means that this is one of your first pieces of published work in your genre. How long have you been writing, and what did being a finalist in the competition mean to you?

I’ve been writing in various forms, both recreationally and professionally, but only recently have I started to send out poetry for publication. As much as I’d like to say that my ego is not concerned with external reinforcement, having my work connect with someone enough for them to acknowledge it as a finalist for the Francine Ringold Awards for New Writers is an honor and a motivation to risk putting my poems out in the world again. In fact, since sending this piece out, I’ve had two others accepted for publication, which added to my credentials for being named Poet Laureate of my hometown of Belmont, California.

What is your best piece of advice for aspiring writers?

Immerse yourself in your local writer community. Put your work out there before you are ready.

Tell us something fun, strange, or interesting about yourself. It can have to do with writing—or not!

I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Marshall Islands and still speak fluent Marshallese, a language spoken by about 44,000 people.

Jacki Rigoni writes and teaches within the found spaces of single parenting her three children in the San Francisco Bay area. She has an M.A. in English from UC Berkeley. An award-winning Creative Director and Copywriter by profession, Jacki’s other writing work can be seen on TV and the back of snack packaging.

As part of the launch of our Spring/Summer 2018 issue, Let Us Gather: Diversity and the Arts, we sat down with contributors to talk about their work in the issue and more. The following interview is part of this series. Please visit our website to see the complete list of contributors to Let Us Gather, to purchase the issue, or to subscribe.

Tell us a little about your work in Let Us Gather: Diversity and the Arts: what inspired it, how you came to write it, etc.

The two poems that appear in this issue—“Lighted” and “Eucharist as Sortilege”—represent two poles of my writing experience and sensibility. “Lighted” is a private piece, one of those rare poems that emerged fully formed as a first draft. I wrote it in summer 2017 while sitting on my back porch, considering the beautiful decay of the day, the house, my own face. The poem’s fireflies are an invention, a hoped-for vision—the collision of enzymes that make the insect’s brief light, those moments we feel the present purely before self-awareness crashes back in. “Eucharist as Sortilege” has a more public impulse, finding its setting on a community farm. I drafted some of these lines in late 2008. It’s one of the first poems that engaged my formal imagination: each of the four stanzas contains 78 syllables, a constraint reflecting the composition of the Tarot deck. I abandoned the draft for years before returning to it during the assemblage of my MFA thesis. The poem has now gone through a couple dozen drafts.

Do you have a favorite line, image, or scene from this work?

The quick visual association—almost like the pairing of cards pulled from a deck—in the final stanza of “Eucharist as Sortilege” seemed like a form of divination when I first “drew” these images; this is the original impetus for the piece and the reason I returned to it. I’m still fascinated by these associations; the wind is embodied in laundry and oak trees, while “Leonids streak / the sky. The clouds are tinged / with flame.” It’s a peaceful yet unsettling scene. In one Tarot deck I saw, The Tower appears as a tree rained down on by lightning and fire from heaven, a figure for both destruction and liberation, a sign of sudden and unforeseen change.

What is your best piece of advice for aspiring writers?

Read as much contemporary literature as you can get your hands on. Then, instead of aspiring to some form of external recognition or validation, aspire simply to write well. I think we remain aspiring writers.

Tell us something fun, strange, or interesting about yourself. It can have to do with writing—or not!

I started writing poems in college while touring with an indie rock band. You can hear some of that music on my website.

What’s on the writing horizon for you/what are you working on now?

It’s almost summertime, which for me means a teaching break and some extended time to write. Over the coming months, I plan to start my second manuscript of poems (while of course keeping my fingers crossed for my first collection to win a contest). I also hope to write some songs. I’m eager to see what direction this new work will take.

www.tjmclemore.com

T. J. McLemore lives and teaches in Fort Worth, Texas. His poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Kenyon Review, The Adroit Journal, The Massachusetts Review, and other journals.

