1. Where did you grow up? Was poetry and writing part of that mix? 

I grew up in Iowa City, IA, so poetry--and writing in general--were part of that mix.  I stole poems off of the graduate workshop shelves, filing copies of my faves in a binder (which is still buried somewhere in my parent's house--who knows whose old drafts I have now!!!), and I had access to a great bookstore (Prairie Lights) as well as some excellent used bookstores and a University Library, and I started to go to listen to readings when in high school.  But mostly I think I started writing because I had always loved reading, from when I was very young--novels, biography, whatever I could get my hands on, and that is thanks to my parents who, though they are not really poetry readers, are avid readers of novels--classic and contemporary.  From junior high on I also got a lot of encouragement for my writing from teachers, who made me more aware of poetry.  They also believed in my writing and that writing had value, which I think is very helpful--sometimes it is hard to believe that writing has worth in this world, and the more teachers support it, the more kids will feel open to letting it be part of their lives, as it was for me.

2. Who are your poetic influences, favorite poets, writers, artwork,  other things that inform your work?

 Always and ever changing.  I went through a huge Czeslaw Milosz and Zbigniew Herbert phase, a huge Anna Akhmatova phase, a huge Michael Palmer phase and now I am really excited by a lot of "lesser known" poets in the states such as Myung Mi Kim, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Truong Tran's latest book, etc.  Laura Mullen has certainly been a big influence on me, as a teacher, friend and writer, and I can't get over how exciting her recent book SUBJECT (U Calif) is. Cole Swensen is also a writer I keep reading and never get tired of, like Lyn Hejinian, H.D. and John Ashbery.  But on a very different tone level, I love James Tate and I adore the recent book by Claudia Rankine Don't Let Me Be Lonely (Graywolf Press), both have a witty, dark humor that is so full of the quotidian and everyday language & events, but torqued.  I am also influenced by writers in France, such as Christophe Tarkos or Claude Royet-Journaud, though my work might show that less.  I think that there is a lively and constant exchange of perspectives and ideas that I have going with Remi Bouthonnier, too, and just reflecting on how we see words pushes us both farther as writers in our own languages. 

 Most of all, I would say that artwork influences a lot of what I do.  In Fluorescence, a lot of the smaller poems came out of a combination of artwork-related themes and language play, making new narratives from the edges of a collaged image, or imitating the visual skewing of a figurative world with syntactic skewing in the poems.  Artwork is often a place where I bounce off my own experiences of seeing through language, such as by visiting a show of Rauchenberg's work or spending time with painter Keith Donovan when he was working on Breugel-based collage paintings, where their collaged pieces evoke different collaged memories and images for me that become part of a collage of my own style and voice.  I also feel that the language-less space of art invites me to take language through it in some way, making poems that are my own experience of that journey.  I learn a lot from artists and artwork. 

3. When did you 'become' a poet? When did poetry become part of your everyday life?

 Gosh.  Seems a trick question, though I am sure it is not.  I loved reading poems starting in my early teens and often would carry around this little anthology of the best poems of all time--or some such tacky title--reading them to friends and re-reading my favorites, and I adored Emily Dickinson and Keats right about that time, too.  But earlier even, I liked the rhythms in prayer from being forced to go to church, and liked to sing and make up songs.  So perhaps poetry has always been part of my everyday life.  I don't know about when I became a "poet" and have a tendency to shy away from that word towards "writer", but I feel that only in the last 5 years or even less have I felt like I have been a "mature" writer, one who has worked and reworked like a painter all sorts of little techniques and skills and played and keeps playing with those all the time. I have written my whole life, but it has taken me a long time to feel that writing to get entirely into who I am.

4. Where were you educated? Was this important?

 I guess I have got a good education, seems I never stop!  But is it important to the writing?  In ways, yes, as it has constantly taken me to different books and thus to voices and language that expand who I am and how I can see the world.  But education is something one always struggles to balance with writing--people who are entirely academic seem to speak in another tongue than I do, and I find that perplexing and frightening at times.  Yet, here I am, a doctoral candidate in France in comp lit.  We'll see what comes of that.

 As for my past, I did my BA at Mount Holyoke College in MA with Joseph Brodsky and Michael Petit, two poets who were early influences on me, as well as the nearby UMASS poets in the MFA program that I liked to go listen to when an undergrad.  I also did a summer workshop with Carolyn Forche when quite young, among fellow students Cal Bedient and Laure-Anne Bosselaar who were far more "advanced" in their writing, reading and just maturity than I was, so I got spoiled by getting to be among that group.  Then I got my own MFA from Colorado State Univ with Laura Mullen, Bill Tremblay, Mary Crow and Deanna Ludwin as teachers. Since then, I finished a DEA in France (it is this odd degree which used to be a step above the MA and one below the PhD) and now I suppose I am trying to find a way to balance writing critically, thus reading in a close but different mindset than I feel I do when just reading for pleasure, and writing poems.  I think this must be working for the poetry (and not against it), since I feel the the new work I have forthcoming and which stems from reading books on neurology and memory, could not have happened had I not been working to be more "critical" minded at some level.

