Volume 3 Issue 1

Marjorie Bloom–Interview

by Suzanna Anderson Creates

My true writing space is a small home office. A window to the left of my desk, just large enough to see daylight, sky, some green. I begin a new poem on lined 8 1/2 by 11, comfortable Cross pen in hand. Sometimes I transfer a poem to a large artist’s pad in order to visualize the poem  “larger.” After a few drafts, I usually move to my computer. Here I focus on revision. For a long time I was in love with the seminal emotions, imaginings, words and sounds of a poem; but now I practice “re-seeing” each aspect of craft, its configuration in the whole. I also read the poem aloud to hear the sounds it makes, over and over. It can take me several years to write some poems; these need time to evolve.

A small space in my home office is delineated by a rectangular rug and several folded blankets for meditation and Iyengar asana practice. This, too, demands focus and persistent work.  So I would say to an aspiring writer as I say to myself: persist. When in the stream of writer’s block, cut off from persistence, I feel uncomfortable. So I remind myself of two things. There is something else in life that I must tend to now. And the writing of poems— my great joy—will return.

Check out Marjorie’s work in the issue, Volume 3, Issue 1.

 

JP Sheridan–Interview

by Suzanna Anderson Creates

The Magnolia Review: Describe your creative space. Do you work at home, in public spaces, etc.?

JP Sheridan: I work at home in a room that serves as our library, my office, and a space to put the (mostly unused) treadmill. It’s yellow, and I have a calendar on the wall in front of me that I use to keep track of daily word counts.

TMR: What kind of materials do you use? Do you write by hand or type? What is your favorite writing utensil?

JPS: I mainly type, but when I’m traveling I hand-write in a spiral-bound, large-format sketchbook. For whatever reason, I hate carrying a laptop around.

TMR: What is your routine for writing?

JPS: Up every morning at 4:15. Shower, coffee. In the chair by 5:00 AM. Write until 6:45. Try to get 500 words. Wake up the daughter. Wake up the wife. Eat oatmeal and watch cartoons.

TMR: How long have you been writing? When did you start writing?

JPS: I’ve been writing, off and on, as long as I can remember, but different things at different times: poetry, lyrics, silly little comics, finally fiction. I’ve been what one might call “seriously” writing fiction for about three or four years now. The Magnolia Review will be my 10th publication.

TMR: Who is your intended, or ideal, audience? Who do you write for?

JPS: There are a few people in my life, from my present and from my past, who could make me quite satisfied by saying they enjoyed what I’ve written. I keep them to myself, because they’re like magic: once you reveal the secret, they lose all of their power.

TMR: What inspires you to write? If you are blocked, what do you do?

JPS: Nothing inspires me to write. Writing for real is a serious, hard, daily grind. At times it’s all-consuming. Sometimes it turns me into a whiny crybaby. Seriously. It’s hard work. I want to get better at what I do, so I practice every day. If I’m blocked, I read. Reading, for a writer, is a cure-all.

TMR: What other things do you do besides writing? Do you dance or play golf, etc.?

JPS: I dance but not well, and the closest I every came to dying was on the golf course with my 15-year-old brother. So ixnay on that, too. I teach writing, and I hang with my family, and I take my dog for a walk. I spend a lot of time actively trying to think about something other than what I’m working on.

TMR: What is your favorite part of the creative process?

JPS: When I realize that the puzzle pieces I’ve been trying to cram together for the past two weeks actually kinda fit all of a sudden. It happens less often than one might think.

TMR: What is your advice to aspiring writers?

JPS: If you think you can write without a schedule, if you think it’ll work out without a routine, if you have no discipline about it, if you let doubt beat you, if you don’t put your butt in the chair and leave the phone in the kitchen, you are SUNK.

Check out JP’s work in the issue, Volume 3, Issue 1.

 

JC Reilly–Interview

by Suzanna Anderson Creates

The Magnolia Review: Describe your creative space. Do you work at home, in public spaces, etc.?

