Interviews 2021 (17-24):
Wort, Reed, Atkinson, Koiter, Woo, Mitra, Biegelson, Corrigan

The Shore Interview #17: Kelsey Carmody Wort

Questions by Taylor N. Schaefer, Interview Editor

TNS: Each of your poems published in this issue of The Shore are doing very different work from each other, showcasing a dynamic range of poetic techniques and themes. For example, “I Watch My Girlfriend Put Poetry Under Her Microscope” seems to examine both the way we perceive others and the way they perceive us, as writers, through our art. It’s a lovely and intimate poem, and it gives us as readers a detailed impression of a person we’ll never meet. What techniques and images did you consider most important to focus on in order to create this impression?

KCW: I like that you mention perceptivity in this question, because I think that’s a concept I’m interested in conveying in this poem, and I’m honored that you pointed it out in this instance. In “I Watch My Girlfriend Put Poetry Under Her Microscope,” I want to capture the way it feels to look a photograph and be struck by it in a way that only happens when you really know someone, how we want to believe a baby photo is a way to know someone we already love even better. I saw this photo in a beloved’s house and was mesmerized by how it feels like a childhood picture can be a prophecy for who someone will become.

I was talking to a friend recently about the way declarative statements and seemingly objective observations can be charged with emotion and tenderness, which I think was something I was unknowingly trying to achieve in this poem. In the second stanza, I list details that feel devoid of emotional context in a way that feels as though they could potentially be found in the beloved’s search history, with a few pieces of specific insight from the speaker. When we lean into specificity enough when describing someone, it reflects a level of attention that implies care, and in this instance, deep fondness for that person. I wanted to be sure to include enough images surrounding the beloved’s fears and fascinations that it was clear that the speaker would listen to the beloved talk about anything she wanted and commit those details to memory.

TNS: “Gemini Drunkenly Scrolling Through Her Feed in the Bar Bathroom” captures the moment with long lines and exquisite soundwork. Combined, they set a rapid pace for this poem, making it pass in the blink of an eye. How is the sound technique you apply in this poem essential to the atmosphere you are creating?

KCW: I am obsessed with pop music. I love the glittery sheen that can be glossed on even the most gut-wrenching lyrics, the way the bass can feel like a second heartbeat when turned up loud enough in the car, how you can hear a chorus once and then know it forever. I think “Gemini Drunkenly Scrolling Through Her Twitter Feed in the Bar Bathroom,” is aiming for that same boisterous, glamorous, sticky quality that all of the pop music I love possesses. Sound is integral to emphasizing the catchiness and memorability of that music, and hopefully, this poem as well. Like my favorite music, this poem aims to have rhymes that aren’t exact or necessarily expected, but ring to the ear nicely, and hopefully in a way that the reader doesn’t feel is too overt. One of my favorite tools when writing a poem as voice-driven and personality-packed as this one is subtlety, and so while the content is looking to walk tightropes and breathe fire in a “look at me!” type of way, I wanted the sounds to be in charge of the lights, aiding the spectacle from a less obvious angle.

TNS: In all of your poems, you have a particular knack for titles. Though “Gemini Drunkenly Scrolling Through Her Feed in the Bar Bathroom” and “I Watch My Girlfriend Put Poetry Under Her Microscope” are titles that give us plain context and situate us in the poem, “Our Three-Quarter Phase” is not nearly as literal, and suggests a meaning much deeper than the surface. How do you think titles generally impact the meaning of a poem? What led you to this title, and how does it fit here?

KCW: I appreciate this question so much, because I have always had a hard time landing on a title! I am glad these worked well in this instance! I actually learned a lot about titles this year by writing a handful of two-line poems. When writing poems in the past, I would either have a title in my head, but wasn’t able to successfully build the poem around it, or I would write the entire poem and couldn’t find a title that didn’t either feel cosmetic or extraneous. When writing these two-line poems, though, the title ended up being so integral to the content of the poem (such little room to operate!), that I stopped looking at the title as either more or less important to the content of the poem, but rather as an active piece of the poem that happens to come first.

In “Our Three-Quarters Phase,” I wanted a title that was a bit more ambiguous because the relationship that this poem centers around is ambiguous as well. The speaker and Finn feel as though they’re on the precipice of something, but not quite there yet. I also find that I am drawn to titles in other poets’ poems that like to maintain some mystery, that keep unfolding to me. I am currently exchanging poems with a friend whose titles always feel like they unfold to me a bit more every time I read them. I’ll text him and say, “wait! I just discovered another thing about your title!” I love the idea that our titles live with each reader, and that maybe, someone else has an interpretation I haven’t thought of and could like even better.

TNS: Are there any journals or magazines you’re currently enjoying?

KCW: Of course! One of my favorite ways to discover and fall in love with journals now is to follow the publication pasts of contributors of journals I already love. I also love to discover new journals through my program mates’ publications as well. Currently, I love Nashville Review, underblong, Salt Hill Journal, Booth and MumberMag. Some long time favorites of mine include West Branch, Ninth Letter, Cream City Review, Passages North and The Offing.

TNS: Please speak to how two poems in The Shore (not including your own) are in conversation with each other.

KCW: There are so many poems in this issue of The Shore that struck me, but two poems that immediately had staying power for me and that I think speak well to each other are Becki Hawkes’s “Hidden Teeth” and Ashley Steineger’s “Grief Poem While Hiking.” Both poems have this gorgeous natural imagery that feels so encompassing of the subject matter that they are writing around. I also really admire how these poems are interested in both moments of stark directness and then moments of detail and metaphor that are able to transform feelings that are hard to turn to face into such clear, visceral images that completely reimagine the concepts at hand.

