The Writing Process Blog Tour

Yes, I know everything right now is all AWP all the time, but the kind Kelli Russell Agodon included me in her blog tour and here are the results!

1) What am I working on?
I am currently working on two manuscripts – the one, almost finished, called “The Robot Scientist’s Daughter,” is one I’ve been working on for some five years or so, about growing up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, with Oak Ridge National Labs next door. The other is called “The Field Guide to the End of the World,” which explores our current culture’s obsession with apocalypses (in pop culture, scientific research, etc.) and my own experiences with neural damage.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
I think my work is more likely to go explore scientific discoveries, pop culture, and mythology than my own autobiography, and for this reason, I’ve often been described as a “speculative” poet. I’ve always been more interested in other worlds than my own. My favorite fiction authors – Margaret Atwood, Haruki Murakami, and Kelly Link, for starters – are also similarly writing about alternate realities, comic books, television, and science fiction.
I’d also say that I am probably slightly more likely to be funny – I’m not afraid of humor in poetry, even if it’s pretty dark humor, and that I’d probably be described as a feminist poet, given the subject matter of my first three books.

3) Why do I write what I do?
I passionately believe that 1. poetry can communicate things (ideas, moments, emotions, liminal spaces) in ways that other kinds of writing can’t and 2. writing is meant to change the world. I’m not content to write the kind of poetry that makes people feel more comfortable; I would be much happier writing something that made even one person decide to make a positive change in the world, or, at least, to reconsider the way that our pop culture depicts powerful women or the safety of nuclear energy. Call me optimistic, or idealistic, but that’s why I keep writing.

4) How does your writing process work?
I would say that I do most of my writing late at night, and mostly on a computer (my handwriting is illegible, even to me.) I usually write one or two poems at a time based on an idea, or something I come across in a movie, a magazine article, or in research of a particular subject. The best things for my writing are things like visiting art museums, going to concerts, reading about subjects I’m not familiar with, and even prosaic things like watching television. I read a lot of poetry (and do reviews of poetry books on a regular basis) but I’m more likely to be inspired to write new poems after reading fiction or non-fiction.

Thanks to Kelli Agodon for inviting me to this blog tour! Here’s her post!
And her bio: Kelli Russell Agodon is the author of Hourglass Museum and The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice, which she co-authored with Martha Silano. Her other books include Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room, Small Knots, Geography, and Fire On Her Tongue: An Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry which she edited with Annette Spaulding-Convy. She is the co-founder of Two Sylvias Press and when not writing, Kelli can be found in the Northwest mountain biking, paddleboarding, or walking her golden retriever, Buddy Holly. She blogs at: www.ofkells.blogspot.com or you can connect with her on Facebook: www.facebook.com/agodon or on her homepage: www.agodon.com

I’m inviting Kelly Davio and Lesley Wheeler to join me on this blog tour next on March 4! Stay tuned for their entries! Here are their bios:

Lesley Wheeler’s poetry collections include The Receptionist and Other Tales (Aqueduct Press, 2012), a Tiptree Award Honor Book. Heterotopia, 2010 winner of the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize; and Heathen (C&R, 2009). Recent poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in The Gettysburg Review, Poetry, Crab Orchard Review, and other magazines. She teaches at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia and blogs about poetry’s possible worlds at http://lesleywheeler.org/.
Kelly Davio is the current editor of Tahoma Literary Review and the former Managing Editor for The Los Angeles Review and current Associate Poetry Editor for Fifth Wednesday Journal.  She is also a book reviewer for  Women’s Review of Books. Her debut collection is Burn This House, and her next collection, Jacob Wrestling, will be out from Pink Fish Press in 2015.