5-6. How is your poetic perspective different from those in the midwest and the east coast? You are a midwesterner more particularly an Iowan how does the Iowan/American dialogue as a poet with French Culture?

 I couldn't say.  I think if I had never left Iowa but read what I have read perhaps I would still write what I write.  Also, I can't say what the perspective of someone in the midwest or on the east coast is, though being abroad there are influences that come from the sound of a foreign language and environment as well as reflections on place and origin that I may never have had had I not left Iowa. 

 I think that being here in France right now is peculiar, gives me a totally outsider perspective on the US and my origins at a time when it seems like America is going through a lot of changes, for what seems like the worse right now being that it is enmeshed in a war, has a natural disaster of astounding proportions crippling large parts of the south, is economically shakey with its dollar running at a depreciated level for a few years, and that the Bush administration appears to have no respect for the environment, education, arts in general and openmindedness on moral levels. 

 But most importantly, I think that the slowness of France, which would drive many a New Yorker mad I expect, is just the right pace for me at this time in my life.  I like that this is a country which takes time, looks at and reflects slowly on things.  Tons of people read novels in the metro, and not just police novels, but the "classics", and I like that. France also considers lively debate imperative and having violent, educated debates about politics, education, environment, aesthetics, art, etc with friends is part of an evening out.  Debates where we don't have to decide to agree in the end to remain friends. If I could, I would re-pack that with me on my next trip to the states, as we need some of that--we need to feel more open about disagreeing with one another long enough to talk through the issues and see each others' point, or at least to try.  But I digress--and here things are not necessarily more ideal than there, it is just that I am able here to look out at what is happening there and have a little bit of a sense of not being part of it, not being responsible for it, and that lessens some of the pain I feel about what is going on and seems tragically inevitable and unchangeable at the moment. 

 This said, being here allows me to bring to my French students more varied perspectives on the US, too.  I can share with them writers that they might not otherwise come in contact with, for example.  Finally, being here allows me to meet a lot of writers that I might not otherwise meet, not only all of the French ones, but even American writers coming from the East to West coasts.  Here, somtimes I have the opportunity to help them settle into a place for a while, organize a reading for them, do an interview with them or whatever, and if I was in the states that might not be an option.

7) What is your favorite food?    Chocolate and rasberries.

8) Sports team or Activity? I have to say, I pretty much fall out of the sports team links--no TV and so never see any.  Love tennis, and used to play all the time.  Now I am just a run-of-the-mill gym goer hoping to not become a desk blob.

9) Vacation spot. I love to travel, being a Saggitarious.  Places I am currently dreaming of are back to Italy, more of the South of France, a trip to Cairo and I think that seeing Angar Wat before one dies is a goal.

10) Curse word. Fuck, I s'pose.

Craft Questions

1) How do you form a poem? Is poetry an organic or synthetic process for you?  

Poems form in many ways.  I write some from a sound and go from there, others I used to find I wrote after reading something or seeing an art exhibit.  I have been working on 2 longer projects for a few years now, and one uses titles I stole from a pop-science book called In The Palaces of Memory by George Johnson and making memories (my own or personaes) from them, then intermingling things I learn in the chapters with those same titles and my memories.  Another project I have been working on has been built out of long reflection and meditation on the senses, each of the poems is in 8 sections and has a focus on a voyage, a sense and some sort of artwork.  But in generaly these 8-section poems get written in a rush, after dense months of mulling over the language and letting it settle in me.  Outside these two projects, I have a journal, various notebooks, sketchbooks, etc which I doodle in or play with words in, and poems sometimes emerge from those spaces, too.  After a poem emerges, though, that is when it starts to take form for me--I spend a long time ticking away at it, revising and forming it into what it becomes.  I like that.  Give me a bag of beautiful words, something can be done with it, and something that comes from an urgency in me, an urgency I perhaps didn't realize was there.

2. Where do you write? Is ambience important? Do you have rituals or habits when you write? 

Sound is hard for me, and yet I was just reading about Edmond Jabes and Nathalie Serrault writing in the metro because they found it easier to concentrate there--not ON the train, per se, but seated along the quai.  I can see that, but not live it.  I try to just get far enough in my head not to be overwhelmed by the city around me, or so that the city becomes part of the rhythms of the language--but I think I dream of writing in a soundproof room someday, to just hear the words.  And writing to music?  Not possible for me.

3. In the balance between found language and created language where does you work fall?

Interesting and ever-changing question.  I think all of it is "created"  as in, I don't usually go and simply steal and re-quote.  However, I used to start by reading others and so ended up with a lot of stolen first lines and epigraphs.  My recent work, Circuits, stole parts from George Johnson's po-sci book In the Palaces of Memory, but then got collaged and cut out and revised and so mixed with my own things that the lines between what I got from him and what I have now, as in my own words, are very difficult to find.  So was the work in the end found or created?