There are also moments of immense tenderness that completely caught me by surprise in both poems. In Hawkes’s poem, a tercet describes a snail moving over bricks, “inching its soft shape / into the smoked wet city / cell by cautious cell,” and near the end of Steineger’s poem, we get this amazing line break “hum of love song / sun dimmed by canopy.” I was in awe of the way both poems imbue these moments that slowed the poems down for me, softened me so much that I was double-struck by each poem’s incredible ending.

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Kelsey Carmody Wort is an MFA candidate in poetry at Purdue University. She loves her home state of Wisconsin, pop music, postcards with painted flowers and dancing around her kitchen.

The Shore Interview #18: Dakota Reed

Questions by Taylor N. Schaefer, Interview Editor

TNS: I notice that in this issue, your poems tend towards a circular nature. In “A woman in my neighborhood’s Facebook group asks, ‘where do the geese go at night?’” the poem begins with the titular question, and ends with the image of a woman in a goose costume, black and white feathers, and the phrase “some broken bird.” In “in the dream all the bees were dead,” images of wings, from bees to apple slices to butterflies, follow each other from the beginning to the end of the poem. Finally, in “The Shapes a Hand Can Take” the phrase “They chopped down the orange tree on my street” appears at the beginning of the first stanza and near the end of the second stanza. How is the cohesive, almost interlocking nature of imagery and words in your poems important to their work? Do you find this pattern occurring in other projects you are working on?

DR: I think the circular nature of the poems themselves mimics the way my brain is circling around these images, ideas, the way one thing connects to another unlikely thing, the cyclical, interconnective nature of everything we experience and see. I tend to use a lot of associative leaps in my work because I can so often see myself, or my experiences, reflected back in what I observe of the world. And those associations or moments of connection can be so enlightening. They can also ease the burden of loneliness. And they can even sometimes feel excruciating. But I think we can really learn about ourselves and about the human condition by looking outward into the natural world, by watching the way magpies react to death or the mating ritual of alligators. I think we can find ourselves in all of it.

This pattern does occur in much of my other work. I’ve been working on a long-form lyric essay for a few years now and it probably is the most circular piece I’ve written. It functions in sections of numbered prose poetry (much like Maggie Nelson’s Bluets) and includes alternating anecdotal vignettes, inclusions of scientific research, and lyrical moments of contemplation, exploring the relationship between human and animal, between the self and one’s space, dreamworld and reality. It slowly, almost meditatively, circles around a few different interlocking themes: living in a historically haunted house, alligators, chronic nightmares, femininity, violence, and healing.

I think that in my writing (and in my brain), there is this constant orbiting—little spinning planets of feeling or experience or observation revolving around one another, commanding a certain balance or lending light.

TNS: Both “A woman in my neighborhood’s Facebook group asks, ‘where do the geese go at night?’’ and “in the dream all the bees were dead” mention omens, touching on the idea that in some way our environment can tell us about our future. Do you write often about omens? Why?

DR: I do—not always intentionally or consciously, but they very often seem to make their way into my work, which is something I’ve only recently begun to realize. I’m not a particularly superstitious person, but I am certainly open and receptive to signs, omens, etc. I unwaveringly believe that God—or the universe, whatever you believe in—is in constant communication with us, whether sending signs of wonder or of warning. We just have to have our eyes open and our ears pressed to the sky. I so often return to Mary Oliver’s instructions: pay attention.

TNS: I understand that you previously worked as an editorial assistant for Crazyhorse, and you currently work as copyeditor for Atmosphere Press. How has gaining an editing perspective influenced your own writing process and the way you look at others’ writing?

DR: One thing I really began to notice and learn when reading poetry submissions for Crazyhorse is that there is a fine line between writing about oneself in a way that lends itself to universality, and purely self-indulgent writing. I don’t mean that to sound harsh—I think people should write whatever they want, and that writing poetry about one’s experiences can really aid in processing and healing and understanding oneself. I rarely write any poems where I am not the speaker and the poems are not about my own life, in some way or another. However, I’ve learned that those intimate, personal experiences in a poem need to at some point reach some kind of relatability or interconnectedness. And of course, by that I don’t mean the poem needs to conclude itself in some Hey reader, here’s how this poem fits into the grand scheme of the universe and its innerworkings way, but that it needs to extend far enough beyond the speaker that a reader can feel connected, included, or enlightened by whatever mirror shard they find within the poem’s lines.

TNS: Are there any magazines or journals you’re currently enjoying?

DR: American Chordata has become one of my absolute favorite journals in the last year. It’s Brooklyn-based, and published in print as well as online. They accept some really stunning photography submissions that are interspersed throughout each print issue, and the covers are always absolutely brilliant.

TNS: Please speak to how two poems in this issue of The Shore (not including your own) are in conversation with each other.

DR: I found many of this issue’s poems to be in conversation with one another, bouncing off each other or folded together at the corners like a bedsheet. I’m interested in the presence of the word ‘premonition’ in both Lucy Zhang’s “Maillard Reaction” and Dana Blatte’s “Premonition with Extras.” Both poems seem to point toward the issue of violence against women, or rather the inevitability of it. Blatte uses the image of a bird (“thin-boned, lace-necked”) to represent girlhood, though in a falsified, stifling sense. Zhang uses the image of another delicate, winged creature (“the butterfly flew too close to the fire”) in what feels like a similar indication, as it directly follows the speaker’s learned lesson of men’s inherent danger. The word ‘premonition,’ being a feeling, suggests a certain level of intuition, as well as leaves room for the possibility of it being wrong, or unfulfilled. However, the poems themselves move with this sense of surety of the same things they’re having premonitions about: “refuse every man’s reach because there’s always one hand that’ll choke your words from your trachea and seal your eyelids shut until you can only listen to the slurping of premonitions, made real” (Zhang); “If my life were a movie / I would be the dead girl in the alley”; “This is where the story goes wrong” (Blatte). I find the juxtaposition of and liminal space between the lack of finality that ‘premonition’ suggests and the absolution the poems themselves imply to be compelling. It also, to me, poses the question: what is sitting in the gap between the feeling and its certitude? Hope? Denial? Maybe both.

