Monday, April 26, 2021

TBR: All These Hungers by Rick Mulkey

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe!  

  


We don’t expect an elevator pitch from a poet, but can you tell us about your work in 2-3 sentences?

 

I’ve often thought of a passage by George Eliot: “It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them. How can we ever be satisfied without them until our feelings are deadened?” In many ways, All These Hungers explores this same paradox of desire as a hunger for its own continuation, and how the role of hunger and consumption in its many forms shapes our personal stories and our relationships with family, friends, the natural world, and even our approach to politics and religion.

 

Which poem/s did you most enjoy writing? Why?

 

The poem I most enjoyed writing was “Cured.” First, I don’t know that I’d ever written a poem addressed to a specific person. I’ve written poems about individuals, and poems in which the “you” existed and was addressed, but that “you” was often a mixture of several people or an imagined individual or audience more than a single person directly addressed. Plus, “Cured” was the poem that brought together several of my interests in this collection: the region of the country, Southwest Virginia, where I was born and raised, the role of religion and the spiritual in our lives, the ways in which we are all connected by our hunger for food and drink, for acceptance and friendship, for love. It is a political poem, but, I hope, not too overtly political. Plus, it is a poem about bacon.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

I write very slowly. I’m not someone who can complete a poem in a couple of hours. It can take me days, even weeks. In some cases, I may come back and work on a poem over months or even years before I’m done with it. So, the lows for me almost always have something to do with whether or not I’ll finish a collection. It is always a multi-year process for me. As for the book’s road to publication, I find the submission process the most stressful. Each of my previous books was published by a different press, so once I finish a manuscript, I have this sense of dread about the submission process and having to start that all over again. When I first began sending this manuscript out, I sent it mostly to contests, and almost immediately it was selected as a finalist at a couple of those contests, so I thought acceptance and publication might happen quickly. But it didn’t. Before I knew it, I was nearing the date that would start the second year of submission, and I was feeling pretty low about the situation. Then, fortunately, three different publishers showed interest, and now the book is out in the world. Of course, now that this book is published, I can start worrying about whether or not I’ll write another one.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Since I’ve made a living as a writing teacher, I’ve given lots of writing advice over the years. But the one piece I always come back to is to read as much and as widely as you can. I can’t stress how important this is. I read poetry, fiction, especially short fiction, nonfiction, science, history, and biography. All of it informs me, and I hope it makes me a better writer. No one can be a successful writer without reading actively and obsessively. In this age of technology and social media, it is too easy to overlook the importance of informed, careful reading. I think it is valuable to know the best contemporary writers, but also know that body of literature that precedes us. The best writers I’ve known have always been some of the best and most avid readers, too. Beyond that, however, the greatest obstacle is lack of perseverance. Desire and energy make up for many shortcomings in terms of natural ability. It helps to have talent, but willpower and drive can carry us through lots of inevitable disappointments and rejections.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

What surprised me most in the writing of this book is how often I went to closed forms to find my way into a poem. While the end product isn’t always a sonnet, villanelle, or pantoum, several of these poems are in those forms, and other poems are influenced in some way by various forms. “Velveeta” uses a variation on rhyming quatrains, for instance. I was reading lots of Metaphysical and Romantic poets during the years I worked on this collection, and perhaps that had some impact on the way I thought of form, too.

 

How do you approach revision?

 

For me the most enjoyable aspect of writing is revision. I’m generally horrified by having to start a new poem. I envy novelists who have a general idea of where they are going with their writing each day they go to work on the book. With each poem, I’m starting all over again with all the fear and self-doubt that a new start brings with it. Plus, I rarely have a clear vision of the poem when I begin a new one. I mostly start by obsessing over a sound or image, or there is a sentence or phrase I have stuck in my head, but I don’t know where this might lead me. This is why I love the revision process. Once the first draft is completed, I can go back and work on a poem without that fear of the blank page, and with the solace of knowing I have a place to start the day’s work and a direction to explore.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

As you might guess, a book titled All These Hungers has lots of food references and associations. While the book deals with plenty of subjects that aren’t food related (dung beetles, for instance), you’ll find poems about bacon, whisky, peaches, pickles, and one of my favorite dishes, haggis, in a poem titled “In Defense of Haggis.”  People who’ve never tried it are horrified by the idea of haggis, but I’ve been eating it since my trip to Scotland many years ago for a writing residency at Hawthornden Castle. Because of certain U.S. regulations, it isn’t possible to have real Scottish haggis shipped to the U.S., so I’ve discovered a couple of recipes that I can make at home. I’ll share one for a very simplified version of haggis that is quite different from real haggis but is remarkably close to the texture and taste of the real thing. I hope you’ll give it a try with some mashed potatoes and mashed rutabaga, and a glass of your favorite single malt scotch.