JC Reilly: I need to be super high-focused and distraction-free to write, so I try to write in quiet spaces, sometimes in the very back of the library where no one ventures, but usually in my room at home with a cat or two planted by my side.  (Cats can be distracting, especially when they sit on the keyboard, but I can deal.)  Often I’ll write at night because there’s no noise at all—plus at night, when it feels like I’m the only person in the world, I can work solely on my writing and not feel like there’s chores and quotidian stuff I should be doing.  It’s just me and my imagination.

TMR: What kind of materials do you use? Do you write by hand or type? What is your favorite writing utensil?

JCR: I mainly use the computer to write—which makes me all kinds of a fraud since I tell my students to write on paper first—but I will often print out drafts—or partial drafts—and then write on the drafts by hand.  There’s something about the materiality of paper that I love—but there’s also a kind of permanence to it, so if I am writing first on the computer, I’m not really “committing” to the poem yet—it’s not an object in the world…yet.  It’s only when I print it out—and then take a pen to physically write on it—that a poem seems real.  After I physically write on the draft, I can go back and “fix” the draft in the computer.

TMR: What is your routine for writing?

JCR: I wish I had a true routine.  I know writers who get up at 4 a.m. and write until they have to get ready for work, and they do that every day.  I try to write in the afternoon (if I can find a quiet moment), or I write at night.  But I don’t write every day—maybe 4 or 5 days a week.  I do make try to read something significant every day—it’s important to be exposed to words—even if it’s not poetry.  Maybe it’s a biography or a mystery.  The point is to be connected to other writers—people who have put their work out in the world.  It’s inspiration.

TMR: How long have you been writing? When did you start writing?

JCR: My earliest memory of writing was two rhyming poems when I was 7.  My dad included them in a handwritten journal of poetry that he was writing for a friend at the time.  Then I wrote some silly sci-fi novels in my teens—which I’m glad to say are lost to the annals of time.  I didn’t get serious about writing until I took a creative writing class in college and found out that I was pretty good at writing.  I was also an English major, and I was reading all the greats (even if they were all dead, white men), so all these words were swimming around my head all the time—and I just felt like I wanted my own words to come into being.  And then I just never stopped writing.

TMR: Who is your intended, or ideal, audience? Who do you write for?

JCR: I think anyone’s first audience always has to be herself.  If you’re not happy with what you’ve written, there’s no way that anyone else will be.  I try to write poems that balance the personal and the universal (of course “universality” is a myth), and I try to write stories that make me laugh.  Hopefully what I write will resonate with others.  I have a long-standing writing group with some colleagues at work, and it’s been amazingly helpful to have a kind of built-in audience like that—but the problem with being with a group for eight or so years is you begin to write for them—because you know what they’ll say, you’ll know how they’ll react—they’re in your head—so it’s good to break away at some point too.  I’ve really learned to trust my own instincts and voice.  I used to make more of the changes they suggested because I was less sure of myself.  But reaching a balance is important, and I feel that these days I’m achieving that.  (Our writing group has gone on hiatus in the last semester or so, so I’m relying more on my instincts.)

TMR: What inspires you to write? If you are blocked, what do you do?

JCR: Reading other people’s work inspires me the most!  But when I’m blocked, I drag out the poetic forms book and work through them.  A few months ago, I felt just depleted.  I didn’t think I had anything worth saying.  So, I went on a villanelle binge—I knew I had to work the pattern and so it forced me to write.  But the beauty of a villanelle is, because there are repeating lines, you don’t have to write so much—and if you know the pattern, then you know where it has to end, and you can get in and get out in 19 lines.  And you’ve completed something.  It might not be great—I’ve written a ton of lame villanelles (and sonnets and sestinas…)—but at least it’s done.  Formal poetry is compelling in that way—you know how the form looks and works and it gives you a goal to write toward, and that gets me out of a block.

TMR: What other things do you do besides writing? Do you dance or play golf, etc.?