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Dakota Reed is a copyeditor for Atmosphere Press. She received her MFA in poetry from the College of Charleston, where she was a Woodfin Fellow and senior editorial assistant at Crazyhorse. Her work is forthcoming in Hayden's Ferry Review, has been published in Blood Orange Review and has been awarded the Poetry Society of South Carolina’s Nancy Walton Pringle Memorial Prize, College of Charleston’s MFA Creative Writing Prize and honorable mention in AWP’s Intro Journals Project.

The Shore Interview #19: Brittany Atkinson

Questions by Taylor N. Schaefer, Interview Editor

TNS: This poem, “Missing the Funeral,” has its foundations in experiences we can't access (the way a body might take up a coffin, a funeral the speaker couldn't attend), making them more real by describing things we can remember. The impact of moments like "The bag now bathes/ in its own rot: saturated and bottom-/ sunk, tea leaves black and frowning" laid next to lines such as "Yes, six feet is probably deep enough" definitely demonstrate the power of associative image, to allow the idea of "rot" to get much closer to "loved-one" than we would like. Do you use this method often in your work? Why did you choose it here?

BA: I do believe I use associative imagery in a lot of the work I write. As you’ve said, the poem itself is a lot about what can’t be accessed. I think that poems discussing larger ideas, such as death, beg to be grounded in something, in this case, small details like a tea bag rotting. Including visceral, small moments like that one allows readers to immerse themselves in the world of the speaker, but also to immerse themselves in their own experiences with death in a new way. We can’t see the way a body decomposes, but we can imagine and/or experience the way an abandoned cup of tea can rot. Most people spend their whole lives fearing the inevitability of death, so associating it with the mundane, such as a tea bag, also familiarizes death in a strange way.

TNS: "Missing the Funeral" explores a common experience for many of us, but it is also an experience (posed or not) that comes with a particularly heavy emotional weight, one that can easily overpower the rest of the poem with sentimentality. When writing about something like this, how do you push away from that sentimentality into art?

BA: It is certainly tough to not come off as overly sentimental in pieces that are about heavy emotions, such as death or love. I am sure I have written tons of drafts of poems that miss the mark and bathe in the sentimental. That said, I think I try to avoid doing so by grounding as much of the poem in image and sound as possible. Doing so drives the reader away from thinking “this is sad” or “this is happy” and allows for them to just experience the sounds of the lines and the images being drawn for them. You already mentioned the moment with the tea, but another example might be the following: “I did not see them shovel to / entomb your casket: a wooden beetle / burrowed beneath dew-blanketed / dirt.” With all the harshness of the “b” and “d” alliteration and the image of a casket as a wooden beetle, the reader is more likely to get wrapped up in that than thinking about abstract emotions. Staying away from abstract words is another key to not being saccharine in writing! Giving the reader something they can sink their teeth into is crucial.

TNS: You mentioned in your bio that you're currently in your first year of your MFA at Western Washington University. From your experience, what would you say are the benefits of an MFA program? What advice would you have for writers who are thinking of looking for a program themselves?

BA: I’m about to start my second year this fall, which is super exciting. The MFA so far has been wonderful, even with it being fully online my first year. So far, the greatest benefit has just been having a support system of other writers. Everyone in my cohort is so kind, smart, talented, and hardworking. It’s also nice to have so many professors that just love poetry as much as I do, and the space to explore my writing.

As for advice, I’d say the biggest thing is to start the process early. I began to prep what I needed an entire summer in advance, which made the process a whole lot easier. I drafted cover letters, narrowed down my list, prepped for the GRE, and so on. Other than that, just prioritize your creative sample! It’s truly the thing that schools look at the most. I was lucky that I did an MA before applying to MFA programs, so I had the opportunity to do an independent study right before I applied, allowing me to gather up the best work I could. Don’t be afraid to do an MA first if you don’t feel ready to tackle the MFA!

TNS: Are there any journals or magazines you're currently enjoying?

BA: I’ll go ahead and give a shoutout to Waccamaw and Bellingham Review, which are journals I’ve worked on/work on. Other than that, I have been loving THRUSH, Rust and Moth and Popshot Quarterly. All such great journals that everyone should give a look to.

TNS: Please speak to how two poems in this issue of The Shore (not including your own) are in conversation with each other.

BA: I’m always extremely interested in the ways that a magazine and team of editors decide to order the pieces in an issue. I think there is something to be said about pieces that appear next to each other, and that the placement alone allows for connections to be drawn. For me, this was evident in the placement of “Tongue Prophecy” by Melody Wilson appearing right before “Experiments with the Perception of Time” by Jared Beloff. For example, Wilson writes, “The cat knows this—/dissolves the list of preconceptions/we voice//with each sandy lick of its paws./Balloon, it says,/in one pink stroke,//God, it says in another.”  I loved how the cat’s paw ends up connecting to the “arm” in Beloff’s poem that follows it: “We feel earth’s imperceptible arm toppling/on its axis, twitching with a drone’s rhythm,” There is also something neat happening with the cat’s tongue in Wilson’s poem and the ending of Beloff’s: “forget/each grain, sip only sweetness clear as water.” In both, we end up in the location of the mouth, whether it be cat or human.