 

*Simple Haggis

Ingredients

·      1/2 tbsp butter 

·      1 large onion

·      1 tsp ground black pepper (I add a little more because I like mine very peppery)

·      3/4 tsp ground coriander

·      1 tsp nutmeg

·      1 tsp allspice

·      3/4 tsp dried thyme or fresh, slightly chopped if fresh

·      1/2 tsp cinnamon

·      1 lb ground lamb 

·      ½ lb chicken livers (ground or chopped)

·      1 cup stock (I use chicken, but I think vegetable would work, too)

·      4 oz pinhead oatmeal (I sometimes toast this but it is ok if you don’t)

Instructions

1.          Preheat the oven to 350F.

2.          Warm the butter in a pan. Finely dice the onion and cook over a medium heat in the butter until softened, about 5-7 minutes.

3.          Meanwhile chop the chicken livers. Sometimes I will mince them in a food processor.

4.          Add the spices and thyme to the onion and cook a minute then add the ground lamb and chicken livers.

5.          Brown the meat. Once it cooked through, add the stock and cover. Simmer for around 20-25 minutes.

6.          Next, add the oatmeal, mix well and transfer to an oven dish (I use a cast iron Dutch Oven so I don’t have to worry about this step, but any oven proof dish will work.)

7.          Cover the dish and put in the oven for 30 minutess.

8.          Remove the lid and cook another 10 minutes.

9.          Serve with mashed potatoes and mashed rutabaga.

10.        *This is adapted from a recipe from Caroline’s Cooking. There are also plenty of good vegetarian recipes available online, too.


*****

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR:  www.rickmulkey.com


WATCH VIDEO OF THIS AUTHOR READING: https://fb.watch/4IeTE09Qvr/


BUY THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/1950739031/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_208PM1QYFGEWSEFHB7VA


READ AN EXCERPT FROM THIS BOOK: https://www.brickroadpoetrypress.com/rick-mulkey



Monday, April 12, 2021

TBR: An Inventory of Abandoned Things by Kelly Ann Jacobson

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe!

 


Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

The book is a collection of linked stories that both tell the story of a pregnant graduate student separated from her wife and form an inventory of the Florida panhandle. The biggest question in the book is what it means to fight the land for a home, and how that fighting with a place can actually make you fall in love with it.

 

Which story did you most enjoy writing? Why? And, which story gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

My favorite story in the collection is probably “Insect Killer.” I love stories that challenge me, and “Insect Killer” contains three separate encounters with three separate kinds of ants, all serving as metaphors for different phases of the character’s time in Florida. So it’s my favorite story, and yet also the most challenging—kind of like the Florida landscape where I encountered all of those ants!

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

This book was purely a work of personal art. I wrote it for myself—to document all of the strange and wonderful (and very terrible!) things I had experienced during my time in Tallahassee. It’s an interesting book in that it’s part nonfiction—almost all of the natural details are drawn from my time there—and part fiction, because the characters and relationships are completely fabricated. (Writing a story where the partner is 100% supportive does not make for good fiction!) Then I sent it off to some chapbook contests, since chapbooks are hard to publish outside of dedicated venues, and never really thought much about it. I love Split/Lip and have been a fan of theirs for many years, but I certainly didn’t think they would select my book! There are so many wonderful authors who submit! What a reinforcement of the idea that writers must first and foremost write for themselves, and write the stories that they need to tell, even if they don’t necessarily have a publication plan, because you never know whether a book will sell or whether it will sit on your computer for all of eternity. 