JCR: I play tennis—singles and doubles. This spring, I was fourth in a league with 140 players—it was the best I’d ever played.  I love tennis, and my coach tells me I have the best backhand at the whole tennis center.  He might be exaggerating, but it is a pretty good backhand.

TMR: What is your favorite part of the creative process?

JCR: The best part is feeling proud that I’ve created something that I want to share.  And when a journal takes one of my poems or stories, it’s absolutely as delicious as the moment of when your Mom gives you a mixing beater full of cake batter and tells you to have at it.

TMR: What is your advice to aspiring writers?

JCR: Read more.  Stay away from time-sucks like social media as much as you can and use the time instead to read books by people you love and to find new literary magazines to explore.  And write all you can—keep a journal or make lists or make erasures or work through forms like I do if you have blocks or if you need to be inspired.  Set the timer on your phone and for fifteen minutes every day (or so), be in the moment and write.  Writing is one of the best habits you can have—and it only gets better the more you do it!

Check out JC’s work in the issue, Volume 3, Issue 1.

 

Jared Pearce–Interview

by Suzanna Anderson Creates

The Magnolia Review: Describe your creative space. Do you work at home, in public spaces, etc.?

Jared Pearce: I write at home, usually.  I have a busy household, so I generally write from 5:00-6:00 in the morning when it’s quiet.  I keep the lights off.  Of course, if I see or hear or do something that connects a poem, I’ll build it right then.  Once, while driving across Arizona, I had an idea and dictated it to my co-pilot.  But generally it’s just me, at the dinner table, in the dark.

TMR: What kind of materials do you use? Do you write by hand or type? What is your favorite writing utensil?

JP: I use a laptop computer, mostly, and type-out poems.  I do a fair amount of handwriting, though, too, when away from the machine.  In fact, I’ve got four-ish poems on scraps of paper on my desk waiting to be typed-up.  Since those poems are kind of out of my habit, we’ll see if they get electronified.

TMR: What is your routine for writing?

JP: I don’t know that my routine is all that startling: I see or hear or do or feel something that connects to something else I’ve seen or heard or done or felt and then there’s a poem.  Revisions come in two flavors: either all at once or in little chips.  When I know the idea’s good but the words stink, I often just crash the entire poem and start from scratch.  Sometimes, though, it’s just a matter of a little change here or there.

TMR: How long have you been writing? When did you start writing?

JP: I was fourteen when I wrote my first poem.  I had been out with my friends, miniature golfing.  I love the miniature golf.  When I got home I had this idea about how miniature golf was a metaphor for living and stayed up pretty late, in the dark, working on the poem.  No, it wasn’t very good, but I became interested in the idea of building a metaphor.

TMR: Who is your intended, or ideal, audience? Who do you write for?

JP: I’m the first audience—that’s where the idea starts.  But as the poem is shaping, I understand that if the metaphor is going to work it has be unchained from my singular perception.  I like poems that are a little more accessible, that work to comment on and illuminate living without having to make either a grand gesture or drag me into a pile of language that just baffles me.  I like poems that tell stories, even if the stories are, in a way, incomplete.  My reader wants to hear a story and think about something.

TMR: What inspires you to write? If you are blocked, what do you do?

JP: If I’m blocked, I write a stinky poem.  Then the next day, or even in the next few moments, I find that the subsequent poem is less stinky.  I’m inspired by everyday things.

TMR: What other things do you do besides writing? Do you dance or play golf, etc.?

JP: I don’t spend as much time as I need to be spending working on maintaining the old house in which I live.  I’m no construction guru, but I do like to work on the house.  I’ve been teaching myself to play the guitar.  I’m no great cook, but I’m often recruited to work in the garden.  I’ve been put in charge of the wisteria and the fruit trees.  The wisteria’s getting out of hand.  The fruit trees are coming along very well.  I like to play games, some video, some board, some party.  I like films and chocolate.

TMR: What is your favorite part of the creative process?

JP: Fitting the words to the concept is, I find, challenging and energizing, and my favorite part of the process is that moment, in composition or revision, where the lid on the poem fits snug, waiting for someone to come along and open it.