As part of the launch of our Spring/Summer 2018 issue, Let Us Gather: Diversity and the Arts, we sat down with contributors to talk about their work in the issue and more. The following interview is part of this series. Please visit our website to see the complete list of contributors to Let Us Gather, to purchase the issue, or to subscribe.

Tell us a little about your work in Let Us Gather: Diversity and the Arts: what inspired it, how you came to write it, etc. 

Like most of my work, “Just as I begin to imagine eternity” was inspired by my experience of place.  Near the end of my third summer of backpacking in Denali National Park, conscious of having had once again, the privilege of walking every day in this expansive landscape among flowers and creatures, of doing what makes me feel particularly alive, I was grateful. Watching this moose allowed me to gather some threads about appreciating the natural world, defining the creature I am in it, and wanting it all to go on.

Do you have a favorite line, image, or scene from this work?

I like the flow of the opening with the title leading straight into the feeding moose, the moose moving down, the mist rising up. I am also fond of the word choices apparatus and eyeballs.

 What is your best piece of advice for aspiring writers?

Revise. Rejection letters revealed that this poem was almost accepted a couple of times. I trimmed a few lines each time, and now I’m proud to have it in this form and in Nimrod.

Tell us something fun, strange, or interesting about yourself. It can have to do with writing—or not!

I want to make it to Iran, Mongolia, and Antarctica, and several other places, while I can still walk around with a backpack.

 What’s on the writing horizon for you/what are you working on now?

I’m writing prose as well as poetry these days. I hope to finish a collection of creative nonfiction pieces in the near future.

Sheila Sanderson’s work has appeared in journals such as Alaska Quarterly Review, Crazyhorse, Miramar Magazine, North American Review, and Spillway as well as in anthologies such as Language Lessons(Third Man Press) and One for the Money(Lynx House Press). She is the author of Keeping Even and Ok by Me(SFA Press). She teaches at Prescott College and edits Alligator Juniper.

As part of the launch of our Spring/Summer 2018 issue, Let Us Gather: Diversity and the Arts, we sat down with contributors to talk about their work in the issue and more. The following interview is part of this series. Please visit our website to see the complete list of contributors to Let Us Gather, to purchase the issue, or to subscribe.

Tell us a little about your work in Let Us Gather: Diversity and the Arts: what inspired it, how you came to write it, etc.

Re “The Open Window”: My friend Pat Duffy and I paused on the steep stairway to Samuel Menashe’s Greenwich Village apartment and wondered that a man in his eighties could manage it on a daily basis. Samuel, who wrote short, gemlike poems, had recently received the Poetry Foundation’s Neglected Masters Award. Seeing his apartment brought to mind his poem, “At a Standstill.” I saw the kitchen “Where the bathtub stands / Upon cat feet.” Paint on the walls peeled in layers. As we talked, the three of us shared coffee from a single mug. I commented on an enormous painting on the wall—an underwater scene with Klee-like beauty. Samuel stood up and began rhapsodizing about the light from a door-size open window that played on the artwork and was otherwise revitalizing, until I experienced a vicarious sense of transcendence.

Do you have a favorite line, image, or scene from this work?

I like the lines in the poem about the small, innocent fish near the open mouth of the big fish. “The painting has a playful, / mosaic quality: near the open mouth / of the giant fish, small fish rise, innocent / as bubbles.” A little later in the poem I re-view the painting and grasp that the huge fish is actually swallowing a little one, which ties into the later “fish-eats-fish world.” Perhaps if I could see the painting again, I would envision it yet another way—maybe the small fish is escaping. The painting becomes a place where innocence and danger coexist. The changes in light repaint the artwork again and again and lead to an accelerated sense of the passage of time.

What is your best piece of advice for aspiring writers?

As for daily writing habits, what works for one person might backfire for another. For me it’s important to keep writing, even when I’m not in my most inspired state. That way I stay in practice, and it allows for surprises. If new material doesn’t seem worth developing, I work on revisions of unfinished poems that needed to “incubate,” until an unexpected metaphor jumpstarts a new poem. Poetry stems from lived and felt experience, but it’s also important to read widely. When we read we vicariously expand our experiences, as well as consciously or subconsciously absorb possible new approaches to expressing ourselves.

