https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/feb/18/iowa-man-creates-literary-journal-while-supporting/
But here is the email exchange between Amy and me.
"1.) You refer to yourself on your website as a "hybridwriter." What does this term mean to you, or rather, what are you trying to convey by using this term?"
My own definition of hybridwriter seems to change each year. I first thought of hybrid writing as something that experiments and pushes the boundaries of what, separately, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, images, documents, etc. can "do". Then at the 2012 AWP I attended back-to-back panels around feminist and political writing and both panels included hybrid styles (as well as collaboration) as ways to define each form. I recently fell in love with Rose Metal Press' Family Resemblance: An Anthology and Exploration of Eight Hybrid Literary Genres, edited by Marcela Sulak and Jacqueline Kolosov. The book is divided in hybrid genres: "lyric essay, epistolary, poetic memoir, prose poetry, performative, short-form nonfiction, flash fiction, and pictures made of words." I realized these are the forms I always lean to. Maybe all of these things would include a "working definition." If anything, maybe a hybridwriter's concern is to challenge notions of Patriarchy, privilege, and such.
http://www.rosemetalpress.com/Catalog/familyresemblance.html
"2.) Your work seems to share themes, often touching upon topics of social justice. Why do you focus on these subjects, and moreover, what role do you see contemporary literature playing in addressing them?"
Beginning poetry workshops often start with the individual experience as an approach to write those first poems, which is great. Mine grew into realizing I could address the public experience through my private experience--that the public and private reflect each other. It's something I consider in my approach to writing. I see that in what I enjoy reading, too.
Maybe I am already saying a given, but I enjoy reading Historical Fiction to look for how a writer addresses her or his concerns for themes of racism, sexism, "homophobia," etc. of today. Many films and television shows are taking this approach. It feels like with the Black Lives Matter movement, there are so many films and shows coming out of this: Selma, 12 Years a Slave, and the recent The Birth of a Nation (so glad they reclaimed this film title!).
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/27/business/media/fox-searchlight-bids-17-million-for-the-birth-of-a-nation.html?_r=0
For part of my own Black Lives Matter activism as a White ally, I am at work on a hybrid novel, trying to avoid and point out the novel's historical role. I realized I didn't want to write in the "novel form," but will use hybrid genres to "tell the story."
http://dennisetzeljr.blogspot.com/2016/01/what-is-novel.html
http://dennisetzeljr.blogspot.com/2016/01/novels.html
"4.) You live, write, and teach in Topeka, KS. What, if anything, do you find inspiring about the city and/or the midwest?"
Alongside what you write in your article, I have found what can come out of place. I love the Tall Grass Prairie, how sky and earth match up with a flat horizon, and stargazing on the prairie. I was boggled by how "romantic" these things sound until actually experiencing them. I continued asking, "Is this real, or am I lending emotions to being out here?" It is real.
Maybe on another less-romantic note, I have loved researching Kansas history for my writing and acknowledgement of the fight to end discrimination towards POC. John Brown became a way for me to come up with what I could do as a White ally:
https://dennisetzeljrjohnbrown.blogspot.com/
In school, history was boring to me. I received a sympathetic D in high school. Now, I can share my love for history with my sons. They talk about John Brown, John Henry, and even asked the question, "Why would someone want to shoot Martin Luther King?"
Knowing that I am in the area where the first battles for the Abolitionist movement were fought, where Brown v. Topeka Board was the case used to begin dismantling segregation in schools, I can feel the work that still needs to be done.
"There are some very good writers, poets, artists of all kinds who think that politics should be separate from art, because they just make each other worse. Is it accurate to say that you don't believe this, that you in fact have found a way to make political art valuable in an aesthetic sense?"
I can see why people would want their art to be art, and, sure, there are histories of movements art has gone through to change how art "is"--but isn't there that other side? About what is happening in culture and politics? Like Pollack via World War II?
Adrienne Rich answered the question for me in her speech-turned-chapbook Poetry and Commitment. Have you read it? I love that book! She would say, and I agree, that choosing what to make as art is still a political act in not choosing to be political.
Oh, here is part of it online. Mark Doty had this to say: "And if the critic in his position of aesthetic purity believes that poems suffer from it then perhaps we have labored under a hobblingly narrow definition of poetry, a fiction of a realm in which words in their harmonies and shadings operate and are removed from the world in some sacred grove. That idyllic glen, if it ever existed, was entered by human traffic long ago. And where people live inequity resides."
Here is what she said: "But we can also define the aesthetic not as a privileged and sequestered rendering of human suffering, but as news of an awareness, a resistance which totalizing systems want to quell, art reaching into us for what is still passionate, still unintimidated, still unquenched."
I love poets. They are the resistance. They are geniuses. I hope I can be one someday.
http://www.nationalbook.org/nbaacceptspeech_arich.html#.VqkjOPkrLIU
6.) Your website says that you lead "writing to heal" workshops. Can you talk a bit about what goes on during these workshops and/or what it is that participants try to achieve by attending them?
Maybe my approach comes from having parents who were in the health care field: one an RN, the other a nurse therapist. I've lead workshops where social workers, therapists, and such wanted to learn prompts and approaches to take back to their clients in working with their recoveries. Also, we all sometimes need that extra thing to help us--from what I know about my own experiences with using poetry as an additional aid with depression and anxiety.
Poetry can call out social injustices and act as sites for
activism. However, poetry can also help with the traumas, losses, and
other burdens that come from living. Writing poetry isn’t simply
catharsis, but can lead to healing out of the search for understanding,
which is my guiding aesthetic. In other words, I see writing as my
attempt to create a poetic alchemy, to create gold out of lead.
(Note: I borrowed what is in italics from what I said in an interview with The Kansas City Star: http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/books/article54667740.html#storylink=cpy)
So I lead those workshops with no-fail prompts to open up the world
of figurative speech, or writing out of honesty and authenticity, and
all of those notions people without poetry writing experience already
know about poetry.
If anything, people leave the workshop with a couple of poems, lists, and strategies to continue with.
No comments:
Post a Comment