ChicagoPostmodernPoetry.Com

Poetic Profile

 

Laura Sims

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

General Questions

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


I grew up in Richmond, Virginia, first in the city, then in the suburbs, then back to the city (which I much preferred) during my high school / college years. Poetry and writing were part of the mix because from early childhood I wrote stories and poems, and I was always a voracious reader. My father, a French & Spanish Lit professor, played a big part in this - he would take me to the library almost every Saturday and plunk me down in the children's section for hours while he browsed the grown-up section.

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

*Let me warn you; the answer to this question is long and completely out of control. I'm sorry. I find this to be such an exciting question to answer!

In poetry, my favorite writers and influences continually evolve, but some of the 'deepest' and longest-remaining influences are, in no particular hierarchical order: Barbara Guest, Elizabeth Robinson, Michael Palmer, Russell Edson, Sylvia Plath, Louise Bogan, Anne Carson, Emily Dickinson, Charles Baudelaire, John Ashbery, Elizabeth Bishop, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams. And the big haiku poets: Buson, Issa, Basho (Robert Hass's translation is my favorite). Whew.

My other great influences and favorite writers are my peers, my 'writing friends': Corey Mead, Courtney Brkic, Jesse Seldess, David Pavelich, Stacy Szymaszek, Anthony Hawley, James Wagner, Andrea Baker, and Hermine Meinhard.

But honestly, other art forms influence my poetry far more than poetry does...especially fiction, non-fiction, music, and movies.

In fiction, my biggest influences, the writers and/or works that have made my head (and my definition of 'writing') expand or explode, are: David Markson, Diane Williams, Virginia Woolf's The Waves and To the Lighthouse, Kawabata's Snow Country, Joyce, Barthelme, Faulkner, and D.M. Thomas's The White Hotel.

Unforgettable, huge and hugely beautiful, influential, and entertaining books: Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter series (Penguin only), Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son, Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood, Dickens's David Copperfield, Nabokov's Pale Fire, Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Henry James's The Golden Bowl, Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Alice Munro's everything, Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Brillat-Savarin's The Physiology of Taste (M.F.K. Fisher's translation), Paul Bowles's The Sheltering Sky, Exley's A Fan's Notes, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, Tanizaki's The Makioka Sisters, and William Styron's Sophie's Choice.

I'm a sucker for horror novels too; Peter Straub's first novel, If You Could See Me Now, inspired two poems of mine.
Which brings me to movies. Film may be the most influential medium for my work. I watch movies constantly and indiscriminately (from art-house films to 'Old School' and 'Chasing Liberty'). I most admire (and am influenced by) those directors who delve into 'the dark side' and transform it into great art: David Lynch, the other Kurosawa (Kiyoshi), Hitchcock, the Coen brothers, and Krysztoff Kiezlowski ('La Double Vie de Veronique' especially).

Some of my favorite films I also consider to be among the most gorgeous ever made: 'Rear Window,' 'Vertigo,' 'Spirited Away,' 'Fire Walk with Me,' 'Blue Velvet,' 'Eureka' (a recent Japanese film never released on DVD or VHS), 'George Washington,' 'Donnie Darko,' 'Heavenly Creatures,' 'Rashomon,' 'Room with a View,' 'Moloch,' and 'Russian Ark' (the last two both by Russian director Sokurov).

Visual artists: Bosch, Jan van Eyck, Dorothea Tanning, Yoshitomo Nara (I love all things 'cute but creepy'), medieval iconography (especially triptychs!), Joseph Cornell (anything in miniature thrills me), Louise Bourgeois - her sculputures and drawings. I love ink drawings / etchings / lithographs. I love book arts! I admire Kathe Kollwitz, Japanese woodblock prints, Rothko, a variety of installation artists, there are really too many people to consider and I'll just stop here, that's really enough.

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

I've been writing fiction and poetry since I was little, so it has always been something I've just done; but I guess I 'became' a poet in the 9th grade, when my English teacher, Bonnie Martin, oohed and ahhed over a poem I'd written for the school magazine. That's when it dawned on me that I was doing something that had a 'name,' and was therefore legitimate (ha!).

4) Where were you educated? Was this important?

I went to the College of William and Mary as an undergraduate, and it was important because of the thriving little literary community in which I became very involved. I also had wonderful teachers who still continue to support and inspire me - Henry Hart and Nancy Schoenberger, primarily. Seeing how they lived their lives as poets and teachers proved to me that it could be done.

My experience in the MFA Poetry program at the University of Washington (Seattle) was a very different story. Aside from meeting my husband there, seeing Mt. Rainier on beautiful summer days, drinking great coffee, and getting a Master's degree that enables me to teach at the college level, it was time ill-spent! I'm very disturbed by the exponential growth of MFA programs, and more disturbed by what goes on in them; they corporatize the writing experience. And yes, I'm a hypocrite, because I attended a Master's program and didn't drop out in protest.

