#30 - Alison Stine

How often had you sent out Ohio Violence before it was chosen as the winner of the 2008 Vassar Miller Prize?

I started sending out the book that would become Ohio Violence when I finished school. It took five years for the book to be accepted.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been Ohio Violence? Did it go through any other changes?

The book had one previous title for most of the years I worked on it. Then, I was standing in the kitchen of our apartment in New York, making dinner with my husband, and I just thought of the phrase, Ohio Violence.

I wanted the title to catch you by surprise, but I also wanted to counter the idea of a tame Ohio. I had been thinking a lot about the difference between NYC and the Midwest, where I grew up: how poverty, which is a kind of violence, is treated. There was always a real sense in Ohio that people are aware of violence and are taking precautions against it, whereas in other places, NYC say, people are too broken or jaded or just plain tired out to do anything but stare—or worse, look away.

I had already been working on the piece that would become the title poem. As soon as I renamed the book, all the old poems seemed to fall in line. I realized a lot more clearly which ones fit and which didn’t. The first time I sent the book out with the new title Ohio Violence, it hit. I had found my backbone.

It seems like there’s a possible misconception among some poets who are trying to get their first book published: that they must win a contest. Were you concerned about winning a contest at any point? What advice would you give to poets sending their book out now regarding contests versus open reading periods?

I was just concerned with getting my book published. Getting someone to actually look at your work is hard enough, I don’t think it matters what route you go, as long as the publisher is reputable. Contests cost money to enter, but so do most so-called “open” reading periods. The advantage of a contest is that the judge changes, so you might find someone who understands your music better, or is more open to new things, than the regular series editor. The first round of a contest is often judged by students. That can be a great thing. I don’t really understand all this pandering to the old guard of poetry. The old guard dies off—and soon those young students will be in charge.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

I went through a lot of drafts, but I mainly changed order. The poems mostly remained the same, though I would add in some new work over the years, and I did take a lot out. My books get thinner and thinner. I’m more slash and burn than let a bad thing be.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.? Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

I was very involved with the cover. One of my oldest friends, Brad Daugherty, an artist in Columbus, designed it. I knew how it should look on some level, but Brad crystallized exactly what I wanted it to be, in part because he understands my writing so well. I knew it had to be fall. This is a fall book. I knew there should be a storm coming.

What about the publication of the actual poems prior to the book being published? Was there ever a concern for you to have the majority of the poems published before you were sending out your manuscript?

Most of the poems in the book were previously published in magazines, if for no other reason than they were so darn old! Some of the poems in Ohio Violence were written when I was a teen: “Fields Beyond Fields,” “Fall Burning.” They had time to find a place. Although I’m suspicious when I open a book and very few of the poems or stories have been previously published, you shouldn’t worry about getting all of them into magazines, or wait for that. If the book comes out, that work will find its audience.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

I did a lot of work. I didn’t think the book was done when it was first accepted. I felt the same way with my second book. Once you know publication is imminent, looming, that really crystallizes things. It helps you make hard decisions fast.

Both my first and second books I put together, finally, in the same place: at the Reynolds Young Writers’ Workshop in Granville, Ohio, a creative writing summer workshop for high school students where I’ve taught for the past ten years. I’m very inspired and motivated by children and teens, and being around my students in that setting helps me see things better. I can hear their voices and I know what to say, how to say it better for them. Because it is for them. I’m also motivated a great deal by the teaching assistants at the workshop, many of whom are former high school students of mine, and all of whom have become good friends.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your finished book for the first time?

Well, I made a video about it. They delivered the box of books to the wrong address. I was leaving to go to a conference the next morning, so I had to drive three hours to fetch it in the pouring rain. The book was shiner than I would have thought. I loved, and still love, Brad’s cover. I studied the cover and flipped through a bit, but I didn’t read it. I didn’t read it at all until one night, about a year later, when I couldn’t sleep. I got out of bed and read the whole thing, straight through, cover to cover. Then I could sleep.

How has your life been different since your book came out?

I realized that my readers were those I had always hoped for, those I was actually writing for all along: teenagers and young adults. That’s not a change so much as a realization, an awareness on my own part. I knew that, I wanted that, and now I don’t have to pretend anymore that I care what contemporary poets or professors think. Because I could care less. I only care what your kids think. That’s all that matters. Saying that aloud—that’s a change for me.