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Brittany Atkinson is a first-year MFA candidate at Western Washington University. Her work can be found in Barren Magazine, Electric Moon Magazine and Picaroon Poetry. When she isn't writing, she enjoys roller skating, thrifting and drinking vanilla oat milk lattes.

The Shore Interview #20: Jenn Koiter

Questions by Taylor N. Schaefer, Interview Editor

TNS The first thing I noticed about your poem, “Reading Tour,” is the way the voice and tone mimics that of a fairy tale: contractions are removed, the sentence structure is kept simple and brief. Is this a style you employ often, or is it particular to the "story" you're telling here?

JK I love that reading! I wasn’t thinking of fairy tales, specifically, but I was questioning stories and storytelling, so I was mimicking that, for sure. In hindsight, I think the stylistic choices you highlight were also a way of creating a structure for and some aesthetic distance from an emotionally charged topic, for both the reader and myself. I hope that structure gives the reader space to feel along with me without being overwhelmed.

TNS I understand you have a new collection, So Much of Everything, forthcoming from Day Eight in September! What advice would you have for any writers putting together their first poetic manuscript?

JK Yes, it’s such an exciting process! My advice is to make sure all of the work in the manuscript is strong, then take some time and live with the manuscript while you tinker with it. This was my process: I placed what I considered to be some of my very strongest pieces at the beginning and the end of the book and then worked to build an arc between them. Then three poet friends who are more accomplished than I kindly read the manuscript and gave advice. I tried out their suggestions and kept many, though not all, of them. Then I lived with the manuscript a little more and made increasingly fine tweaks. Of course, every book is different, and every poet is different. I have two long sequences in this book, for instance, which presented some unique organizational challenges. But I feel like a strong book will come out of listening to suggestions from people you trust, and ultimately following your gut. And don’t stress too badly: if the individual poems are all strong, you’re not going to be able to screw it up!

TNS You've noted that you are more of a storyteller than anything else. Why did you find poetry to be the best medium for you to tell the story of your new collection?

JK I wish I could control that! Poems are what came out when I sat down to think through these particular events and ideas. I was writing essays at the same time, and I actually tried to write “Reading Tour” as an essay. It wouldn’t go until I switched genres. There’s also a long sequence of poems about my boyfriend’s suicide and those poems just happened while I processed; poetry was all I could write. Sometimes, we have to let the work tell us what it wants to be; for me, that’s most of the time.

TNS Are there any journals or magazines you're currently enjoying?

JK The Shore, naturally! I mean it, though: you publish aesthetically varied, quality stuff. Generally, it depends on what I want to read. Smartish Pace is a perennial favorite. Barrelhouse, if I want to think about pop culture. One Art, if I want to break my heart. There’s a new journal called $ (a.k.a. Poetry Is Currency) which is really smart.

TNS Please speak to how two poems in this issue of The Shore (not including your own) are in conversation with each other.

JK This is a tough one to narrow down! So many great poems. A few poems in this issue play with the idea of being underground in interesting ways, but I’m going to choose the two aubades: Rebecca Patrascu’s “Slanted Aubade” and Majda Gama’s “East End Aubade,” both of which I adore. One of the delights of poetry is joining a conversation that has been going on for a very long time, and this is especially true when we work within poetic forms. Both of these poems turn the aubade (traditionally a poem about lovers parting at dawn) on its head, but in very different ways. Gama rejects the premise that dawn brings the end of intimacy: the real dawn is the lover, and if the lover sleeps, dawn has not come. In making the speaker’s attempt to greet the dawn a metaphor for moving through life, Patrascu eliminates the context of romance altogether to create one of the most stressful poems I’ve encountered—certainly the most stressful aubade. It’s like a bad dream just before waking. Dawn functions so differently in each of these poems! For Patrascu, dawn is a fraught deadline, a goal the speaker approaches asymptotically but never quite reaches, while for Gama, dawn reveals mess and mortality, but is ultimately immaterial. I love the way these poems stretch and redefine the aubade!

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Jenn Koiter’s poems and essays have appeared in Smartish Pace, Bateau, Barrelhouse, Ruminate, Rock & Sling and other journals. She lives in Washington, DC with three gerbils named Sputnik, Cosmo, and Unit.

The Shore Interview #21: Nancy Lynée Woo

Questions by Taylor N. Schaefer, Interview Editor

TNS: In your poem "S.O.S With Warble and Cell Tower,” you utilize large shifts in tone and rhetorical position— from call for help to call to action— from dream imagery to concrete reality. How did you come to these craft choices in the poem?

NLW: Honestly, I don’t really know! That’s just how my brain works. Sometimes, writing a poem feels more like a dam bursting than a careful stitching. This was one of those times.

As Diane Seuss recently said in an interview with Southeast Review, “I’m a poet where my primary strength is imagination.” I’ve learned how to make a home in the liminal space between what’s present and what could be. As a poet, I’m constantly wavering in between dreams and reality, calls for help and calls to action, the mundane and ecstatic, the best and worst imagined futures—a “semiprofessional dreamer” as Matthew Zapruder put it in Why Poetry (Ecco, 2017).

I also want to credit Eduardo C. Corral and his poem “Self-Portrait with Tumbling and Lasso” from Slow Lightning (Yale University Press, 2012). That poem is an outrageously delightful rollercoaster of language. It does surprising turns so well, and it’s sunk into my bones. I’ve written half a dozen or so “self-portraits” inspired by Corral. This one, however, ended up being more of an “S.O.S.” because it reaches beyond observation of the self to touch upon the edges of collective angst.

Motion over stagnation is the necessary work of hope, even if we have to zig-zag to get there. I try to have as much fun as possible in the leaps, even when the ground is miles below.

TNS: Do you often use poetry specifically as an avenue for social critique? Why do you think it’s important for art to function in this way?

