Profiles – Page 4 – Willow Springs Magazine

Issue 76: Ed Skoog

About Ed Skoog

Ed Skoog is the author of Mister Skylight, Rough Day (Winner of the 2014 Washington Book Award), and the forthcoming Run the Red Lights, all from Copper Canyon Press. He is the poetry editor of Okey-Panky and co-hosts the Lunch Box Podcast with novelist J. Robert Lennon.

A Profile of the Author

Notes on “1978 Buick Station Wagon”

I walked down the gravel driveway in my bare feet to the swimming pool and asked Gary Stearns, a friend of my dad’s, who had sold us the station wagon of the poem “1978 Buick Estate Wagon,” what its name was, because it seemed to me that cars had names, and he said “Beulah.” He always had plaid slacks and sideburns and maybe a Coors. In gospel songs, Beulahland is somewhere between Heaven and Earth. When I started driving, at 14, that was my car. I drove it between Heaven and Earth all the time. At the end of high school my friends Mike and Cooper went with me to the salvage yard and sold it for twenty dollars, and we rode back in Mike’s Honda or Cooper’s Mustang, can’t remember which. There was an ostrich in a pen by the salvage yard. About that time I bought my first banjo from Capitol City Pawn, maybe with the cash from the car. I eventually learned to play it. I’ve had the same banjo since 1993, a Deering Deluxe. I intended to trade it for a Gibson archtop but never have.

Notes on Reading

I have mostly been reading what literature is appealing or diverting to a toddler, mostly aloud, though sometimes, on rereading, I just point to the pictures, or tell an abbreviated version. I have been reading fiction otherwise: The Tartar Steppe, by Dino Buzzati; For Rouenna, by Sigrid Nunez; Regeneration, by Pat Barker. But I am always reading poems, especially new books from Tavern Books, Wave Books, and Copper Canyon. Three poets whose work everybody should know, and will, are Matthew Lippman, Carl Adamshick, and Catherine Barnett. The Greg Pardlo book, Digest, which won the Pulitzer this year, is extremely good. I pay attention to whatever Ben Lerner and Kevin Young are doing. I try to keep up with whatever people are reading in Seattle, Portland, Spokane, and Missoula. I spend a lot of time with the poems of Jean Follain and Roque Dalton. This year is the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina; I will be reading what smart people from New Orleans and Mississippi will have to say about that. I recommend one ebook in particular about the Katrina aftermath: Lee Mullikin’s Hardcscrabble Days, Milky Way Nights.

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Issue 86: Matthew Lippman

About Matthew Lippman

Matthew Lippman is the author of 6 poetry collections: Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful, winner of the 2018 Levis Prize, Four Way Books, to be published in 2020, A Little Gut Magic, Nine Mile Books, 2018, Salami Jew, Racing Form Press, 2014, American Chew, winner of the Burnside Review Book Prize, Burnside Book Press, 2013, Monkey Bars, Typecast Publishing, 2010, and The New Year of Yellow, winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Poetry Prize, Sarabande Book, 2007; finalist for the 2008 Patterson Poetry Prize. He has also been awarded the Levis Prize (Four Way Books), the Anna Davidson Poetry Prize, the Georgetown Review Magazine Prize, the Jerome J. Shestak Poetry Prize from The American Poetry Review, the Michener Fellowship in Poetry, the New York State Foundation of The Arts Grant, and more. (matthewlippmanpoetry.com)

A Profile of the Author

Notes on “Flew It All Around”

Like most of my poems, it’s the little things that get me going. My daughter messed up my hair one morning. When she was doing it, in the moment, it felt like a little annoyance but once I let go into the tussle, it was lovely and whimsical. That’s where the poem came from. The lovely and the whimsical. Just that little experience. The bubbly nature of that moment. I am always looking to turn those tiny things into little poignant poetic narratives that somehow speak to larger terrains, movements. It’s also important to me to have some kind of sweetness and hope in a poem. So, that’s the reason for the lines, “That we all can wake up and have someone come upstairs to fuck up/our hair/for fun.” Getting to the world outside the self. That’s the turn, the surprise, in the poem. There has to be a surprise for me, a place where things can get a little dark, rough, raw, and edgy. The sweetness/tenderness is important but then so is the hard stuff. That is reason for the end, that last line: the sun that “smashes our face to pieces.” Because it’s both, this living, and there has to be both in a poem or else you are just writing postcards and postcards are wonderful but, for me, they are not enough. There has to be some kind of rumble that makes the reader turn their head and go, “Uh-oh.”

Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.

Quarantine has been rough but it’s been a great place, space, to listen to music and I love
music. I have been setting my ears and heart ablaze with Phoebe Bridgers, Kamasi Washington, Robohands, Aaron Parks, Talib Kweli, Yussef Dayes, Joan Armatrading, Brian Eno, Makaya McCraven, and Robert Glasper. All the while I have benn perfecting the art of baking homemade Challah and hanging out with the cat, a Siberian, named Sammy, on the front porch. The front porch has been my refuge. I will spend hours out there in my plastic Adirondack chair with a cold beverage, watch the cars and people, the sky, write, read, nap, as one day morphs into another, and we wait for a day without masks and isolation.

“Flew It All Around” by Matthew Lippman

My kid did my hair this morning. She got her fingers in my mop and fucked it up. Made all these spikes and railroads trestles. Threw in some twirls and … Read more

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About Maggie Smith

Maggie Smith is the author of three prizewinning books: Lamp of the Body, The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, and Good Bones, the title poem from which was called the “Official Poem of 2016” by Public Radio International. Her poems and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Tin House, APR, The Believer, The Paris Review, the Washington Post, Ploughshares, Best American Poetry, and on the CBS primetime drama Madam Secretary. Smith has received a Pushcart Prize as well as fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Academy of American Poets.

Read her Willow Springs interview here.

A Profile of the Author

Notes on “Three Thoughts After Crossing Nameless Creek”, “For My Next Trick”, “How to Build a Fire”, and “Poem Beginning with a Line from Basho”

“Poem Beginning with a Line from Basho,” “How to Build a Fire,” and “Three Thoughts After Crossing Nameless Creek” are very new poems, and all of them deal, I think, with anxiety, change, and how we process shifts in our lives. I gravitated to Basho’s words for their optimism—the idea that a burned-down structure has its perks. “For My Next Trick,” though, is a poem I’ve been trying to write for years. It’s taken different forms; it’s begun differently, ended differently, and had different titles. But the core was always my daughter’s words. Like some of the poems in my last book, Good Bones, this one began with my daughter’s questions—this time about where she came from and how. I think she was about four when she asked these questions, and my son asked similar questions at that age, too. One of them asked if they were dead before they were born—as if nothingness equals death. How could I not write about these moments?

Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.

What I’ve been listening to: the new Sharon Van Etten, the new Neko Case, 80s new wave radio on Pandora, Sufjan Stevens, Superchunk (my six-year-old son’s favorite band, now that the indoctrination into 80s/90s indie music is well underway), The Replacements, Jenny Lewis, Pavement, The Mountain Goats, Margo Price, Aimee Mann, The National.

What I’ve been drinking: black coffee, Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout, Basil Hayden’s—and the occasional fizzy glass of Alka-Seltzer Cold Medicine, because winter.

What’s been saving my life lately: see drinks above, see music above, poetry, my kids, dog snuggles, my friends close by and faraway, yoga, sunshine even on cold days, Ritter Sport, my mother, making travel plans, knowing spring is coming.