I’ve stopped pretending to be or to want anything else, to fight for a place in world I despise. I think I write for a different world. I write for people who are still growing up—that’s who I am. And I know that now. And I expect my life and my husband’s life will change much more, in deeper ways, soon: this winter, I will be giving birth to my first child.

What have you been doing to promote Ohio Violence, and what have those experiences been like for you?

Every event is different, and you can’t predict what’s going to happen. The University of Scranton gave me the chance to connect with the son of my late teacher and friend, the fiction writer Richard Kraus. Nearly everywhere I’ve read has given me the chance to have a meaningful interaction with at least one younger person, which is why I do readings. I mostly read at colleges, but would love to do more at high schools. My background is with bands and with theatre. I was very involved with the music scene when I lived in Washington DC, and pretty much all my ideas about touring and promotion come from those experiences. Have a set list. Bring snacks and your own water. Be on time. Be professional. Use lip liner.

If you struck up a conversation next to someone seated on an airplane, and after a few minutes you eventually told them that you were an author who had a book of poetry published, how would you answer their next question: “What’s the book about?”

Well... I wouldn’t tell them that! I avoid telling people I write. It seems pretentious, and it brings up questions that are difficult. I’m a teacher. That’s what I was trained to do, what I’ve done since I was fourteen, when I got my first job, helping at a performing arts school. Teaching is my job, and I love my job.

I was on a plane once where a flight attendant figured it out. She asked me if I had published a book, and then she wanted to know the answer to your question. I told her the truth: my book is about a young girl in a small town who gets in big trouble. I didn’t tell her it was poetry. If I’ve done my other job, my job of telling a good story, that shouldn’t matter. They’re just stories. If you’re interested in the story I’m telling, you won’t mind the form in which I tell it.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

I don’t have a mentor. I’ve learned my own instincts are correct, but following them is sometimes hard. I told myself: do something else now. And I did.

What influence has the book’s publication had on your subsequent writing? Your second book has also won a prize and is going to be released next year. Tell us about that book. Were you completing it when you were constructing Ohio Violence? What’s different about your new book when compared to Ohio Violence?

I hope the teen readers who liked my first book will stick around. They’re a little older now, in college or maybe grad school, and this book is older too. It’s darker, rougher, more black magic. It’s about that last year before you find your way, when you’re still very deep in the woods—and you’re not alone out there. Except for the first poem and a few near the end, the stories are all set before I married my husband, when I should have waited for him. And didn’t.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

No.

I believe that stories can create influence in the world. Genre has nothing to do with it. Helping someone feel not alone; giving someone, especially a young person, hope for her life—that’s the only reason. And that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, to tell those stories.

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Alison Stine was first published in The Kenyon Review and Hanging Loose when she was a teenager. Her work has since appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, Tin House, and many others. Her awards include a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, and a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. Ohio Violence, her first book, was published in 2009. Her second book, Wait, winner of the Brittingham Prize, will be published by the University of Wisconsin Press in early 2011. Formerly the Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College, she has taught at Fordham University and Grand Valley State University, and presently teaches at Ohio University, where she is a PhD Candidate. She is married to poet and critic Jordan Davis.

• To read more, visit Alison's website

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#29 - Jehanne Dubrow

How often had you sent out The Hardship Post before it was chosen as the winner of the 2008 Three Candles Book Award?

I would like to be coy and say that I have no idea how many times I sent out The Hardship Post before it was accepted but, unfortunately, I keep really excellent submission records. So, I have a very clear chronicle of that demoralizing time: nearly 40 submissions to contests and open reading periods over the space of approximately two years. What misery that was.

Tell me about the title. Had it always been The Hardship Post? Did it go through any other changes?

The Hardship Post came pretty late. First, I spent several years cycling through a series of extremely abstract titles that made the book’s project sound too gauzy, too gentle. No, worse than that, precious. Finally, I hit upon The Hardship Post, which is a term used by the U.S. Foreign Service to describe overseas postings that involve physical or economic hardship. Since the manuscript examines my experiences as an American Jew through the lens of my upbringing as a “diplobrat,” focusing on the post-Holocaust landscape of Poland where I spent nearly seven years of my childhood and adolescence, the concept of a “hardship post” felt apropos.

It seems like there’s a possible misconception among some poets who are trying to get their first book published: that they must win a contest. Were you concerned about winning a contest at any point? What advice would you give to poets sending their book out now regarding contests versus open reading periods?