NLW: Every writer holds a position and perspective within society, even if it’s not the main subject of their work. Of course, these positions and perspectives can always shift or be multi-dimensional. It’s possible to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time. Who isn’t swimming around in the messy middle?

I think poetry is a great space for honest confusion to romp about. In a supercharged political climate, I love reading poets who can capture their mind in motion on the page. If poems are “mystical documents,” as Mary Oliver said, it might be possible to reach a reader in that mysterious place where beliefs are formed, unformed and transformed. We are not static beings and if poetry can open windows to seeing things from different angles through language and metaphor, that’s valuable.

I tend to write toward the socio-political. This might be because I was trained as a sociologist, so I can’t not think about social systems, even when considering ecology. The current climate crisis was created by homo sapiens, so homo sapiens has a lot of work to do to protect the plants, animals, biomes, human societies and future generations who are hurt by the imperialist capitalist machine, which is completely out of control.

In the complicated 21st century, I believe that creating art can help us reclaim personal power. In making art, I own the means of production, even if it’s just me and a few words. In some small way, I wish to use my body of language to tip the scales. We need rising global consciousness to balance out the rising seas. So I skip my pebbles of poems out into the current to see what happens.

TNS: Clearly you're an accomplished artist, but you've also done great work bringing the arts to your community. Can you speak to your experience as a fellow and what those fellowships helped you achieve?

NLW: Thanks! I think arts and community go hand in hand; there is no art without participatory audience, and there is always a need for art. It’s a two-way exchange.

In 2015, I completed the Emerging Voices Fellowship with PEN America for writers who “lack access” to the traditional literary world. It was a difficult, challenging, eye-opening, and life-changing experience to encounter famous writers week after week, including some of my heroes, and be told that I could join their ranks if I work hard, believe in myself, stay curious, and write every day.

That last bit was virtually the same advice we got from every writer: “If you want to be a writer, you need to write every day.” I took on a duty to try and be as good as that fellowship believed I could be. I’ve lightened up a lot since then, but I’m very grateful for Emerging Voices; almost a decade later, that fellowship is still opening doors for me. Growing up, I didn’t know anyone who was a professional writer or artist; now I am surrounded by them.

Then, I received the Professional Artist Fellowship from the Arts Council for Long Beach in 2019, which awarded me money and resources to support my incorrigible habits of writing, teaching, and organizing community art events. I was able to display my work in an art gallery, and that was thrilling. This fellowship connected me to a job teaching poetry in elementary schools, so like PEN, the opportunity kept feeding my practice, both spiritually and materially.

That same year, I landed a fellowship at Idyllwild Writers Week, which is where my EV mentor Victoria Chang finally convinced me to attend Antioch for my MFA. Looking back on the path, everything is connected, and one thing naturally leads to another.

It’s incredibly important for artists to have support networks like these fellowships. I appreciate the entire interconnected ecosystem of the arts economy. I’m a dedicated writer, and I think I’ve got a lot of grit, but no artist works alone. We all rely on the goodwill of the broader arts community to keep thriving together.

I also appreciate editors in the literary ecosystem so much! Thank you for allowing me the space of this interview!

TNS: Are there any journals or magazines you're currently enjoying?

NLW: Yes, always! Recently, I’ve fallen stupidly in love with Waxwing. This poem especially, “Prelude to Survival,” by Nome Emika Patrick, really stirred me up.

I also had a poem published recently in Vagabond City Lit, and their entire issue 64 is incredible, full of rich, dense, epic meditations on the chaos of the world, which is really my favorite thing right now. I love their mission statement, where they especially welcome “20-somethings whose misery is dashed aside as hipster apathy, melodrama, overemotional.” Even though I’m 30-something, I resonate with that Millennial/Zoomer cry for acknowledgement: Isn’t the world kind of fucked up? Are you seeing what I’m seeing? ALL the feels ALL the time! That’s pretty much how I’m writing these days, so I appreciate that touchpoint.

There are too many others to name, but I also really enjoy the visual poetry in journals like Dream Pop and CTRL-Z.

TNS: Please speak to how two poems in this issue of The Shore (not including your own) are in conversation with each other.

NLW: As a Californian, I am naturally drawn to poems about rising temperatures, heat waves, and wildfires, so I am savoring the links between “How the Story Ends” by Mia Bell and “It’s not as if you haven’t heard the news” by Bill Neumire. These two poems make me feel right at home with their handling of climate change—part apocalypse anxiety, part sensory delight, part love poem to place or person and all glorious motion and freewheeling wordplay.

Both poems take the news as their subject. Bell states it outright with, “the changing climate, of course—600 fires in the last 3 days alone,” and though Neumire’s news is less specific, there’s a similar leaning toward the “92-degree afternoon” and “burning brush.”

Both poems braid regional or global news events with the intimately personal, careening from one subject to the next, expanding and contracting the scope, as if tipping over with the weight of tipping points.

Bell’s aphoristic subject seems to be a lover, as she loves “the explosion that you are, even if you burn 1,000 acres of me,” deftly weaving the ecosystems of land and romance together. Neumire explores apocalyptic coping (“drinking heavy for a Sunday // like they’re not sure Monday comes / this time”) alongside the simple pleasures of enjoying time with friends, almost forgetting about all the doom and gloom, perhaps with a dash of joy-guilt (“& didn’t we glisten / in chlorinated pools? Didn’t we guilt / out on the guilt-free menu?”). (I also love Bell’s nod to the globalized food chain with her “ethically produced block of tofu.”)

These bold, raucous poems swerve across the page, using white space to enhance a feeling of rumbling and rambling toward and then away from the overwhelming mental state of modern living. I am absolutely enamored with both pieces, as they speak to my own preoccupation with managing information overload, finding joy and embracing love amid the endless news of global chaos. 