Four Poems by Maggie Smith

Found in Willow Springs 83 Back to Author Profile POEM BEGINNING WITH A LINE FROM BASHO The moon is brighter since the barn burned. And by burned I mean to … Read more

About Natalie Sypolt

Natalie Sypolt lives and writes in West Virginia. She received her MFA in fiction from West Virginia University in 2005 and currently teaches writing at WVU. Her work has appeared in various journals, including Kenyon Review Online, The Queen City Review, Flashquake, Potomac Review, Oklahoma Review, and Kestrel. Natalie’s writing has received several awards, including the 2009 West Virginia Fiction Award from Shepherd University, judged by Silas House, and the 2009 Betty Gabehart Prize sponsored by the Kentucky Women’s Writers Conference. Her stories have also been honored by writers Ann Pancake, Amy Greene, and Bobbie Ann Mason. Her story, “Love, Off to the Side” (published in Still: The Journal) has been short listed for the Pushcart Prize. Natalie’s first collection of stories, tentatively entitled Kitchen Accidents, is currently seeing a home.

A Profile of the Author

Notes on “Lettuce”

I wrote the first draft of this story nearly in one setting. This is my favorite way to write stories, though it seldom happens, and it always feel like a sort of gift when it does.

This story was inspired by a poem called “Everything Good Between Men and Women” by CD Wright. I was listening to the podcast “Poetry Off the Shelf” from the National Poetry Foundation on my way home from work one day, and Wright was the featured poet. I had the first pages of the story written in my head before I entered my driveway.

Of course, there has been much research. I’ve been really nervous (and still am, actually) about getting important things, like the information about Chris’ prosthetic arm, right. Taking on a story of a veteran who has brought home wounds—both those that are visible and those that are not—is not something I take lightly.

I also must mention the awesome writer Ann Pancake who worked with me during the West Virginia Writers Workshop in Morgantown, WV last summer. She helped me tweak this story and refine some rough edges; most of all, though, she gave me confidence that this was a good piece that people would want to read. Both she and the incredible Appalachian writer Silas House have been so instrumental to my writing career thus far and I can’t thank them enough.

Notes on Reading

I don’t read as much as I would like to, or as much as I should. This is a constant source of frustration for me, and I’m guessing also for many writers who also teach in order to survive financially. I enjoy my classes, helping students refine their writing and come to the understanding that words really are important—that they really do matter. Unfortunately, though, between August and May each year, what I read the most of is drafts of undergraduate essays. For those reasons, it can take me quite a while to finish a book, and when I do get the opportunity to read, I don’t want to squander that time reading something I’m not completely in love with.

I’ve recently really enjoyed two collections of short stories out of Greywolf Press: Mattaponi Queen by Belle Boggs and Volt by Alan Heathcock. Heathcock is currently getting a lot of buzz (including a review in the NY Times), and it’s well deserved. His collection is truly impressive. Both of these are collections of connected short stories— connected sometimes by character, but always by place. I suppose I’m attracted to these books because having a strong sense of place is also something that is so important to me and my writing. My current “collection” of stories is not a linked collection, but I’m interested in creating a cycle of stories someday.

Also very important to me are the writers Ann Pancake and Silas House, who are currently showing the literary world that Appalachian literature is alive and strong. Ann’s book Strange as this Weather has Been is incredible. Not only does she tackle timely and crucial issues (like Mountaintop Removal), but her sense of language always amazes and inspires me. Her writing is lyrical, beautiful, and so real to the people she’s describing. I’ve been lucky in the past two years to meet both Ann and Silas through writing contests that they’ve judged and am continually impressed by their work, both as writers and as voices for Appalachian issues (which, really, are also important American issues).

Willow Springs 92 NEW

Hourglass by Clare Beams

Found in Willow Springs 68 Back to Author Profile A TRANSFORMATIONAL EDUCATION, the newspaper ad had promised, so we’d come to the Gilchrist School, which looked like a 19th century invalids’ home. … Read more

Bird Girls by Jill Christman

Found in Willow Springs 68 Back to Author Profile I WAKE UP, a wife and mother, at five a.m. on a July morning in the middle of Indiana, not because my … Read more

“Blue on Blue” by Susan Maeder

Found in Willow Springs 68 There were tables of shining blond wood in the restaurant in my neighborhood where I took him on a dare. Stiff white napkins, too many … Read more