At some point, I decided there was no way that The Hardship Post was going to win a contest (it was too quiet a book, too ethnic, too formal, and definitely too uncool). I then let go of the idea that my first book needed to receive some kind of award in order to satisfy me. Imagine my surprise when I found out that the book had won a contest.

The best advice I ever received about first books came from my mentor and former teacher, Hilda Raz, who said, “Don’t worry too much about where your first book is accepted, just get the manuscript published so that you can move on to the next project.” She was right. I know too many people who feel frozen as long as the first book is unable to find a home. As a result, they stop writing new poems. Then, once the first book finally finds a publisher, many of these poets have so lost the habit of writing that they have no idea what’s next. I know one poet who has been revising a first collection for 15+ years. This poet can’t move on to something new, because the first book remains a looming and oppressive presence.

What was the process like assembling the book? How many different versions did it go through as you were sending it out?

I love reading first books of poetry and thinking about the meta-narrative that each collection constructs. The first poet I ever read deeply was Charles Baudelaire, and there’s no question that the poems in Les Fleurs du mal tell a story. People who complain that too many contemporary poetry collections focus on being “book projects” rather than compilations of really good poems, need to remember that the meta-narrative is not a new thing. Just ask Baudelaire. Or Whitman.

In putting together The Hardship Post, I always concentrated on shaping the story that I wanted the book to tell, even as I revised individual poems, moved them around, or cut them altogether. I really struggled with how to tell the story, working through at least 100 drafts, because I didn’t want the book to open with the dark hole of Auschwitz. Eventually, I ordered the manuscript so that it begins with the personal mythos of “the diplomat’s daughter” and slowly moves toward issues of cultural translation, religious identity, and at last the Shoah. Above all, the book’s order needed to make clear that I wasn’t a tourist, that my attempt to represent trauma was the result of having spent many years in Poland, and that I myself was a scholar of Holocaust studies.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.?

Steve Mueske, the founder and editor of Three Candles, let me have a ton of input about the book’s appearance. As a poet himself, Steve is very sensitive to the significance of a poem’s shape on the page. I never had to explain to him why a certain line break should be preserved or a particular word italicized, because we already spoke the same language.

Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

I found the close-up image of a Polish train station board and sent it to Steve. I loved the way the schedule board evoked my nomadic childhood but also gestured at the important Holocaust trope of train stations. But, as much as I liked the image, I knew it was going to be difficult to design around. How would we incorporate an image filled with names—of Polish towns like Warszawa and Kraków—in a way that wouldn’t interfere with the necessary bits of text on the cover, such as the book’s title? I think Steve’s solution was both elegant and appropriate to the quiet tone of the collection.

What about the publication of the actual poems prior to the book being published? Most, if not all, of the poems have been previously published. Was there ever a concern for you to have the majority of the poems published before you were sending out your manuscript?

I wasn’t too worried. Having administered a major book prize for two years, I understood that poetry manuscripts need to demonstrate the ways in which they’re part of the discourse of contemporary literary publication. Having a solid acknowledgements page is one way to prove a collection’s viability and engagement with the current literature.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

The finalized manuscript barely resembled the manuscript I initially submitted to Three Candles. By the time the book won the contest, I had already reordered the middle sections of the book and cut an entire grouping of poems. Fortunately, Steve agreed with the re-envisioned manuscript, and we only made a few more changes to the text in the months leading up to the final proofs.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your finished book for the first time?

I was tired. Very tired. I had just come home from a long day of teaching. Hours of ungraded English 101 papers stretched out in front of me. I had no idea what to make for dinner. And, besides, my refrigerator contained little more than a bottle of stuffed olives, a near empty container of soy milk, and some rotten zucchinis that just weren’t going to be edible, no matter how much I trimmed their edges. The box of books was waiting at my front door. I carried it in, dumped it beside the couch, and didn’t open the carton until a few hours later. Then, I laid one copy of The Hardship Post on the coffee table and spent the rest of the evening picking it up and putting it down again.

How has your life been different since your book came out? Did it become a factor in getting a future job for you?

Initially, having a book made me feel more vulnerable. I felt like an easier target for the snarky reader, the MFA student who still believes in his own entitlement and grand literary destiny. Having a first book changed me; I became more empathetic, more inclined to suspend or temper my judgment when reading a poetry collection that didn’t please me. Now, when I read a book of poems that I don’t love, I’m much likelier to say, “writing a collection is an important achievement in itself.” I guess what all this means is that I began to hope others would treat my work with this same kindness and understanding.

