Have you been involved in Litquake before? If so, to what extent?
I have never had the pleasure of being involved with Litquake until this year. I am altogether flattered that Fourteen Hills asked me to be a part of it.

What will you be reading for the Crawl?
That's a closely guarded secret, much like the recipe for Pepsi or the key to enlightenment. Translation: I have no clue. Something that has ampersands I can guarantee, however.

What projects have you been working on since publication in Fourteen Hills' most recent volume (17.2) ?
Among other things, a series of epistolary poems to my grandfather and a series entitled A Dynamic Range Of Various Designs For Quiet, initiated by some traveling in Southeast Asia.

Truman Capote wrote lying down; Hemingway wrote standing up; Philip Roth admits that he paces: what do you find yourself doing to help you write best?
I don't have any real physical 'ticks' so to speak, but I will say that not limiting [oneself] to poeticness is a real strong foundation—for me at least. I work for a company here in SF as an editor of translated and localized Japanese Graphic Novels, or Manga. I think that helps my writing a lot, because I am able to be very direct and apply a tight economy to the words, or so I think. Oh, and I ruthlessly eavesdrop at bars. This is a great city for writing in bars.

Any advice for writers out there hoping to get published?
Persistence. And a nearly mechanical record keeping process for submissions, editors, and dates. Read a ton of independent publications and don't get hung up on big name journals. Think outside the confines of the North American poetry world.

Which (other) emerging writers are you reading / recommend?
A quick overview would include Josh Bell's No Planets Strike, Ed Skoog's Mister Skylight. And, neither of them have a book out yet, but Evan Hansen and Dawn Marie Knopf. Track those last two down online or in various journals and you'll see exactly why I mention them.
 
Favorite place to eat in San Francisco?
Currently I'd have to say the Tee Off in the Outer Richmond. But that answer shifts daily.

 

 

What will you be reading for the Crawl?
I think I will read from my manuscript in progress, This Isn't What I Came to Say. Or maybe I will read a short creative nonfiction essay about the time I threw a book at someone in a meditation group.  

 

What projects have you been working on since publication in Fourteen Hills and Heavier Than Air?
A series of stories told by a young woman grieving her dead lover, This Isn't What I Came to Say. I am just finishing up a personal account nonfiction manuscript, Here Come the Brides—stories from queer women who married during the sliver of time marriage was legal for queers in California. Joell Hallowell, oral historian and film maker, is my collaborator. 

 

Any advice for writers out there hoping to get published?
Oh, just persist and focus on developing your practice—that's all there is. If you keep going you will find things and those things will find homes or lead to other things.

 

What Bay Area bookstores or library branches are your favorite (and why)?
Aardvark is fun. Modern Times has shrunk but I love supporting that store because they have been so lovely to local writers. Dog Eared Books, Books Inc., any of the independent bookstores within walking distance of my Duboce Park neighborhood.  Sometimes I find great stuff at sidewalk sales.

 

 

 

Nope.

Some poems, I imagine.

I've been pretty busy preparing my first collection of poems to go to press (Open Winter won the 2011 Bellday Prize for poetry and will be published in November). Over the summer I also became the Education Programs Manager for Memoir Journal, a literary nonprofit based in Emeryville, so I've been busy integrating a new job into my already busy teaching life. Writing-wise, I'm working on two suites right now: one about the history of paper, another about the history of mirrors. 

 

Yoga. And reading. 

Not really. The whole enterprise is both utterly meaningless and gorgeously meaningful.

Darcie Dennigan (Corinna A-Maying the Apocalypse), Ryan Flaherty (What's This, Bombardier?), Katie Umans (The Flock Book, which is forthcoming in spring 2012), and Brent Armendinger (Undetectable and Archipelago). I love these folks both as people and as poets, and can't recommend their poems highly enough.

I seem to end up at Gracias Madre after classes at Yoga Kula sometimes, but most of my favorite eats in SF are picnics out at Land's End. 

 

More difficult for me than the selection of the poems in the manuscript was how to order them. A few years ago I read an article in Poets & Writers Magazine written by Katrina Vandenberg called “Putting Your Poetry in Order: The Mix-Tape Strategy.” The advice that stuck with me most was the importance of not making the linkages between poems too tight, but instead allowing for juxtapositions. Thinking back on how I approached ordering the manuscript a lot of it had to do with judging whether a poem matched the emotional core of the narrative of that particular section or whether it was a digression. If it was a digression, did it add interesting dimensions to the discussion?

 

What projects have you been working on since Things I Say to Pirates?
I'm dabbling with a project that focuses on California port cities, both their ecology and economy, and the ways they intersect and antagonize one another. Lately I've been very interested in the intersection of geography and human history, kind of a melding of poetry of place and poem as memorial or historical marker.

Have you been involved in Litquake before? If so, to what extent?
Last year Lit Crawl fell on my birthday and if that weren't awesome enough, I was lucky enough to be chosen by Quiet Lightning to read at Gestalt during Phase I. The other readers' work was really wonderful and the energy of the crowd was just intoxicating. I read "Mind & Body Forgive Each Other" and "Frankenstein," two poems in the new book.

What will you be reading for the Crawl?
I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise, but rest assured at least one of the pieces will be decidedly piratical!

Which (other) emerging writers are you reading / recommend?
I've been keeping an eye on Tinfish Press lately. The books and chapbooks they've published in the last year have just been blowing me away. [Sarah] Messer's Bandit Letters is absolutely brilliant. I discovered the book when I was about halfway through my "Letters to Anne Bonny" project and it gave me a whole different entry point into the poems. I even wrote an homage to one of Messer's poems, "What It Is Like to Be an Outlaw" and titled it, "What It Is Like to Be a Woman Pirate." [Gabrielle Calvocoressi] just recently released a new book titled, Apocalyptic Swing, which is quite good. Her long poem, "Circus Fire, 1944" [in The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart] still haunts me over a year after I last encountered it.

Favorite place to eat in San Francisco?
Mission Pie on 25th and Mission Street. The existence of their mixed berry pie is a public service to the universe.