I can’t help but notice there are a few other pieces in this issue that lean up against the idea of climate anxiety and some sort of ending. Considering this era of pandemic and the last few years we’ve been through, I have a special place in my heart for poetic pandemonium. Thank you so much!

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Nancy Lynée Woo is a poet, writer and community organizer. As the founder of Surprise the Line, a community poetry workshop, she believes in the power of the arts to bring people together. She has received fellowships from Arts Council for Long Beach, PEN America and Idyllwild Writers Week, and is an MFA candidate at Antioch University. Her third chapbook, Good Darkness, was named a Semi-Finalist in the Sunken Garden chapbook contest with Tupelo Press. Her work is largely inspired by the magic and power of the natural world. Find her online at nancylyneewoo.com.

The Shore Interview #22: Debarshi Mitra

Questions by Taylor N. Schaefer, Interview Editor

TNS: Two of my favorite lines from this issue comes from your poem "Morphogenesis:” "The past quivers like the flame of a candle./You are now as much a name/as much a thought." How do you tackle completely abstract concepts in your poetry? Did you approach them differently with "Morphogenesis?”

DM: Thanks for saying so. I suppose the quality of “abstraction” in this poem that you have alluded to has something to do with the pandemic, although I'm not entirely sure what. This poem was conceived during a particular “lockdown” that was imposed in India just after the first wave of the pandemic. This poem, in hindsight, is quite different compared to the ones I'm more accustomed to writing which are, more often than not, rooted in experience. This particular poem, however, stems from the lack of such experiences and interactions, so much so that one is forced to meet others only through virtual platforms or in webinars where people do become reduced to “a name” or “a thought”. One is forced constantly to reminisce about past times or daydream about better times to come. In fact, the title, “Morphogenesis,” also owes its existence to a particular webinar I attended where a scientist was elucidating several aspects of Morphogenesis through simulation studies. I was keenly aware of the particular moment in history which I found myself in and was, therefore, more than anything, trying to stack up language in interesting ways, trying to see if there is an emergent pattern which reflects our predicament and the dichotomies we contend with on a daily basis and chronicles our own fragmented selves with hopelessly shrinking attention spans and quick dopamine fixes.

TNS: What techniques do you consider when you're writing exceedingly short poems, particularly a poem like "the flick of a lighter?”

DM: I do have a fondness for short poems. I think such poems have a symbiotic relationship with the white page whereby it uses the white space to introduce certain gaps in the narrative and also improves upon the white page by nudging the reader through associations to inhabit a space which is purer and (dare I say) even sublime. While writing such poems I tinker with line breaks quite a bit, I like the disruptive effects a line break causes. This is central to such poems where I am trying to manipulate the ways in which a reader's gaze scans the page, using the tools at my disposal which are line breaks and lineation. This particular poem that you have referred to also relies on the final image, that of "shadows gathered/ to sharpen their blades.” Brevity also allows me to place the image on a pedestal, to elevate it and to direct the reader to this final point, where he/she is confronted with the bare image.

TNS: "Abscissa" defines moments by their space and difference from other moments, a point's distance from each axis of the graph. How do you create distance in this poem, not simply with space, but with language?

DM: I think in the poem "Abscissa," the very first line sets the tone which goes as: "All that's here/is already/in the process/of vanishing." This alienates the reader from his immediate surroundings and makes him/her receptive to what is to follow. The final inscrutable image, which I think is arresting despite its inscrutability, brings the reader to the edge of a precipice. The lines themselves resist a linear narrative flow and proceed instead by associative logic. This heightens, in my opinion, the sense of distance that you refer to.

TNS: Are there any journals or magazines you're currently enjoying?

DM: I quite like a number of magazines and browse through them periodically: Thrush Poetry Journal, Berfrois, The UCity Review, Rattle, The Mad Swirl, Paris Review and The Shore of course.

TNS: Please speak to how two poems in this issue of The Shore (not including your own) are in conversation with each other.

DM: In Julia Watson's stunning poem, “The Playlist Reaches At the Bottom of Everything” we are made privy to the dynamics of a difficult relationship, which ends with a note of promise. This reminds of a few lines from Vismai Rao's poem: “Ode to this and that.” Those remarkable lines read as: "We grow to learn that some words/ like cellophane are meant to remain invisible,/ existing/ only to carry the specific burden of another." Thus through language one is empowered even to "carry the specific burden of another." This is exactly, in my opinion, what Julia Watson aspires to do through her poem, which becomes above all an act of empathy.

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Debarshi Mitra’s debut book of poems, Eternal Migrant, was published in 2016 by Writers Workshop. His second book, Osmosis, was published by Hawakal in 2020. His works have previously appeared in anthologies like Kaafiyana, Wifi for Breakfast and Best Indian Poetry 2018 and in journals like The Scarlet Leaf Review, Thumbprint, Guftugu, The Seattle Star, The Pangolin Review, Leaves of Ink, The Sunflower Collective, Coldnoon, Indiana Voice
Journal, The Indian Cultural Forum, among others. He was the recipient of the The Wingword Poetry Prize 2017, the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize 2017 and was twice longlisted for the TFA Prize.

The Shore Interview #23: Daniel Biegelson

Questions by Taylor N. Schaefer, Interview Editor

TNS: “(ק) :: To See What You Cannot See” displays a fantastic and complex use of lyric concepts of performance and perspective as it explores the binaries of multiple identities, characters and concepts. Why do you feel the lyric was the ideal choice for the construction of this poem?