I’m sure that having a book (and then, later on, books) was a huge factor in my landing a position as assistant professor. The market is such a shark tank—it’s not enough to have an MFA and a PhD. One has to have significant publications as well. That means fancy-schmancy journals and books with pretty covers.

If you struck up a conversation next to someone seated on an airplane, and after a few minutes you eventually told them that you were an author who had a book of poetry published, how would you answer their next question: “What’s the book about?”

Here’s what I used to say in my cover letters for academic jobs: “The Hardship Post uses personal experience to meditate on the slipperiness of Jewish identity.” Thrilling, no? On an airplane, I would answer, “The Hardship Post describes my childhood as a diplobrat growing up in countries like Poland, Belgium, Yugoslavia, and Zaire.” Then, the insurance agent sitting next to me would probably leap from his seat, run screaming down the aisle, and fling himself out of the airlock. No one wants to make small talk with poets.

What influence has the book's publication had on your subsequent writing? I know two more books of poetry have been published since The Hardship Post. Tell us about these books. How are they different from The Hardship Post? And how have you remained so prolific over the last few years?

On the surface, my second book—From the Fever-World—appears to have a lot in common with The Hardship Post. It’s very Jewish, it’s set in Poland, and it’s shadowed by the Shoah. But, the book is written entirely in the persona of an imaginary poet, Ida Lewin. The collection is a series of linked fragments “translated” from the Yiddish. For this project, I really tried to leave behind received forms, which sets it apart from the “high formalism” and iambic lines of The Hardship Post.

Stateside, my third book, examines my experiences as a “milspouse,” looking at the Before, During, and After of a deployment. The poems in Stateside often play with traditional, fixed forms, but there’s a good amount of free verse in the collection too. A few of the poems are quite rigid in their handling of form, but that rigidity is mimetic of the strictness of military life.

I guess I’m prolific because I keep myself on a very strict writing schedule. I also love book projects, which allow me to stay focused from poem to poem, maintaining momentum and immersing myself in a series of interesting, provocative obsessions.

What have you been doing to promote The Hardship Post (along with your other books), and what have those experiences been like for you?

I had no idea how to promote The Hardship Post. But, by the time Northwestern University Press published Stateside, I had come to appreciate the power of the niche market. With this current book, I’ve made a point of reaching out to the “milspouse” blogging community, contacting literary journals that focus on the relationship between war and literature, and seeking out the advice of other military wife authors. I’m also very lucky that my mother decided to adopt Stateside as her first project in the world of poetry promotion. For instance, it was my mother who landed me a gig on NPR’s “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross. Not too shabby for a first-time press agent.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

This is a tough one: be prepared for changes—sometimes difficult and painful ones—in your friendships with other writers. The publication of a first book may not alter the landscape. But, not everyone will be thrilled when Book #2 and Book #3 arrive. Work hard to preserve these friendships, even when some of your friends’ reactions disappoint you.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

I spent a large portion of my childhood in the Eastern Bloc. If there’s anything that the Polish poets teach, it’s that an artist must believe in the power of art to change the world. Even if such belief is quixotically misguided, it remains necessary. Otherwise, we end up writing bloodless poetry: cold exercises in music and image.

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Jehanne Dubrow is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Stateside (Northwestern UP 2010). Her work has appeared in The New Republic Poetry, Ploughshares, New England Review, and Prairie Schooner. She is an assistant professor of creative writing and literature at Washington College, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

• To read more, visit Jehanne's website.
  

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#28 - Anna Leahy

How often had you sent out Constituents of Matter before it was chosen as the winner of 2006 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize?

Yikes, embarrassingly often and for a long time! Actually, that’s not true at all.

I had sent out an earlier version of the manuscript for a couple of years. That manuscript had been a finalist, but I took it out of circulation for more than a year, during which I had an especially intense summer of revision. I came up with the new title, Constituents of Matter, which led to a re-seeing. The Wick Poetry Prize was in the first batch of a half-dozen competitions to which I sent Constituents of Matter. So, it seemed to take ages to find a publisher, but it actually was picked up quickly once I had figured out how to think about the concept of book.