TMR: What is your advice to aspiring writers?

JP: Keep going.

Check out Jared’s work in the issue, Volume 3, Issue 1.

 

Lynn White–Interview

by Suzanna Anderson Creates

I generally write at home using the computer. I usually write a first draft fairly quickly, then I edit and edit over a period of days, weeks or months! I have a small notebook in my bag to scribble in if I get an idea while out.

I started writing in my teens and have written from time to time since then, but especially over the last 5 years.

I don’t really think about my audience, though it’s important that I have one. I would like my work to reach a wide range of people. I’m often surprised by who likes a particular poem.

All sorts of things inspire me to write—people, places, events memories…Sometimes ideas flood in, others not, but I can usually write to a prompt.

I love to be in the open air. I like gardening and wildlife. I love dancing and rock and blues music.

I think any aspiring writer has to find their own path. Creative writing groups help some by giving prompts and confidence. It’s important to read and learn from the writing that you like. Then have a go and try submitting the pieces you like best.

Check out Lynn’s work in the issue, Volume 3, Issue 1.

 

Guinotte Wise–Interview

by Suzanna Anderson Creates

The Magnolia Review: Describe your creative space. Do you work at home, in public spaces, etc.?

Guinotte Wise: Sort of a nook in the kitchen, looks like a Denny’s. If I want a Grand Slam, I cook it myself. My wife has an honest job fifty miles away and not much time.

TMR: What kind of materials do you use? Do you write by hand or type? What is your favorite writing utensil?

GW: MacBook Pro. Does that make me a pro? Stylist pens for jotting. I was given an elegant Mont Blanc but I forget to fill it so it gathers dust. It would add class to a pocket of my ragged chore coat, though. I’d get respect at the feed store.

TMR: What is your routine for writing?

GW: I’m like a bush pilot. Whenever the thing starts I fly it. Lately I’ve been trying to prepare for a sculpture show in Los Angeles, so that eats into my writing time.

TMR: How long have you been writing? When did you start writing?

GW: Since I learned to read and write. I had a little press when I was a kid, rubber type, I made a sort of newspaper, wrote libelous stuff about neighbors, put it out on the street. I worked in advertising for years, writing.

TMR: Who is your intended, or ideal, audience? Who do you write for?

GW: Anyone who likes a little noir, libelous stuff about neighbors, a poem, a story.

TMR: What inspires you to write? If you are blocked, what do you do?

GW: Everything inspires me. When I’m stuck, I weld—that unsticks me.

TMR: What other things do you do besides writing? Do you dance or play golf, etc.?

GW: I dance, play golf. Actually I caddied, which made me hate golf. I only dance for my dogs, who seem to enjoy it. I’m a sculptor. There is no balance in my life.

TMR: What is your favorite part of the creative process?

GW: The part where you can go do something else.

TMR: What is your advice to aspiring writers?

GW: Ron Carlson said, I’m paraphrasing, the best writing he ever did was twenty minutes after he wanted to leave the room. And I think it’s a good idea not to share what you write until after it’s quite done. My official advice is take no advice. Why would anyone take my advice anyway? I drive a 15-year-old truck, I limp, my last royalty check was $12.74.

Blog: http://www.wisesculpture.com/blog/

Resume Speed (Shorts) https://goo.gl/9GUaGv

Ruined Days (Thriller) http://goo.gl/LMXKSu

More books http://goo.gl/O9mBki

Check out Guinotte’s work in the issue, Volume 3, Issue 1.

 

Frances Howard-Snyder–Interview

by Suzanna Anderson Creates

The Magnolia Review: Describe your creative space. Do you work at home, in public spaces, etc.?

Frances Howard-Snyder: I mostly work at home. I have a small nook off the kitchen with a messy desk. I can often hear my children in other parts of the house, which is mostly good and sometimes a distraction. Sometimes I find a table in a cafe and work there with headphones.