DB: Well… it may be a choice by default…or a choice made by previous commitments. I tend to think of poetry as a place/space outside of narrative, which then, for me, foregrounds the lyric mode. If the self is constantly being hailed by competing and overlapping ideologies, identities, obligations, then the self is constantly shifting, turning, modulating, accepting, rejecting, incorporating, refashioning, experimenting. So the lyric mode, I think, fosters contingency without necessitating closure. Perhaps, the lyric is more mimetic of thought. For me, the lyric also arises from and encompasses prayer, and prayer raises the question of who is praying, to whom do we pray, are prayers heard, are we hailing and/or hailed, etc.

TNS: The Hebrew letter Kuf (ק) is redefined in the title of this poem as a verb: to see what you cannot see. Linguistically, this letter represents two opposite concepts that are continuously warring with each other, often defined as “holiness” versus “animalistic tendency.” Can you speak about the role Kuf plays in this poem and how you utilized its traditional interpretation in the second section?

DB: The poem is part of a larger book-length sequence—an associative meditation on the acrostic Jewish prayer Ashrei and the Hebrew alphabet. The line of the prayer for the letter Kuf (ק) begins with the Hebrew word Karon, which can be translated as “close,” and the line argues that G-d is close to all who call in truth. The word Kadosh, which means “holy,” also begins with Kuf (ק). At the same time, Kuf (ק) means “monkey” in Hebrew and can suggest the animalistic tendency to imitate or ape. So the poem takes up the kind of act of creation—the making of images—which both helps us to see ourselves—to bring ourselves closer to ourselves--and helps us to achieve distance from ourselves. This is often figured as coming closer to our holy selves, but I didn’t want to reinscribe the binary that privileges the soul over the body, so the poem refuses to reject our embodied experiences. This is fraught for me, personally, as I engage elsewhere in the series, because my own body has been compromised, so to speak, in ways that have forced me to reconsider the self and my own fractured identity.

TNS: At the end of the first section, you write, “I am still working out the variables of my belonging.” Do you often write about conflicts of identity? Why do you feel poetry might be an ideal medium for this?

DB: And so we circle back to the lyric. One could argue that each poem offers up its own definition of poetry. Lately I have found myself writing about conflicts of identity—identity as contingent, multiple, shifting. Here we are again. I feel very other where I am. But—then, I think, there are (at least) two complicating factors with this statement. First, who is “I,” particularly if this “I” and the feeling of being “other” is relative to history, geography, and culture? (So maybe who, where, and when are the more accurate questions. Currently, I’m thinking a lot about the category of embodied time.) Second, I have been struggling with the way the term “the other” has become essential to our contemporary way of talking about difference and trying to replace it in my own thinking in poetry with the word “stranger,” or at least trying to think through the variances between these words and their valances. On the one hand, the term “the other” seems to suggest, to me, an unknowability, and while we may each be unknowable—an irreducible singularity unto ourselves--we are also all each common. However, the term “the stranger” seems to be conditional in a way that leaves open the possibility of ethical encounter. We are strangers now but need not always be—so the word offers us the possibility of understanding.

The Torah contains multiple commandments to embrace, feed, clothe the stranger, and this is predicated on a kind of understanding of the estranged condition of being once a stranger. As it is written, “for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” I may end up—through testing in the process of poetry—rejecting or finding this distinction between “the other” and “the stranger” to be a dead end. We’ll see. You’ve caught me in process, as we are always in process. But here is the answer (at least for now) of why poetry. Poetry can be a kind of testing in language, a kind of working through of what we believe and don't believe. As George Oppen argued, “the great many things one believes or would like to believe or thinks he believes will not substantiate themselves in the concrete details of the poem.” I take this idea in a slightly different direction but find it a valuable claim for language and poetry. That is, in my poems and writing, I don't tend to erase this process of working through and testing to arrive at a well-wrought urn. I enjoy reading various modes of poetry—the well-wrought poem with astonishing turn and landing included—but I don't generally write in this mode.

I suppose I would also say that we often collapse the category of identity with the category of being—as if identity and self are equivalents. Poetry can be a place for the contingent to take shape, dissolve and form again, a space for the polyvocal, or the varied register, the association and the allusion, the layering of time and thought. In simplest terms, I think of my poetry as music and collage, or even simpler, the music of thought. At this point in my life, I hear so many ever-present ideas and voices—to speak or listen—I have to focus on shifting some self/selves to the fore while all the other music and noise keeps on keeping on in the background. It’s hard to discuss in a sense, since the nearer in thought we get to our many selves the more our language becomes metaphorical, perhaps, by necessity.

TNS: Are there any journals or magazines you're currently enjoying?

DB: I am currently digging Guesthouse, Court Green, Puerto Del Sol, Interim, Breakwater Review and The Bennington Review, but really there are so many wonderful journals both in print and online out there—we live in a time of poetic abundance.

TNS: Please speak to how two poems in this issue of The Shore (not including your own) are in conversation with each other.

DB: There are so many immersive poems in this issue—and I am thrilled that my poem is sitting alongside such an array. Liane Tyrrel’s “You Can’t Even Imagine” is just a marvelous little philosophical engine of a poem. And I always want to spend time in the mystery of poems like Jake Bailey’s “Darkness.” David Dodd Lee’s poem “After the Golden Age” is a vital multi-layered allegory that seems to capture something of the apocalyptic air of our contemporary moment. The feeling of the ephemeral—of simultaneously living a life apart from and part of the turning world seems to inform many of the poems in this issue. Maybe it’s the zeitgeist. Many people seem to be living lives of vertiginous extremes where joy and creativity and rage and despair are intertwined. Two poems that specifically speak to each other, or perhaps better said rebound off each other in interesting ways, are Michael Quattrone’s “Spring Regret” & and Mary Rose Manspeaker’s “Conditional.” Both poems seem to take up the relationship between human beings and the world outside or beyond us and gesture toward what our thinking and actions have wrought in either ecological or philosophical terms. Manspeaker’s poem approaches this question through a more Stevensian lens, but both poems complicate and explore a kind of creative destruction or destructive creation.