Tell me more about the title. It hadn’t always been Constituents of Matter. Did it go through any other changes?

The earlier manuscript was called Moments from Their Causes, which is part of a line from the poem that opens Constituents of Matter and a phrase Stanley Plumly had suggested would make a good title someday. The new title refers to the fundamental particles that make up all matter, the smallest parts of absolutely everything around us—that compose us. The title sounds less Romantic and made sense to me because the autobiographical poems attempt to make sense of events and images in my life, especially my father’s illness and death, as fundamental particles of who I have become.

Your question compelled me to go poking around in my old files, and I’m newly surprised at how much that title change then changed the whole manuscript. There had been four sections where there are now three, with different arrangements within sections. I deleted poems (at least a half-dozen), added new poems, re-titled poems (used “theory” in numerous titles), and revised some poems into this undercurrent theme. That may sound like a trick, or some kind of ploy, but it didn’t feel like that one bit. It reinvigorated my writing and helped me discover connections within and across poems. The revision was significant enough that I probably shouldn’t talk as if these manuscripts are versions—the book really was a new manuscript.

It seems like there’s a possible misconception among some poets who are trying to get their first book published: that they must win a contest. Were you concerned about winning a contest at any point? What advice would you give to poets sending their book out now regarding contests versus open reading periods?

When I was sending my book out, I didn’t really think about winning a contest—the important thing to me was to find a publisher. My sense is that there are more contests than there are open reading periods, and open reading fees often cost as much as contest fees. From my perspective as a submitter, it really all seemed the same.

That said, for those of us who teach in a college or university, these issues cross our minds. I knew that publishing a full-length collection could make me marketable (yikes, what a word for a poet to apply to herself!) in a different way. I’d like to say I’m above all this so-called po-biz, and I hope that I am when I’m writing. But I would not have my current position at Chapman University if Constituents of Matter weren’t published. I’ve heard, too—and this surprised me—that a contest win matters a great deal to some search committees faced with a stack of published poets.

My advice is to look at the opportunities and send to presses—contests or open reading periods—where you’d like to see your work. My friend Nancy Kuhl had been published by Kent State University Press, so I knew the Wick Poetry Center and the press were good people doing interesting things. I’m glad my book landed there.

What about the publication of the actual poems prior to the book being published? Many of the poems have been previously published. Was there ever a concern for you to have the majority of the poems published before you were sending out your manuscript?

I was happy to have every journal publication, and the chapbooks, too. “At My Father’s Funeral” was published in Alaska Quarterly Review in 1995, more than a decade before the book came out. Each context creates a different way of reading the poem. Each venue is a different party the poem is invited to attend, a different conversation about poetry in which it gets to say something. The book changes, in some ways, how the individual poem is read—there are connections to be made across poems, there’s an arc I’ve created, and so on.

I know this issue is already a bigger one for writers of story and essay collections, but I haven’t heard much fretting by poets about that. In fact, until recently, I heard poets advocating for publishing as many individual poems as possible from a manuscript. Not many of my published poems were available online, so that might matter more and more these days. I’d hate to think we’d have to hold back poems for a book. Seeing which poems were picked up by journals helped me understand what might be working well in certain poems and not in others, and a piece in a journal or anthology puts a poet in the company of others. That’s a great opportunity.

How much work did you do as far as editing the poems from the day you knew the book would be published to its final proofing stage?

Very little. I think I changed a few lines, and I agreed with Maggie Anderson, the Wick director at the time (it’s David Hassler now), that two poems (airplane poems that are in my chapbook Turns about a Point) could be cut. By the time I sent out the manuscript, years of writing and revision had made it as strong a collection as I could manage.

How involved were you with the design of the book—interior design, font, cover, etc.? Did you suggest or have any input regarding the image that was used on the cover?

I saw page proofs, and made formatting corrections, especially with what I call my squared sonnets in the “Recurring Dream” sequence. But I didn’t discuss much interior design.

Maggie Anderson suggested some editorial changes, and my book’s editor suggested small edits. One I remember was the change from Stryofoam to polystyrene. The editor caught it because it was a brand name, and I sort of laughed that that mattered in a poem. But immediately, I recognized it as a good diction change for the project, because polystyrene emphasizes the chemical and molecular nature of the thing. It was an aesthetic change even more than an editorial one.