TMR: What kind of materials do you use? Do you write by hand or type? What is your favorite writing utensil?

FHS: I usually write the very first draft by hand, and then type it up. I like to read a hard copy and make notes and then do more revisions on the computer. When I first came back to writing fiction five years ago, I wrote in pencil so that it would be easier to erase.

TMR: What is your routine for writing?

FHS: I try to write something every day but I don’t have a regular routine. Sometimes I write a lot and sometimes I write a little.

TMR: How long have you been writing? When did you start writing?

FHS: I started thinking seriously about writing when I was 16. But I’ve had long periods when I’ve done other things. I returned to it really seriously five years ago.

TMR: Who is your intended, or ideal, audience? Who do you write for?

FHS: Intelligent people.

TMR: What inspires you to write? If you are blocked, what do you do?

FHS: Read good writers. Just write whatever comes into my head. Mostly what comes out is garbage but sometimes I hit a vein of gold that I can use and then trash the rest.

TMR: What other things do you do besides writing? Do you dance or play golf, etc.?

FHS: Teach and read and write philosophy, play with my children and husband, walk around my beautiful lake (Lake Padden in Bellingham) read, watch Shakespeare, play chess.

TMR: What is your favorite part of the creative process?

FHS: I love the first draft. But I also love revision, carving something beautiful out of the big messy rock of first draft.

TMR: What is your advice to aspiring writers?

FHS: Write a lot. Submit a lot. Don’t get discouraged when your work is rejected. Keep failing better.

https://franceshowardsnyder.wordpress.com/

Check out Frances’s work in the issue, Volume 3, Issue 1.

 

Doug Bolling–Interview

by Suzanna Anderson Creates

 

  1. I work at home, usually in the same spot, favorite chair.

Though with sometimes a bit of roaming around room

To room in and out of shadows and sunlight, the coffee

And CDs helping. I like to think of Montaigne’s comments

About hiding away from the world’s distractions in his

Tower to trigger the writing. Once I lived in France for

A year and a half or so, thought it would be cool to

Scribble poems on scratch paper in the bistros along

The Left Bank—it didn’t work. Too many marvels

Going on table by table!

 

2. A pen begins it, carries on awhile then to the keyboard

Or typewriter. 0f course, it’s the mysterious little inner

Pen that drives the wagon.)

 

.       3.  No routine. It’s always something sudden, unexpected.

Once the spark comes it might go on for hours then dies

by its own rhythm.

 

  1. A long time.  Still remember with a shudder more or less

trying at age 11 or 12 to write a novel. Got maybe three

or four pages and gave up. But when I began again some years

ago I started with short stories then to poetry.

 

  1. (oops my cranky laptop won’t let me keep the left margin)

Just anyone who’s interested in joining the journey,

Preferably those who are already reading poetry, whether

Critically or for more or less innocent enjoyment.

 

  1. I believe it’s the absolute love of writing, wanting/needing to

Immerse in imagery, rhythm, how lines break, etc.

Blocking out happens often. Once, I tried to defeat it by

An act of will so to speak. Have since learned to let go,

Disappear. It comes when it comes, goes where it goes.

 

  1. Roaming, reading, getting out to rediscover the great green

Earth before it turns to cinders, connect with fellow sojourners.

 

  1. Hard to exclude anything much. Two moments do stand out.

 

  1. First, when an idea or image or line from another writer

(thinking here often of Pessoa, Lorca, Neruda) strikes

home and I have to do something with it. Then, later on,

the moments when the poem seems finally rounding out

and I get the confidence that I can bring it in.

 

  1. In another life I taught writing workshops and giving advice

went with the ice cream—but I back away from that now,

would rather leave it to others who know much more than I.

Something like figure out if writing is your love, your passion

And if it is go for it full speed, meaning both through the

Garden times and the blocks!  There may be wonders down

That rabbit hole.

Check out Doug’s work in the issues Volume 2, Issue 1 and Volume 3, Issue 1.