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Daniel Biegelson is the author of the book of being neighbors (Ricochet Editions) and the chapbook Only the Borrowed Light (VERSE). He currently serves as Director of the Visiting Writers Series at Northwest Missouri State University as well as an Associate Editor for The Laurel Review. His poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Cream City Review, Denver Quarterly, DIAGRAM, FIELD, The Minnesota Review and RHINO Poetry, among other places. Find him at danielbiegelson.com

The Shore Interview #24: Brittney Corrigan

Questions by Taylor N. Schaefer, Interview Editor

TNS: “Roadkill Afterlife” plays on the established idea of a still life by changing the subject, then offering three perspectives of appreciate that subject instead of one. Why was it important to you to bring in alternate perspectives in this poem?

BC: The idea for this “roadkill three ways” approach came from the National Geographic story that is cited in the epigraph. The article details all the ways in which animals killed by vehicles can continue to have a sort of “life after death.” I was interested in focusing closely on three possibilities of what might happen to these animal bodies, using careful attention to detail to create a feeling of reverence instead of the perhaps more common reaction of revulsion. The still life quality of the poem was inspired by artist Kimberly Witham, whose work is referenced in the second stanza. I was drawn to using multiple perspectives in the poem in order to examine the ways in which what any of us might leave behind can affect/benefit/influence those who come after us.

TNS: You’ve explored a wide variety of topics in your work over your career, but recently much of your work (and your forthcoming collection, Solastalgia) focuses on the environment and the human relationship with the organisms that exist within it — how are those ideas at play in “Roadkill Afterlife”?

BC: After finishing the manuscript for Solastalgia, I found that the subject matter was still very much of interest to me, and of importance in the current state of our world. I had more to say. I then came across an article in the New York Times about wildlife crossings and I became interested in the effect of roads on the animals whose habitats they run through. To me, roads are emblematic of the intersection of the human world and the wild and serve as a stark reminder of how easily we as humans separate ourselves from the rest of the creatures on this planet, always putting ourselves first. I decided to write a series of poems exploring the relationship of animals and roads, looking both at wildlife crossings (our attempt to fix the damage we have done to ancient migration routes and the health of animal populations) and, as in “Roadkill Afterlife,” what can happen to animals that interact with roads.

TNS: Previously much of your work has been in poetry, but you’ve been publishing short fiction and in your bio you state you’ve started work on a new short story collection. Where do you see connections in the craft of poetry versus fiction? How has your background in poetry affected your transition to writing and publishing short stories?

BC: I wrote short fiction as a child but then set it aside for the majority of my writing career in favor of poetry, thinking I didn’t have any stories to tell that would be longer than a single poem or small group of poems. But about five years ago I had an idea for a story that continued to haunt me and I decided to try my hand at fiction. Short stories are one of my favorite genres to read and I’ve fallen in love with them from behind the scenes as a writer, as well. I consider myself a poet first and I think that aesthetic comes through in my stories. I’d call my style “poetic fiction,” as I rely more on setting, description, character and imagery than on plot or dialogue to tell the story. The short story collection I am currently working on also deals with issues of climate change, extinction and the Anthropocene age (like my most recent poems) and I’ve very much enjoyed exploring the same topics in two different genres. I find that the stories and poems are in conversation with one another and I love the challenge of presenting my work both within the concision of poetry and through the more in-depth realm of short fiction.

TNS: Are there any journals or magazines you're currently enjoying?

BC: Yes! I absolutely love Orion for its wide range of articles and writing about the environment and its stunning visual presentation of the natural world through photography and art. I’m also quite smitten with Terrain.org, and not just because they’ve published my work. I look forward to every new poem, short story and essay that appears in their virtual pages. I can also easily lose myself in an issue of Ecotone, with its gorgeous treatment of all aspects of writing about place. Other current favorite journals include Sixth Finch, Sky Island Journal, Book of Matches and the recently re-launched The Dodge.

TNS: Please speak to how two poems in this issue of The Shore (not including your own) are in conversation with each other.

BC: Two poems I’m drawn to from this issue are “Mustard Seed” by Shannon K. Winston and “Woman as Xeriscape” by Stefanie Kirby. I admire how in each poem the female body is inextricably linked to the natural world. I see the poems in conversation with each other as they explore how identity is shaped by the earth and the living world. In each poem, repetition plays a key role: I’m swept up in the repeated lines in Winston’s pantoum and I follow the echoes of the subtly repeated words and phrases in Kirby’s. The effect of this technique in both poems is a kind of conversation in itself and reading the poems one after another I can hear the woman in Kirby’s poem talking to the girl in Winston’s. In particular, the line “Her art project grows and grows into a landscape/that equals her body” in “Mustard Seed” seems to be in dialogue with the line “Your body/a landscape emptied in thirst” from “Woman as Xeriscape.” It is this kind of serendipity in a literary journal (being of course a serendipity curated by gifted editors) that keeps me turning the (virtual) page to find out what’s next and see how the conversation continues.

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Brittney Corrigan is the author of the poetry collections Daughters, Breaking, Navigation and 40 Weeks. Solastalgia, a collection of poems about climate change, extinction and the Anthropocene Age, is forthcoming from JackLeg Press in 2023. Brittney was raised in Colorado and has lived in Portland, Oregon for the past three decades, where she is an alumna and employee of Reed College. She is currently at work on her first short story collection. For more information, visit http://brittneycorrigan.com/.