I was invited to participate in the My Writing Process blog tour by none other than Rosebud Ben-Oni, who was also responsible for my participation this spring at Split This Rock! on a panel with her and a few other amazing women. And who facilitated my conversation with poet Metta Sama about the natural world, which you can find on my “Works Online” page above. If she keeps this up I’m going to have to dedicate my next book to her or something. You can find her discussing her own writing process here.
1) What are you working on?
I’ve got three major projects that I’ve been juggling for a while: my next poetry manuscript, Perennial, an ongoing exploration of the intersections between divinity, the natural world, and our relationships with both, viewed through a feminist lens; a speculative fiction novel, which I like to describe as post-dystopian, that’s narrated by a minor Irish goddess and includes a minor character who’s a descendant of Elvis; and the final entry in the Wonder Woman series, an epic poem in verse that follows her journey of self-discovery after she’s lost her Power Cosmic and left the Justice League. I hope to publish this and the sonnets (which I think I’m done with) together as a chapbook.
2) How does your work differ from others’ work in the same genre?
Frankly, not having read everything that’s out there, I can’t promise that it is. But I’ve cultivated a pretty authentic, and therefore unique, voice. My heritage is incredibly mixed, and I let my writing reflect that. I’m pretty sure you’re not going to find anyone who flavors their work with quite the same blend of pop culture and natural philosophy and old school theology that permeates mine. I deal with some pretty heavy material: the rape of the natural world, our seeming inability to recognize each others’ humanity, the unavoidable catastrophe(s) that is our future on this planet. But still manage to employ humor, find hope, and enjoy the astounding beauty to be found in the present moment. Also, I practice poetry with traditional forms (I recently wrote a sonnet for my son’s 18th birthday, a villanelle entitled “A Mother Laments That They Refuse To Learn From Her Mistakes,” and a rondeau in honor of the first hummingbird sighting of the year), but also enjoy practicing both free verse and innovations like collage and erasure. And I’ve made my own innovation, a rather ambitious form I’m calling Poetic Resonance Imaging, a hybrid of the sestina and the crown of sonnets. I’m about to begin my fifth. They’re pretty exhausting. I use the same 14 words, 15 times.
3) Why do you write what you do?
That’s a really hard question to answer. It’s not that I haven’t thought about it: it’s that there are too many answers. My Wonder Woman poems were initially written as me laughing at myself for imagining that I was going to save the world with poetry. Because that was why I wrote my earlier work. Conspiracy of Leaves (my first book of poems, published with Plain View Press in 2010) is an earnest attempt to wake people up to the reality of what we’re doing to each other and the world, and how different things could be if we instead approached each other and the world in a loving manner. Which clearly seems laughable to some people, so I thought I’d do so preemptively. There’s a litany of reasons for why I’m writing the novel, but here are a few: because I enjoy the characters and the world I’m building, to enlighten people about the dangers of biotech, to inspire people with the beauty of Permaculture. And to see if I can actually DO it. The poems? Asking a poet why she writes poems is like asking someone why she breathes. It’s just something that happens to make life possible.
The Poetic Resonance Imaging form I developed as an attempt to create a form of poem that could be more like a novel. Something into which you could pack multiple subjects and have them bounce off each other.
Blogs happen usually when I’ve read something about things going on in the world that makes me want to explode. I blog to release that energy, to keep it from seeping into or blocking my other work.
4) How does your writing process work?
I’m afraid I’m still in the process of cultivating diligence. My life pulls me in so many directions. I have two teenagers (which means there’s some very bright light at the end of the tunnel in terms of balancing the mothering & the writing), I garden (and it’s summertime!), and because I don’t work outside the home, many people think that means I have all the time in the world to volunteer. Also, I have poly-autoimmune syndrome, and so I have to make yoga and other forms of self-care a priority or I won’t be meeting ANY of my responsibilities, much less getting any writing done. So I don’t write a lot. But I do think a lot about writing (what are my characters going to do next, or what will the subject of my next poem be) while I’m busy with the dishes or on the mat, and I read in snatches whenever and wherever I can. I carry a small notebook in my purse, and I scribble a line when it floats into my head. Later, I take that out when I’m ready to write a poem, and see where it leads me. I will also sometimes just do exercises (I have several books of such things). Sometimes the results are worth keeping.
The process for my mega-form, Poetic Resonance Imaging, is a little more formal. It starts with a title, and an epigraph. Then fourteen words, preferably some that rhyme, and many that can be used in more than one way (like words that can be both nouns and verbs). For the first one I wrote, the list was provided by my husband. For this next one I’m about to start, the list was provided by my daughter (she seems proud to be participating in my process, and I have to say I’m excited to see her taking an interest…and it’s a great list!). The next thing I do is read the dictionary entries for each of the words. If you’ve got to use them 15 times, you’d better know every usage. And it’s amazing how many usages some very common words have. (You should check out the entry for “water.”) Then I write the first section (each section is a numbered, stand-alone poem), ending each of the 14 lines with one of the words from my list. That determines the order of the list. So then I make an index card with the words, and I label them (a, b, c, d, etc.). I have a chart that I follow, with fourteen columns filled with letters, a — n, changing position in the folding pattern you’ll find in the sestina. So when I go to write the subsequent sections, I use the index card with the words and my chart, and I transcribe the end words in the right margin, and then sit down to write the lines that reach them. I never try to write more than one section a day, but once I sit down to write one, I don’t get up until it’s finished. I want them to be as coherent but unrelated as possible. The point of the form is to juxtapose poems dealing with different subjects in an attempt to discover relationships between them that may not be apparent at first. Reality is, after all, one big meatball. As John Muir said, everything is hitched to everything else. And my intuition tells me that if we perceived the relationships between things more accurately, everything would make more sense. And we might behave more sensibly.
Writing to the end words, of course, is the actually tricky part. And I do it largely by relying on what my psychiatrist husband would call my unconscious, fast-thinking brain mode (vs. the slower, analytic mode that follows rules and indulges in stereotypes and prejudgments). Not that I necessarily write it fast. In fact, sometimes I take quite a while sitting with my notebook in my lap, staring. But I approach it prayerfully, meditatively, often distracting my conscious mind with doodling or visual observation of unrelated phenomena (I have a beautiful view from my window…did I mention I garden?), and what floats up in this almost-dream state usually surprises me.
If anyone would like a copy of my chart, just ask. I’d be happy to share it.
Don’t miss next week’s posts by Jenn Jackson and Zig Zag Claybourne: