Interviews

The Lightning Room With M. R. Sheffield

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Stay awhile and listen to M. R. Sheffield (story in the Nov. issue) describe herself on a beach surrounded by strange men, running from swords, and what follows her heart in quotes. Maybe forgiveness?

1) Imagine a sunrise. You are a child surrounded by strange men. Describe the sunrise.

For some reason we’re on this beach and it’s beautiful, of course: it’s a sunrise – it’s yellow and red and pink; it’s purple and it’s blue and it’s gold, but the men are shuffling their feet in the sand, dirtying their nice shoes, and I’m worried when they get to work they will look scuffed – scuffed and faded as a sunrise – but something about them wearing suits on a beach in their nice shoes watching the sunrise makes them less threatening than maybe they would be otherwise, say if we were on a boat in the middle of the ocean, say if we were locked inside a mall together fighting zombies; they are more vulnerable for their finery, like peacocks bent nearly double by the weight of double breasted suit.

2) At the end of a long hallway you see a beautiful figure holding a long, delicate sword. What do you do?

First things first – any time weaponry is brandished, you run. You run run run run run. I don’t care how beautiful the creature is. The figure is. I don’t care how smooth skinned or lustrous haired. Maybe the figure is a being is a creature is beyond-human or subhuman nonhuman monstrous-human human-human or inhumane. Run. It doesn’t matter if the voice calling you is as bird song. Run when she or when he or when it slides the sword, so delicate, from its sheath. Long hallways are bullshit meant to hypnotize. Don’t fall for it, run for it, dummy, lest your body be torn asunder. Lest your heart in all its power falter. Continue reading →

The Lightning Room With Karen Eileen Sisk

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Won’t you join Karen Eileen Sisk (five poems in nov. issue) as she tells us why preserving a room full of a bunch of dead people and Judy Blume while unleashing the concentrated blabbermouth of anger at the lush from a living room couch is the only way to live.

1) If you could create a room with any 3 people who’ve ever existed in there. Would you make a room you’d want to visit or destroy? and why?

I would create a room I would visit. I think because my instinct is always to preserve rather than destroy. I love museums, antiques, collections that have been carefully collected and preserved. So it seems natural to build collections of good and/or important people. My room would sort of be a museum preserving say Jim Henson, Mr. Rogers, and Judy Blume. Or I’d have one with Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, and H.D. It would be a museum to people that I’d want to visit regularly. Poor Judy Blume, I lumped her in with a bunch of dead people.

2) Name a poet no one reads but should?

Even though I’ve spent the last 7 years in graduate school, I never feel like I have a good sense of who people read and who they don’t. I guess I would recommend Lynn Emanuel because I get the sense that not enough people read her books. She really crafts a book. Continue reading →

The Lightning Room with Rae Gouirand

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Won’t you join us and make a murderous face with Rae Gouirand as she discusses the interesting blurriness of whether it’s better to be understood or to be loved (see her poem In Lieu of Questions in our Jan Issue).

1) Reading your poem makes me feel like I woke up much earlier than normal on a summer morning and it feels like I’m on vacation, but I know I have to go to work in a few hours. Why do I feel that way?

Because nothing happens, or has happened. Though it might at some point. But that doesn’t matter. The stakes have dissolved. There’s a private threshold. Because both late night and earlyearly morning are times of attention, and interesting blurriness, and privacy. The poem observes a passing moment. Time keeps passing, but not without recognition. It has a nonspecific quality to it not because it’s nonspecific, but because the aperture’s open.

2) What are the questions you can’t stop asking yourself?

There’s a poem in my first book called ‘Hearsay’ about a conversation I had with a close friend years ago on the subject of whether it’s better to be understood or to be loved. Though I know my answer to that question, and have for a long time, I find that lots of things in daily experience remind me that it’s there.

How many variations on the first Venn diagram that comes to mind exist for any of the many things I’m orbiting around each other in the ongoing three-dimensional drawing room of my head.

What is possible. How to do it. What matters. What fire is made of.

Continue reading →

The Lightning Room With Cameron Walker

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This Saturday, a spark from the past. Cameron Walker’s ‘Ripening‘ graced our September issue with its magical presence; here, she talks about mothermagic, people changing into food, and the words that make things hurt.

1. There are certain words in this story that make it especially devastating. For example, “When she thinks I’m asleep, she cradles me in her arms and whispers that even if I become beautiful, she’ll never let anyone hurt me.” Tell me about this even. Are beautiful people meant to be hurt?

First, I have the very odd feeling that I might get these questions wrong, even though I should probably know the answers, right? I think because they are very good questions. And because I haven’t had to take a test in a long time.

I think I first was thinking about the “if” of that sentence, that the mother isn’t sure this daughter will ever become beautiful in the same way that her sister was. And she’s relieved. And she’s feeling guilty that she did let something happen to her beautiful daughter. (And the narrator sort of accepts this about herself. I’ve been reading a lot about siblings recently, and how parents put them in particular roles- and even if she does become beautiful, I don’t think either she or her mother will think of her this way.)

But the “even,” that’s what you asked about. I’m not sure, but I imagine that at first, the mother felt threatened by her beautiful daughter, and the threat made her hesitate to protect her. She won’t hesitate again, not with this child.

2. It can take almost two years to grow an edible pineapple. What are the key growth years for humans? When do we “push out roots”?

Oh, I hope we never stop pushing out roots, don’t you? Continue reading →

The Lightning Room With Danez Smith

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In the third PANK queer issue, Danez Smith gave us two poems, ‘Mail’and ’10 RentBoy Commandments.’ Below, we discuss the violence that tries to stay hidden, the nature of performance, and the very same hands we use to pray to God.

1. Both of these poems have an undercurrent of violence to them, a fury that manifests itself in bruises, in hands around necks. This violence, enacted and repressed, does it come up often in your writing?

Violence has a tendency to show up in a lot of my work, but not always in gruesome ways. Sometimes violence shows up in sexy or innocent ways, sometimes with teeth and tools. It might even be in all my work, even if underlying it, it just waits for its turn on the page, waiting for me to ask “How would you like to dress today?”

2. ‘Mail’ is constructed via a series of increasingly terse and explicit letters, which take on both a sinister and confessional quality. It’s a fragmented poem of terrific implication- how do you choose how much to reveal?

That poem was a mess and a half to write. I wrote it several years ago after sitting down and looking at my work and wondering if I had ever told the truth within my poems (and it was a resounding Heeeeeeellllll No!). I let it all flow out, making no choices about how the voice appeared, just listening to it and letting it say more than needed. The sinister tone is something I struggle with in the poem; it came from a ridiculous level of guilt, and not knowing how to manage that, there was a bite to the confession. I think there is a gentler poem that wants to show itself, but I’m not sure I was (or am) distanced enough from the subject to hear such a soft voice. Continue reading →

The Lightning Room With Anne Hays

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In our latest queer issue, Anne Hays’ “You’re Like This And I’m Like” gave us clashing narratives on either side of the generational divide. Here, Anne gives us a look at this glorious mashup, this myth of memory:

1. To me, this story operates on two levels: on one, it’s the narrator’s development through time, through memories and moves, the tonal shifts of personhood; on the other, it’s the reflections of the narrator’s parents, reflected back on those same memories. What made you decide to structure the story this way?

In terms of structure, I actually took three old failed pieces and wrangled them into one: an oral history workshop exercise which involved interviewing oneself, a short story (ie fiction) about an abusive lesbian relationship, and a prose fragment piece about aspects of life that make a person feel trapped. I started writing the new hybrid piece at 11pm one night and finished in a frenzied, dizzy state at around 3am. It was a wild experience for me, writing it, because it seemed to come flying out as a coherent story all on its own, despite me. Over the next few days I crunched it, editing, but for the most part my feverish midnight exorcism remained intact. But I’m glad you asked this question because the original title of one of the failed pieces had been ‘I know This Is true,’ and my intention was to interrogate varying versions of memory and truth, and what are those things.

2. In this piece I also felt a clash of remembrance, a struggle to reconcile two sides of the same memory, sometimes one that the speaker herself doesn’t even remember. What do we learn from the so-called “mythic impressions” and “crazed technicolor versions” of the memories we’ve left behind?

Ah, yes. The narrator finds her own memories more satisfying than her parents’ renderings of similar events, but the reader can see that the stories don’t actually directly conflict. Their stories aren’t even all that crazed, but because they’re being told to the narrator over bottles of wine, the storytelling scenes themselves have a crazed quality to them. Maybe they’re more shrill than crazed. ‘The fucking suicide list,’ for instance. I think (in real life) parents often tell stories that stand in for the way we were as children, and in the re-telling, the stories get stronger and sturdier, perhaps more sturdy than those memories really should be. I try to make sense of myself sometimes through my parents’ stories about me, so I wanted to give that to this story. You know, “you were always artistic!” and suddenly, just like that, I always have been. I feel this way about photographs, too; I remember photos better than the scenes they represent- the photo becomes and then replaces the memory. Also, because the first half of the piece emerged out of an oral history-style “self-interview,” the tone of voice sounds as though the narrator is interrogating her own life as a detective, not based on how she feels or remembers feeling, but entirely based on what she tells herself, and then versus what others tell her about herself. It’s a very specific and disorienting way to try and tell a story. Those are the qualities that, I think, give the story a zany, blurry, technicolor feel to it. Continue reading →

The Lightning Room With Laura Tansley

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From the queer issue, Laura Tansley’s “The Wake She Leaves Like A Whirlpool,” bring us ever in circles:

1. Much of “The Wake She Leaves Like A Whirlpool” piece seems to be about proof- the evidence we have that we are who we are, that we’ve done what we’ve done- the ways we demonstrate our hurt to others. What is your favorite scar?

When I was young I remember deliberately kicking a metal climbing frame because someone in my primary school had said that hitting your shin-bone was particularly painful and I wanted to find out for myself. I’m not sure if I should be proud or embarrassed by that kind of bravery mixed with stupidity.

2. A sense of place feels very important in this piece, from the viaduct to CrownGate to Severn Bridge and the park. Can you share something with us about the physical context for this story?

The story is set in a place called Worcester in the UK. It’s near to where I grew up although I’ve been living elsewhere for a number of years now. It was a frustrating place to be a teenager, and I think that frustration has become a useful thing to channel when writing. I’ve become fond of Worcester because of its ability to inspire in this way; it’s appeared in a number of guises in a number of stories.  Continue reading →

The Lightning Room With Anna Joy Springer

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In the most recent queer issue, Anna Joy Springer gave us a fairy tale in the form of a rebus with “The Forest of Despots’ Daughters.” Here, Anna shows us her creative process, the decoding of her particular art:

1. This story has a subversive yet very fable-like quality to it, constructed like those children’s books designed to teach moral lessons and cleverness via rebuses and illustrated puns (a cartoonish eye representing “I,” for example). What implications about the telling of stories and inculcating “morality” might we tease out from the presentation of the material this way?