Kent State University Press asked me for cover art suggestions. Just then, Lylie Fisher had an exhibit at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, near where I lived. Her images are hand-painted on raw images of Bubble Chamber experiments from the 1960s; she worked to ensure that the art didn’t overtake the science, so you can see the particle tracks that guided her reinterpretation. After seeing her exhibit—and picking out the image I really wanted—I attended her lecture at Fermilab and lingered afterward to ask whether we could use “In Search of Meaning (#1)” on the cover of Constituents of Matter. She liked the idea, and granted permission in exchange for two copies of the book. I used part of the book prize award to purchase a print of the cover image, in part because it’s such a good fit with what I try to do with language.

If you struck up a conversation next to someone seated on an airplane, and after a few minutes you eventually told them that you were an author who had a book of poetry published, how would you answer their next question: “What’s the book about?”

I hate that question, but it’s an important one to be able to answer. Emerging poets are sometimes not great at talking about their work. I’ve heard that criticism of us particularly from colleagues who’ve been on search committees. Before something is published, it feels as if talking about the work could jinx the poem or manuscript. After, there’s less pressure to articulate what it’s about because it should be able to speak for itself—and you’re onto new poems and projects anyway.

The blogging and Facebook culture is probably making us more comfortable with being public, with articulating ourselves and what we’re up to as poets. In my graduate workshops, I do an exercise in which students walk down the hall in pairs and “pitch” their chapbooks to each other. It’s something fiction writers have long done. Saying aloud what the project is about makes it real and helps focus revision, as well as being a good career skill.

When asked, I probably skirt around the question, as I’ve just done, then say something like, As the title Constituents of Matter suggests, I draw ideas and language from science. The book is divided into three sections, each named for a different pair of quarks. The poems are largely autobiographical, dealing in part with the death of my father from cancer when he was 53. I said something like that at a dinner party recently, and a woman—not a scientist—started naming the quarks. I really got that book title right on many levels.

This is a, for lack of a better word, extremely varied book in regard to forms of poem to poem. Was this a conscious decision for you as you were writing these poems, or do you believe that eventually each poem lets you know what the final form will be for it?

I read Beth Ann Fennelly’s “The Winnowing of Wildness” as I was in the process of revamping my manuscript. I had long experimented with a variety of forms—the villanelle form; my squared, unrhymed sonnet-like poems; regular stanzas; single-sentence poems; poems broken up all over the page; and so on. Starting with my hamburger haiku in fourth grade, I’ve always played with fixed forms, as well as free verse, which isn’t willy-nilly itself. But Beth Ann’s article made me wonder whether I needed to have a narrower range in my collection. She herself admits to reigning in her first book’s manuscript. I wanted to buck that presumption. My so-called theme—the science—allowed me to rationalize that a thematic or topical (autobiographical material) coherence compensated for what otherwise might be too much formal variety.

Because of my own habits and interests, I continue to be flummoxed that this—too much variety in form—is an issue, but it keeps coming up. I know many poets find their form—or their aesthetic stance or their subject matter—and vary within that. That’s well and good. I actually don’t think of my work as exceptionally varied, until someone points it out. Jon Tribble, from Southern Illinois University Press, held an AWP panel a couple of years ago that really helped me think about disparate and cohesive collections. I try to do something distinctive with each poem, so I expect variety in form from myself. I’m sure I get into other ruts, which sometimes might be turned into cohesiveness, but form keeps pushing me in many directions.

What do you remember about the day when you saw your finished book for the first time?

That’s pretty exciting! I expected it to be a relief—because it took about a year between acceptance and publication—but really, it was encouragement to keep at this poetry-writing thing. The book in my hand for the first time was the giddy, inarticulate, Wow, look what I did! It was also the question, Now what?

What have you been doing to promote the book, and what have those experiences been like for you?

Promotion is part of the package, isn’t it? And that’s okay, because promotion is about readers, about celebrating poetry with other people.

The Wick Poetry Center hosted me, along with judge Alberto Ríos, for a week of events, which was amazing. I set up readings, wherever was relatively convenient, like Homecoming at Knox College. At a friend’s suggestion, I ordered postcards with the image of my book cover on the front. That’s a handy thing to distribute, though there’s no telling whether a postcard leads to a purchase. Kent State University Press is great about getting copies into libraries.

Friends and family are promoters, too. My aunt sold copies to her poker buddies, and my mother gave copies to people who had known my father, since many of the poems are about him. The poems probably matter in a different way to people who know me.