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Writing should be fun. I certainly have written books that have challenged me or gotten me stuck for a while, but overall, I think that writing should be an enjoyable process—whatever that means to you. It’s not financially rewarding enough to spend time doing it otherwise. In my classes, I have my students do a ton of creative exercises, from acting out their battle scenes to drawing weapons on pieces of paper and then exchanging them. I have to break them out of their high school mindset of the five-paragraph essay, and out of their fear of producing something a teacher might tell them isn’t right. I want them to start at the point of silly-fun, and only after that, when they’re sitting there smiling at their papers, do I move them to emotionally-challenging-but-still-fun.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

The ending surprised me. I often don’t know the endings of my books—or I know only the beginning and ending but literally nothing between those two points. I don’t want to give anything away, but I wasn’t sure whether these characters would stay in Florida or not, and I was fascinated to find out what path they chose.

 

How do you approach revision?

 

So revision is basically my worst enemy. I hate it. I read about writers who describe how much they’ve come to love revision over time, and…I’m not one of them. I basically live in a book while I’m writing it, and then, when I finish it, it’s dead to me. This is not to say I think my books are perfect—far from it! I just am willing to write a book that doesn’t work, acknowledge that a few months later, and then put it in a computer folder, never to be read by anyone but me. If I really, really, really care about a book enough to revise it, I have to start the book over from the beginning. On the plus side, this makes me a very easy writer to work with during the editing process—an editor suggests a revision, and, having moved on and completely distanced myself from the work, I can apply that revision as suggested with very few exceptions. Some people use short stories to practice their craft—I just happen to use novels and collections as well.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

I wish! There’s an apple pie in the book, but it’s store-bought, which is an important detail in that story. I ate so many wonderful foods in my time down south—my favorite was the shrimp & grits and hush puppies from Jonah’s in Thomasville, Georgia, which is pretty close to Tally—but as a part-time single parent when my partner was in Virginia and full time PhD student, I didn’t have much time to cook!

 

***

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR:  www.kellyannjacobson.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://www.splitlippress.com/an-inventory-of-abandoned-things

 

 

 

 

Monday, April 5, 2021

TBR: Worn by Adrienne Christian

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe!



We don’t expect an elevator pitch from a poet, but can you tell us about your work in 2-3 sentences?

Worn is a collection of Black love stories that all feature clothing in some way. “Love” here encompasses all kinds of love – agape, filial, and eros.

 

What boundaries did you break in the writing of this book? Where does that sort of courage come from?

The boundary I broke in writing this book is getting away from Black literature being largely rooted in trauma. For example, if you look on any bestseller list right now, you will see that every book written by a Black person is about the traumas of race. Even if you look, too, at Black authors who have won the major writing awards, the books they’ve won for are almost always about race. Worn explores the other side of the coin of the Black experience – the side that is not rooted in trauma. I found courage in Toni Morrison’s advice, “Write the book you want to read.” I wanted (actually, needed!) to read something about Black people that didn’t enrage me, or send me to my knees in tears.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

There hasn’t been a single low on my book’s road to publication. In fact, I’m in awe in how professional, skillful, and supportive Santa Fe Writers Project is. Working with Monica Prince and Andrew Gifford has been great.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 Am I allowed to give more than one? ;) Toni Morrison said, “Write the book you want to read.” Carolyn Beard Whitlow said, “When people are clapping, stop.” In other words, don’t write the sequel if the original was a major success. Major Jackson said, “Ass in chair.” In other words, sit your ass in that chair and write. Steven Pressfield said, “A professional stays on the job all day.” Chigozie Obioma said, “Read.” A writer should never write more than she reads.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 I had no idea that what we wear (and don’t wear) is so political. The why of what we’re wearing runs way deeper than the what.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

Titles to me are important, just as names are important. I knew I wanted something that told the reader that the collection was about clothes. I was thinking I could call it either Worn or Woven, and two of my mentors – Kwame Dawes and Joy Castro – said emphatically “Worn!”

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

Hahaha. That’s a very good question. I drank a lot of tea while writing this book. Decaf tea is a great substitute for wine if you want something with ceremony, but don’t want your sleep affected. Also, I’m absolutely in love with High Tea. It’s a great way to have a high-end experience for not high-end money.

Homemade chai: https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/homemade-chai-201226


***

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.adriennechristian.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK: https://www.sfwp.com/project/worn/

 

Work-in-Progress

DC-area author Leslie Pietrzyk explores the creative process and all things literary.