Interview with Diane K. Martin

Today’s Summer Interview is with Diane K. Martin, author of Conjugated Visits (Dream Horse Press, 2010.)

Diane Kirsten Martin’s work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Field, New England Review, Poetry Daily, Crazyhorse, Harvard Review, Narrative and many other journals. She was included in Best New Poets 2005, has received a Pushcart Special Mention, and won the Erskine J. Poetry Prize from Smartish Pace.

Links:

http://dianekmartin.blogspot.com/

http://www.13ways.org/poets/Diane/diane.html

Conjugated Visits

Jeannine Hall Gailey: How did you promote your book this time around? How was it different than if it had been published a few years earlier (impact of social media, etc?)

Diane K. Martin: Well, there’s no doubt that Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, etc. offer PR opportunities, but there’s a lot of pressure, too, to be on top of all that. I have had to put a lot of effort into looking for a job this year, so I can’t spend 100% of my time at promotion. Also people get pissed off. There’s a thin line between doing right for your book and totally turning people off. And sometimes there are diminishing returns. Someone convinced me to start a Goodreads competition for ten people to win — and maybe review — your book. That was expensive! And what happened? A lot of people marked it “to read.”

JHG: How has the poetry world changed since you started out (proliferation of MFAs, etc) and has that impacted you as a writer?

DKM: Well, the world has changed, not just the poetry world. When I did my Master’s at San Francisco State (there weren’t many MFAs then or I didn’t know of them) I submitted a typed thesis (not to mention typing all papers). I envy those doing MFAs today, especially low-residence ones like Warren Wilson, though I haven’t been in an economic position to do them. I envy the ability to develop relationships with major writers and thinkers. Some of that is possible to do by attending conferences, but you don’t necessarily develop deep friendships.

JHG: How do you see the online world impacting poetry?

DKM: I think it’s wonderful to be friends with people, to develop connections not limited by geography. I loved going to Virginia Center for Creative Arts and meeting, in real life, Eduardo Corral, who was already a friend from the blogosphere. I think I would be crazy by now, crazy and totally depressed and isolated, if it weren’t for the Internet — email and blogs and Facebook and the like. It’s changed everything! Even being able to read a journal online before submitting and, now, more recently, submitting manuscripts online. This is all good, as far as I’m concerned.

JHG: What advice would you give your younger self?

DKM: I wish I had known how important it was to connect, to meet and greet, to let people know who you are, etc. The problem is, I’m sure I wouldn’t have done anything any differently. I’m fairly introverted. Get a glass of wine in me, and I can talk to people, though I’m not necessarily a wise and considered conversation.

JHG: How has your life changed since the book came out? Are you working on another collection?

DKM: I have an entirely new collection making the rounds of publishers and competitions right now. For more than a decade, I had been circulating Conjugated Visits — under different titles — and asking people to read it and give me advice — because it was always a finalist, never a winner. And I kept adding poems, removing poems, re-ordering the poems, and getting more mixed up about the book rather than clearer. In 2004, at Squaw, Bob Hass advised me to just get the first book out, just get it published under any model. Then I’d showed him a poem I wrote about Stradivari and talked about my dozen or so poems written in the voices of Picasso’s women. And he said to fix my sights on the second book, which sounded like it was “about” art and women. In 2008, I went to VCCA, and while CV had still not been published, I started pulling the 2nd book together. When Dream Horse Press took CV in 2009, I removed the poem “Hue and Cry,” which had won the Erskine J. Poetry Prize from Smartish Pace, to put in the second book and to use Hue and Cry as the new book title.
That’s pretty much where I am now. I’m still doing readings, promoting the first book, but I didn’t win a book prize, you know. There was never an overwhelming reception from the world at large. Individual people told me they loved the book, which was very gratifying. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was ready to move on from Conjugated Visits and the poems in it. They’ve been with me a long time!
Hue and Cry is a quirky book; the poems involve ideas about art, creativity, imagination, and perception itself. But I’m excited by it and hope others will be too.