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first book came out?

It’s not advice exactly, but I wish I had known that a lull in one’s poetry writing is common, either after the acceptance or in the wake of the publication. Once I had a book—once someone else said I had a book!—I felt pressure to compose the next book, instead of the next poem. Thinking about a poetry project can work really well, but at that time, it was daunting to me. I’m not someone who writes a poem a day and has a manuscript in a few months, but I inadvertently took a break from writing poetry, instead collaborating with art historian Debora Rindge on critical articles and writing pedagogy essays. I ended up going back to older poems before I could move forward with new work, in part because I was unable to start from scratch poem by poem.

I think it’s important that we share our experiences as writers. While each of us has an individual experience, commonalities or similarities exist among us. That’s one reason I spearheaded a conversation essay among Nicole Cooley, Kate Greenstreet, Nancy Kuhl, and myself on the emerging poet (it appears in Bookslut.) Talking about what we do as poets is a good thing for the larger endeavor.

What influence has the book's publication had on your subsequent writing? Are you currently working on a second collection?

I have circulated a second collection, entitled Among Virgins and Harlots, which is less autobiographical, instead seeking less overt connections between my experiences and those of other women. The first collection taught me about developing a coherent collection, and I find a certain energy in seeing groups of poems work together. In this new manuscript, I have a section of poems about women saints, many of which have been published. I’m also experimenting with the persona poem, an approach with which I became fascinated as a graduate student reading nineteenth-century British poetry. One section of the manuscript is in a version of the voice of Lizzie Siddal, D. G. Rosetti’s wife and a popular model for painters of the day; “On Sketching Pippa Passes the Loose Women (1855)” was recently accepted for inclusion the forthcoming anthology A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry, so I feel as if that was an external indication that I’m on to something.

But I’ve stopped sending this manuscript out very much. Over the course of last year, the manuscript was a finalist in several competitions, so I’m not really discouraged. Still, I think it needs reworking. That’s what happened with the first full-length book. The problem, of course, is that I now have written new poems that don’t fit. In the last two years, I’ve started revising a novel, drafting memoir essays, and directing Tabula Poetica, and also launched Lofty Ambitions Blog with Doug Dechow, my longtime collaborator in scholarship and life. I may have mentally or artistically moved into other projects, even as I’m still very interested in these virgins and harlots. And now that your questions have led me to look closely again at my earlier experience, I see how drastic a manuscript revision might need to be. It’s something I very much want to do, probably in the spring when I’ve been awarded a one-course release for research and writing. I’d like to get to it sooner, but this interview has made me more realistic about my process.

Do you believe that poetry can create change in the world?

The world is always in flux, so create change seems an odd way for me to think about poetry’s relationship to or role in the world. Maybe I just don’t want the pressure to create change as a poet—it’s really about language on the page, when I think of myself as a writer. Certainly, poetry can witness and shape change—it’s about that, at least in part, when I think of myself as a reader. I’d say that poetry creates meaning of and in the world.

Human beings are metaphorical thinkers and users of complex language, so poetry stands among the most human of endeavors. To me, poetry seems a deeply human expression of and response to the world in which we live, and it invites divergent thinking and unexpected connections in the poet and the reader. Other tasks employ these human skills, but poetry does it in a particular way—with language, with words, syntax, musicality, visual form—that allows the personal and universal to collide, to meld, to create meaning together. I surmise that’s why I drew heavily and purposefully from metaphors and terminologies of science in Constituents of Matter, but ended up with largely autobiographical poems.

Poetic expression shapes—creates shape, expresses the shape of, changes the shape of—the writer, the reader, and the world around us.

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Anna Leahy’s book Constituents of Matter won the Wick Poetry Prize, and she has published two chapbooks. Recent poems appear in Crab Orchard Review, Cream City Review, The Laurel Review, Margie, and other literary journals, as well as in the anthologies The Next of Us Is About to Be Born and On the Wing. She edited Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom, which launched the New Writing Viewpoints series, and continues to publish widely in the area of creative writing pedagogy. Leahy teaches in the MFA and BFA programs at Chapman University and directs Tabula Poetica, which hosts an annual poetry series and other projects. With Douglas Dechow, she writes Lofty Ambitions Blog.

• To read more, visit Anna's website
• Visit the Tabula Poetica Website and the Lofty Ambitions Blog
  

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