5) Do you consider yourself a Wisconsin writer?

Yes and no - Wisconsin has certainly crept into my poetry since I've been here - lots of 'lakes' and 'winter' and greenery, but I don't think of myself as a Wisconsin Poet- not because I don't love Madison, which I do, but because I don't want to apply those types of limitations to my work. And I don't want other people to do that either!

6) What is your favorite food?

I love umeboshi, the Japanese pickled plums that most Japanese people (let alone Westerners) can't stand to eat unless buried in a bed of rice. I eat them like candy. They're salty, sour, and sweet - they've got it all! I love anything that's pickled (except animal parts). And salt-and-vinegar chips. And all Japanese food, Thai food, Italian food. And pizza.

7) Sports Team?

For football, the Badgers (of course), and for baseball, the Red Sox.
Just kidding. I have no idea.

8) Vacation Spot?


Hmm...St. Petersburg, Russia! Because we just went there! Crazy, gorgeous city, not really a relaxing vacation spot per se, but an invigorating one. Other places - the San Francisco area, and a now non-existent swimming hole in Victoria, B.C. where I had the most idyllic swimming experience of my life, thanks to my in-laws.

9) Curse Word?
Jesus Christ! Or, Fuck! 'Fuck' is such a versatile word - it's so much more than a curse word, in its various forms.


10) What is your opinion of Avant-garde American writing in comparison to other avant gardes from other places in the world? You just came back from Russia; talk to any poets?

Arkadii Dragomoschenko! That's who I talked to in Russia - what a character! Drinks and chain-smokes and gives the most charming, fragmented lectures. He told us how he and his other poet-friends worked as street sweepers or boiler room attendants for years and years under communism. Arkadii now scrapes together a living with several journalism, teaching, and filmmaking jobs.

Maybe that's one of the main differences between American 'avant-garde' writers and some other countries' - there seem to be many members of the 'leisure class' involved in the American avant-garde. Actually, I can't limit that to the American avant-garde; I'm sure that applies to European and many Asian avant-garde artists as well. But for Russians or Eastern Europeans who are defined as 'avant-garde,' perhaps their brand of experimentalism springs from a socio-political environment that has far more urgently and immediately fractured, or even destroyed, the old forms and ways of writing / creating / existing.

Craft Questions
1) How do you form a poem?

Usually I get (or steal) a line from somewhere in the world...often it's something someone says at work, since I do most of my poetry writing at work these days. Then I kind of free-write with that line for a while, make a mess of things, put it away in disgust, come back to it the next day, make it better, put it away in disgust, pick it up again, make it better, etc., until it feels done.

2) Do you use collage, parataxis cut ups or other tools?

Yes, all of the above-I often have various disconnected, even disparate lines that I glue together. It has become the 'natural' way I write.

3) Is poetry an organic or synthetic process for you?


Both. I'd like to pretend that it's all 'organic,' all me and some higher power collaborating via magic, but I know better. Everything I see, do, and hear influences me. I'm an organic synthesizer.

4) Where do you write? Is ambiance important? Do you have rituals or habits when you write?

I write best at work. I'm the receptionist for a small bank in Madison, and I have the large, peaceful reception area, with windows facing capitol square, all to myself. And I have very little to do. So ambience is important, but not ambience in the expected sense. When I have time to sit at home and light candles and do breathing exercises (which I never do), I end up watching a movie... when I'm at work, and the forces of boredom and semi-semi-busy-ness, and sometimes frustration, are pulling at me, that's when I feel like writing! That's where a whole series of poems I call the "bank poems" has come from in the past months.

I moonlight as a teacher, and as much as I love it, I can't write a word when I'm teaching. I'm just too happy! And I'm channeling all my creative energy into the class and the students.

5) In the balance between found language and created language where does your work fall? Do you use many sources?

I have used sources (in the strictest sense) in the past - I once took a (deeply disturbing) Christian advice guide for girls (ca. 1960) called For Girls Only, and pulled phrases and words from it to create a 12-part poem. That was at a time when I had writer's block, and after obsessing over the project for about a month, I felt free to write again.

This is a very difficult question to answer - where to draw the line between 'found' and 'created' language? My found poem (mentioned above), in which every single word was lifted (and then utterly manipulated) from an outside source, feels as purely 'mine' as do my other non-found poems. But what isn't 'found'? Usually I 'find' something like a co-worker's story about being stolen by a monkey when she was an infant (!), and eventually a line enters my head that goes with/captures the 'story.' It could be something she herself said, or something I say myself. Then I go from there. I have one co-worker who discusses preferable ways of dying with me (drowning wins, because you feel euphoric towards the end), another one who once explained to me the difference between skinning a wild rabbit and skinning a domestic rabbit, and yet another who tells me about his 'other life' as an acrobatic dancer. So they're an inspiring lot. I guess, ultimately, I can't accept that there's a pronounced difference between 'found' and 'created' language (or material).