Four Poems by Nance Van Winckel

Found in Willow Springs 68 Back to Author Profile “Outlaw Mentality” -that’s what the coroner says caught you up, brought you down. A life of that fuck-that stalled on the track. … Read more

Congratulations Pushcart Prize Nominees

Poetry “Mississippi Snow” by Kerry James Evans “The Future of Nostalgia” by Randall Watson “War Poem” by Anzhelina Polonskaya, translated by Andrew Wachtel “Sexy Fish” by Sara Burge Fiction … Read more

WTAW will be at AWP

WTAW will be at AWP January has been flying by, and AWP is now only two short weeks away. If you plan to be at AWP in Kansas City from February … Read more

Jennifer Pullen’s New Textbook

Congratulations to Eastern Washington University Alum Jennifer Pullen for receiving tenure at Ohio Northern University! Her textbook Fantasy Fiction: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology is out from Bloomsbury Academic.

“The Bridge” by Kerry Muir

Found in Willow Springs 66 Back to Author Profile CAMMY TUTTLE IS THE SMARTEST, toughest girl in our whole fifth grade. She has red hair, straw-straight, and wears boys’ clothes. Her … Read more

Issue 92: Suphil Lee Park

About Suphil Lee Park Suphil Lee Park (수필 리 박 / 秀筆李朴) is the author of Present Tense Complex, winner of Marystina Santiestevan Prize (Conduit Books & Ephemera … Read more

Issue 76: Kathryn Nuernberger

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About Kathryn Nuernberger

Kathryn Nuernberger is the author of The End of Pink (BOA Editions, 2016) and Rag & Bone (Elixir, 2011). She is an assistant professor of Creative Writing at University of Central Missouri, where she serves as the director of Pleiades Press.

A Profile of the Author

Willow Springs Issue 76 cover shows a rustic painted wall in yellows and browns.

“The Saint Girl Opens the Window and Closes It as She Pleases” by Kathryn Nuernberger

Found in Willow Springs 76 The saint girl was wretched with desire. Even a slice of cracked wheat bread tasted like sex, though she didn’t know to hear her throbbing tongue. … Read more

About Bailey Gaylin Moore

Bailey Gaylin Moore studied philosophy during her undergrad and English for her MA at Missouri State University, where she also taught classes in fiction and composition rhetoric. She served as an assistant editor for Moon City Review as well as a reader for Boulevard Magazine. Currently, she is working on an MFA in creative nonfiction at Vermont College of Fine Arts. In this moment, Bailey is likely on a drive listening to the same song, losing a game to her son, or working at a lingerie boutique because sometimes that’s just where life takes you. You can find her first publication here: http://haydensferryreview.com/111-a-scattering-of-our-own.

A Profile of the Author

Notes on “Second Molars”

Someone suggested writing about vagina dentata for a journal’s themed issue – “Revenge.” I laughed, recalling the female-empowered plot to the movie, Teeth. When I started researching, however, this contemporary “woo-hoo feminism (!)” perception of vagina dentata dissipated. Unlike media representations, it didn’t advocate disenthrallment; instead, its folklore was and is used as a device to subjugate women further, instilling a fear of women, demonizing them in multiple storylines where “vagina” is paralleled as the inciting incident for MANkind’s mortality. The pervasiveness of this lore isn’t singular to one culture or religion. It isn’t specific to one continent, and it cannot be exclusively designated as Eastern or Western.

A rough transition: I don’t talk about rape with people. My natural instinct is yielding to silence. That inclination is evident in “Second Molars” – my narrative interwoven between the safe haven of detached research, further distanced with the use of second person. The physical and emotional process of writing forced me to push against my initial reaction of silence. Though I still can grasp the scope of depravity in a pandemic rape culture, I did attain some clarity, specifically this: In our history of violence, victims became predisposed to wordlessness through a stacking of shame and fear. My instinct to yield to silence wasn’t natural at all, but so deeply conditioned that my lack of voice, to me, felt innate.

I found fragments of my voice in “Second Molars,” and I continue to re-collect these scattered bits in essays that follow. Still more work to be done, but the resumption so far was enough to make my first collection, Mein(e) C. I guess, then, what was most unexpected of all was, not only had I found courage to speak, there was a resonating certainty my voice wasn’t finished talking.

Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.

My ADD-addled brain sometimes prefers songs on repeat. Right now, it’s “Green Room” by my talented bud, Abby Webster. The longest phase was Jeff Buckley’s version of “Hallelujah,” but it faded once I noticed how life wasn’t all that harrowing – perhaps even good and beautiful at times. In between song periods (?) (epochs of repeated songs?), I’ll listen to orchestral renditions of Top 40s hits. My son and I play a game where we’ll try to guess the song. I always lose – even with more obscure ones, like Vitamin String Quartet’s covers from Moon and Antarctica. Embarrassing, considering the Modest Mouse album has remained mostly permanent in every CD player of my past four cars. The trio, Time For Three, covers Buckley’s “Hallelujah.” The first time I heard it, I was alone on a backroad during golden hour. I think I would have won that game had my son been there. Old habit: I put it on repeat, the beginning and end blurring together so it felt as if I was experiencing it for the first time, over and over again. One of those good, beautiful moments.

My dog sometimes goes on drives with me. He’s an Aussie mix I picked up on the side of the road seven years ago. No one ever claimed him, so the dog has followed me around ever since. I even named him – Norm, after my first celebrity crush, Norm Macdonald.

Sideline: In 2010, I was a member of human Norm Macdonald’s book club on Twitter. He started following me after I had made a bad joke during a discussion on Anna Karenina. I can’t remember the joke. One of the less noteworthy times of my life, but a noteworthy time nonetheless. Human Norm no longer follows me on Twitter, but I still have my dog.

Issue 82 Cover shows Chris Bovery print of a bridge in pink and blue with Willow Springs in decorative font.

“Second Molars” by Bailey Gaylin Moore

Found in Willow Springs 82 Back to Author Profile I. YOU LOOK MATURE FOR FOURTEEN: high cheekbones, arched brows, classic face muddled from dark makeup. When your older brother’s friends smile … Read more

View More: http://laurelcscott.pass.us/ivywedding

About R. M. Cooper

R. M. Cooper’s writing has appeared in dozens of journals including Adroit, Baltimore Review, Best American Experimental Writing, Denver Quarterly, Fugue, Passages North, Redivider, and Wisconsin Review and has received awards and recognition from UC Berkeley and American Short Fiction. Cooper lives in the Colorado Front Range is the managing editor of Sequestrum (www.sequestrum.org)

A Profile of the Author

Notes on “Emergency Instructions”

“Emergency Instructions” was inspired by the wonderful Spoon song, “Mystery Zone.” (I’ve been requesting the band play it live for years, unsuccessfully.) It’s a great song that I won’t begin to try and interpret; it’s about the mystery zone, after all. One of the lines that stuck with me was, “Times that we met, before we met, we’ll go back there [to the mystery zone].” The idea of having met someone before they become integral to our lives is fascinating. So is the possibility of taking future/present knowledge back to those times. But then, time travel has been done to death. My intention was to keep the story from descending into a melodramatic mess or simple plot twist. After realizing that, pairing a character’s emotional drive with the informational layout was a no-brainer.

Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.

I’ve been listening to lots of Spoon (obviously), enjoying Colorado breweries (wheats mostly), and spend lots of time with a rescue Maine Coon, Murphy. Maine Coons “trill” a lot, which mostly sounds like a hum. So Murphy hums when he jumps and eats and greets my wife at the door and best of all, when I’m done working at five. He’s a great coworker. Roger from accounting never hums at 5pm. He’s a jerk.

“Emergency Instructions” by R.M. Cooper

Found in Willow Springs 82 Back to Author Profile I. REMEMBER: You will never convince them why you did it. A. Everyone believes hypotheticals about time machines right- ing wrongs. i. … Read more

About Brooke Matson

Brooke Matson is a poet and educator in Spokane, Washington. Eight years of teaching and mentoring at-risk youth deepened her study of physical science and the psychological effects of violence and loss. Her current poems explore the intersection of physical science—particularly chemistry, physics, and astrophysics—with human experiences of loss, violence, and resilience.

Matson’s first full-length collection of poetry, The Moons, was published by Blue Begonia Press in 2012 and was also included in the 2015 Blue Begonia Press boxed set, Tell Tall Women. Her poems have most recently been accepted to Prairie Schooner, Rock & Sling, Poetry Northwest, and Crab Creek Review. The 2016 recipient of the Artist Trust GAP Award with Centrum Residency and the 2016 winner of the Spokane Arts Award for Collaboration, Matson poetry has also been selected for regional anthologies such as Railtown Almanac (Sage Hill Press), and Lilac City Fairy Tales (Scablands Books).

She currently serves as the executive director of Spark Central, a nonprofit dedicated to igniting creativity, innovation, and imagination.

A Profile of the Author

Notes on “Neurosurgery Sonata”

Recent studies tell us that our brain cannot access the sensory details of a traumatic memory and the language to talk about that experience at the same time. Writing about such experiences is therefore challenging for any writer.

The head of someone I loved being sawed open for an unsuccessful surgery was an experience that haunted me—to know what was happening but not being able to be as close as I wanted to the ending of that story. I had tried many times to write about it, and each time, I became stuck on the images in my imagination, which resurfaced again and again. I couldn’t move beyond them. That’s when the idea of a sestina emerged; perhaps the answer was to not overcome what haunted me, but to jump on the carousel of those images.

I have always been fascinated by the brain and the way it is so random and yet so ordered. No two brains are identical, and each has its own organic architecture that arises from experience. Poems can be like that, and I feel this one told me how it wanted to be written.

Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (the notorious NDT) is the voice I listen to via podcast (#startalkradio). He has not answered the question I emailed on gravity and time, but I’m sure he’s getting around to it.

Trader Joe’s Brandy Beans are the secret of life when I can get my hands on them—typically in December.

In between Decembers, I drink whiskey and listen to Gregory Alan Isakov and alt-J with a little Andrew Bird mixed in. Current solo dance party playlist: “Helena Beat” by Foster the People, “The Great Defector” by Bell X1, “Dissolve Me” by alt-J, and “My Shot” from the Hamilton Soundtrack, which I listened to for a full year straight. Playlist for productive crying and melancholy: “Today” by The National, “Colours” by Grouplove, and “Stable Song” and “Idaho” by Gregory Alan Isakov.

Dear White People should be required viewing for all Americans over 18.

“Neurosurgery Sonata” by Brooke Matson

Found in Willow Springs 82 Back to Author Profile Neurosurgery Sonata I’ve imagined it many times and still, it jars like a fist to the jaw. There will be music … Read more

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About Peter LaBerge

Peter LaBerge is the author of the chapbooks Makeshift Cathedral (YesYes Books, 2017) and Hook (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015). His recent work appears in Best New Poets, Crazyhorse, Harvard Review, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review Online, Pleiades, Tin House, and elsewhere. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Adroit Journal and the founder of the Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with his B.A. in English last year. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works in content marketing for a startup. For more, click here.

A Profile of the Author

Notes on “Draft/Mouth”

“Usually, when I approach a poem, I write from a place of emotional truth yet narrative fiction, but this wasn’t the case with “Draft/Mouth”. I wrote “Draft/Mouth” shortly after my father registered me for U.S. drafting while I was home from college last year. It’s mandatory, so — of course — I wasn’t mad, but it did trigger a series of internal thoughts about being , such as: Why am I worthy of dying for a country, but not worthy of loving in that country? Am I worthy of being an American elegy, but not an American husband?
It upwelled the feelings of shame and self-consciousness I thought I’d long left in my past. I’m the most artistic (and by that, I mean un-athletic) in my family, and I can’t help feeling like there’s an element of hope among family members that I’d mature to be the kind of strong, patriotic man who would jump at the chance to register for a draft. That’s simply not me, and I think — at its core — this poem speaks to the process of trying to accept that over time.”

Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.

“I’d say that music is central to my connection with artistry. Music helps provide an environment for me to explore and interrogate emotions — fear, shame, desire, pride, outrage — and the language we use to express them. I certainly don’t think emotion needs to be generative or productive — I don’t believe that is the purpose of emotion at its core — but oftentimes when I’m open to and understanding of my emotions is when I’m most able to articulate everything I’ve been wanting to say.
Which songs and which musicians? The usual suspects are everyone from Ariana Grande to Sufjan Stevens to classical music to nature sounds. It really depends on the trajectory and potency of my current mood.”

“Draft/Mouth” by Peter LaBerge

Found in Willow Springs 82 Back to Author Profile Draft/Mouth If at our most dangerous / we blink. If winter reveals itself like a soldier’s gibbous mouth. If rows of … Read more

About Leila Chatti

Leila Chatti is a Tunisian-American poet and author of the chapbooks Ebb (Akashic Books, 2018) and Tunsiya/Amrikiya, the 2017 Editors’ Selection from Bull City Press. She is the recipient of scholarships from the Tin House Writers’ Workshop, The Frost Place, and the Key West Literary Seminar, a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and Cleveland State University, where she is the inaugural Anisfield-Wolf Fellow in Publishing and Writing. Her poems have received awards from Ploughshares’ Emerging Writer’s Contest, Narrative’s 30 Below Contest, and the Academy of American Poets, and appear in Ploughshares, Tin House, American Poetry Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Georgia Review, Kenyon Review Online, and elsewhere.

Social media: @laypay on Twitter and Instagram

www.leilachatti.com

You can read more of her work at: Kenyon Review Online (essay), VQR (poems), Ploughshares (poem), The Georgia Review (poem)

A Profile of the Author

Notes on “Myomectomy”

I was in a poetry workshop with Blas Falconer last summer at The Frost Place, and he gave us a prompt each day to bring to the next day’s class. One of those was based on Stanley Plumly’s poem “Infidelity,” which we were to imitate in the following ways: the poem is 26 lines long, and the first 13 lines are more or less observation only, and then the second 13 lines allow for commentary, with an “I” that is a little more present—also, the title is something not explicitly stated in the poem, but gives the poem context. I was intimidated by the idea of having to describe something for 13 lines before I was allowed to enter the poem with all my thoughts and opinions, and spent the evening completely stumped. Though I didn’t know how to start, I did know what I wanted to write about—I had come to the workshop to generate poems for my full-length manuscript, which was (is!) nearing completion, a manuscript focusing on a health scare seen through the lens of faith. I had already written many poems about the illness, and a handful about recovery, and was trying to determine what I had yet to address. I woke early the next morning to again attempt the prompt, and perhaps my half-dream state made it easier, because it came quickly; I wrote about the surgery, the most visually striking “scene” of my experience, yet the one I did not get to see. I had only one glimpse of it; the doctor showed me after the surgery a photograph of my uterus in his hands, with my body open beneath it, and the tumor protruding from the incision. It was an image I will never forget.

Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.

I’m currently in Ireland, so I’ve been eating a lot of scones! As for animals, there are gigantic pigeons here, and magpies, which I find wonderful. I have yet to encounter a sheep, but I anticipate that will happen shortly. Listening—I’ve been turning to classical music lately, as I’ve been running around a lot and my nerves are shot, and Enya (don’t laugh!), which now feels appropriate. Tea is my perennial beverage of choice; as for specifics, this month I’ve been drinking jasmine green, kava, and turmeric.

“Myomectomy” by Leila Chatti

Found in Willow Springs 82 Back to Author Profile Myomectomy At the center of the dark room an aureole: there, pricked at the wrists by IV cords, robed except for … Read more