 

Devon Balwit–Interview

by Suzanna Anderson Creates

The Magnolia Review: Describe your creative space. Do you work at home, in public spaces, etc.?

Devon Balwit: I write at home at a standing desk made from a huge stack of books by a window that looks out over the neighbor’s roof.  If I’m lucky, I get to watch flickers and crows drop by.

TMR: What kind of materials do you use? Do you write by hand or type? What is your favorite writing utensil?

DB: I compose and edit on my laptop.  I love the immediate versatility it gives me for moving things around and changing word forms/verb tenses.

TMR: What is your routine for writing?

DB: I’m an insomniac.  I often wake up at 3:00 or 4:00 a.m.  If I can’t sleep for a couple more hours, I get up and start writing.  Either way, I’m upstairs writing by 5:00 or so.  I write until I leave to teach at 8:00.  I write again after work from about 4:00 until 9:00.  When I say “write,” I mean a mix of writing new poems, editing old ones, sending things off for publication, and trying to put together chapbook/book manuscripts.

TMR: How long have you been writing? When did you start writing?

DB: I have been a writer since I was in middle school, so for 40 years.

TMR: Who is your intended, or ideal, audience? Who do you write for?

DB: I write for any reader who responds to what I have to say.  I submit eclectically, and am happy to have published my work in feminist reviews, reviews that I think are read by younger people, those that I sense might be read by older people, “edgy, ” experimental reviews, and more traditional ones.

TMR: What inspires you to write? If you are blocked, what do you do?

DB: I am never blocked as everything inspires me.  I write poems inspired by images, quotations from books that I am reading, prompts, experiences I’ve had throughout the day, political events, conversations, dreams, and other poets’ poems.

TMR: What other things do you do besides writing? Do you dance or play golf, etc.?

DB: I play Frisbee with my goofy yellow lab, Oliver.  I take two or three walks with him throughout the day.  I love to read novels in both French and Spanish.

TMR: What is your favorite part of the creative process?

DB: Tapping that final period and rereading what I’ve written aloud.

TMR: What is your advice to aspiring writers?

DB: Do not be deterred by rejection.  Do not feel cowed by people who do not like what or how you write.  Understand that what people respond to–what journals respond to–is subjective.  You must be your own best/worst critic.  Listen to your own poems, interrogate them, see if they sound fresh, see if they are working hard, see if they are reaching.  Experiment with new forms and styles. Don’t be content to do the same thing.  Don’t be snooty about writing/publishing.  And finally expect many many rejections when you submit.  Be ballsy–keep submitting the same poem time after time and to place after place.  Often it takes 5, 6, 7, 10 tries before it finds the right home.  (Of course, revisit poems that have been rejected quite a bit…some DO need to be retired or seriously reworked…).  I am so grateful to a man in my poetry group who said that he has submitted the same poem to 23 or 24 places.  Initially, I would NEVER have thought to do that.

Check out Devon’s work in the issue, Volume 3, Issue 1.

Charlene Langfur–Interview

by Suzanna Anderson Creates

I think the most important task for a writer is to find their own voice and stick with it through thick and thin and be patient with it if it changes. Poetry takes time and patience and kindness. My view of life is that everything matters, and I try to explore this in my poems and essays and stories. How we can find ways to grow and get past difficulties. Coming of age in the 1960s and 1970s, I was taught by the confessional poet W.D. Snodgrass, who insisted I learn metrics. He emphasized the importance of knowing what I was breaking away from craft-wise, especially if I wrote free verse or in syllabic stress. The confessional poets began writing directly about the personal and about issues, civil rights, women’s rights, war and peace, most of all about the environment. I was a Syracuse University Graduate Writing Fellow at that time, and I am an organic gardener now, so I write about the land’s importance as much as possible. Adrienne Rich, one of the best contemporary poets of our time, tells us poetry is a dream of a common language for us all. I agree.

Charlene Langfur

Palm Desert, California

Check out Charlene’s work in the issues Volume 1, Issue 2 and Volume 3, Issue 1.