“The Forest of Despots’ Daughters,” in a recent LGBTQ Pank is a rebus adaptation of a chapter from my book, The Vicious Red Relic, Love. I took the images from a variety of children’s books printed between 1950 and 1980. I never thought of the rebus form as a didactic form, because I associate it more with puzzles on the inside of beer caps, but I see now you are right. Rebuses are often simple puzzles in children’s magazines and activity books that invite a deeper engagement with a text, because it forces a reader to decode while reading, and therefore engage with the piece actively rather than as a passive lesson-receiver. I also like to force active engagement and do sleight of hand with my readers, rather than directly advise. I suppose you could call this approach “manipulative,” “sneaky,” or “tactical.” We see faster than we read, so putting pictures in a row of text seduces a reader’s eye across the text to the image, and then (in a rebus) they have to decode the image. In my rebuses, there is no “right answer,”- all decodings are rather queer. And I suppose the desire to prompt “an unpredictable reading (or response)” is one of the most consistent moral underpinnings of my work. The moral of the entire novel, of which this piece in its written form is just one part, is that if life mimics art, it may be possible to have a more interesting (less proscribed) life if attention is drawn to art’s cultural functions and conventions, especially to the conventions of art that are so repeated and so supported by the ruling paradigm that they’re often seen as seamless, seen as natural (natural law-bound) rather than artificial. All story is allegorical in some way or another, and all figurative comparison is didactic, even when the antecedent has faded from historical memory and the figurative relationship is more or less severed. In my book I draw attention both to the artificiality of story-making and to the historical contexts from which the stories emerged to de-neutralize narrative conventions, i.e. heroes win (a tautology, and not a politically or interpersonally neutral one) – the method of presentation is, as you’ve said, didactic. But, the bright and not overtly ironic illustrations may hold the interest of even the most imaginatively dull pupil. Unless of course that pupil is a reformer. Reformers seem always to prefer minimalism of some sort, without too many scents, curves, or visible rhetorical maneuvering or “game playing.” “The Forest of Despots’ Daughters” is a playful, didactic game that’s impossible to win (or lose). It’s only possible to engage or not to engage. That’s a moral prompt, right there. Continue reading →

The Lightning Room With Mary Lou Buschi

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In the history of our past, the dog days of July, we presented two poems by Mary Lou Buschi, “Eddie” and “When That Phone Call Comes.” We find them reinvigorated, in this interview with the author:

1. Who is Eddie?

Eddie is my archetypal “heart of darkness.” He is both man and child- victim and villain. When I met him I was living in an unfamiliar place. Nothing made sense. I didn’t make sense. Eddie was the embodiment of my own horror; my own misunderstanding of a landscape and a people.

2. Both poems offer the sense of something striven for, a quest incomplete, something gathered at roots. Is this a frequent theme in your writing?

Yes, I believe all of my poems have some sort of quest, as you call it. Or, perhaps they are journeys. Some are literal and some metaphorical. I realized recently that so many of the poems take place in cars. The poem, “When that Phone Call Comes” began with a real script that I found on my husband’s desk. We were turning in our first leased car and he was researching the best way to negotiate. When I saw it I thought he had been writing and read it like a poem. The moment I realized I was reading a script sent from a dealer, I began writing the poem. Continue reading →

The Lightning Room With Henry Hoke

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In our latest queer issue, Henry Hoke took us deep down the river with “Bottomless Pit.” He talks with us, below, about reinvention, tangled creeks, and wishing for more wishes with coins that never hit the ground.

1. I love how this piece mingles and conflates characters and events from Tom Sawyer with the tumult of adolescent love. What caused you to choose these characters to tell this story?

When we were little my younger brother and I were lying in the back seat of my dad’s car near the end of a fourteen hour drive. We were road-drunk and sleep-deprived and we “became” Tom and Huck. We spoke in accents more Southern than our regular ones and talked about what we saw out the moon roof as if we were floating down the mighty Mississippi. I addressed him as Huck and he addressed me as Tom, and we kept this up, loudly, for the rest of the trip, recounting our adventures and plotting new ones. I think we’d only read the abridged versions of Twain books at that point, but these two were already our icons of boyhood and mischief. The boys in my story simply took on these identities earlier, before they were born and before they had chewed on a long piece of straw.

2. This piece inhabits a place of nebulous identity- its two characters can change their names, histories, and plots as much as their imagination allows. When do these things solidify?

Honesty and a denial of certainty tend to run neck-in-neck in all of my work. I feel like this approach calcifies when we hear Huck’s real names and Tom’s refusal to let go of his alias. That and the “What if” that opens the piece. Continue reading →