Tell us something fun, strange, or interesting about yourself. It can have to do with writing—or not!

I do artwork as well as write poetry. Especially because my work as a copy editor occupies a lot of my time, sometimes art and poetry compete for my regard. At other times visual arts and poetry feel like very different aspects of a connected force and work together harmoniously. When this happens I picture a colorful fluid slowly flowing back and forth within a glass tubular infinity symbol, keeping me in balance.

What’s on the writing horizon for you/what are you working on now?

For many months I’ve been trying to put final touches on another book-length manuscript of poems that I had considered to be complete. I keep writing new poems, and reevaluating which poems belong in the manuscript. At this point, I need to focus on organizing the manuscript—not my favorite part of putting a book together—and accept that new poems can be the beginning of a future book.

https://www.lauraglennpoetandartist.com/

Laura Glenn’s book of poems I Can’t Say I’m Lost was published by FootHills, her chapbook When the Ice Melts by Finishing Line. Her poems have appeared in The Antioch Review, Boulevard, The Cortland Review, EPOCH, Green Mountains Review, The Massachusetts Review, Poet Lore, Poetry, etc. Also a visual artist and freelance copy editor, she lives in Ithaca, New York.

As part of the launch of our Spring/Summer 2018 issue, Let Us Gather: Diversity and the Arts, we sat down with contributors to talk about their work in the issue and more. The following interview is part of this series. Please visit our website to see the complete list of contributors to Let Us Gather, to purchase the issue, or to subscribe.

Tell us a little about your work in Let Us Gather: Diversity and the Arts: what inspired it, how you came to write it, etc.

“The Woman Who Rode Through a Tornado in a Bathtub and Survived” was inspired by reports last year that a woman in Texas did just that. I grew up in Texas and suffered nightmares about tornadoes and once was stranded on a roadside near Caldwell, Texas, as a tornado passed, so the story struck a chord. But the image of the white bathtub also reminded me of a sheet of paper, how it must have been like a magic carpet flying through the sky, how writing is the perspective of power but feels sometimes powerless, a desire both compelling and prone to fearfulness. Like me, the woman is reckoning with seeing herself from such a great height, coming to terms with the truth of it when she lands in someone’s (Marianne Moore’s?) garden.

I began writing “Crossing the Potomac in a Supershuttle Van” at AWP 2017 in DC. Going there so soon after the inauguration, I wasn’t sure how I would feel seeing sights I was so familiar with. But the experience of the city became for me less about the inert structures and more about the people I met and saw, the living tableau that felt like love, a familial love that felt like home. The writer James David Duncan writes about the more-than-human feeling of love he woke up feeling one night, and wrote to the ornithologist responsible for saving the peregrine falcon from extinction, asking him, “Have you felt it?” The morning I woke up in DC, I did.

Do you have a favorite line, image, or scene from this work?

From “Crossing the Potomac in a Supershuttle Van,” the last scene where I’m waking up late, it felt like I was waking up in the Edward Hopper painting, “Morning Sun,” in the liminal lines of sleep and awake.

What is your best piece of advice for aspiring writers?

My advice is to read widely from lots of traditions and to read widely the work of living poets. Finding the work that you’ll be in conversation with is as much about writing as the more writerly, craft-oriented elements.

Tell us something fun, strange, or interesting about yourself. It can have to do with writing—or not!

The older I get the less fun, strange, or interesting I find myself. And that’s fine. It isn’t me who needs to be any of those things–my work does.

What’s on the writing horizon for you/what are you working on now?

I just finished my second collection, Fingerspell, and I’m revising a novel. I’ve also been working on some essays. And right now it’s April, so I’m writing a poem a day.

Lindsay Illich is the author of Rile & Heave (Texas Review Press, 2017) and the chapbook Heteroglossia (Anchor & Plume, 2016). Rile & Heave won the Texas Review Press Breakthrough Prize in Poetry. She teaches writing at Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts.