ChicagoPostmodernPoetry.Com
Poetic Profile
Kerri Sonnenberg
General Questions
1) Where did you grow up? Was poetry and writing part of that mix?
I grew up in the south suburbs of Chicago where the major cultural institutions are golf courses and malls- not exactly a brushfire of literary activity, but to be honest, before going to college, my primary interests were shopping and napping.
Back then I was a reader more than a writer, and while my reading was aimless at this time, cummings caught my eye (for giving the bird to English grammar), and Kerouac was important to me for all the reasons he’s important to teenagers, but also for his musicality and phrasing (which would be my avenue into Language writing years later with my affinity first for Clark Coolidge’s work).
2) Who are your poetic influences, favorite poets, writers, artwork, other things that inform your work?
Gertrude Stein, George Oppen, Louis Zukofsky, many many presently emerging writers, John Cage, Brian Eno, Erik Satie, electronic music (Stock, Hausen & Walkman, Fennez), my husband Jeff’s work in music and video art and being in frequent conversation with him and other artists in disciplines other than poetry. Film and visual art too: Goddard, Deren, Cornell, Smithson, and Minimalists like Agnes Martin and Eva Hesse.
3) When did you 'become' a poet? When did poetry become part of your everyday life?
My last year of undergrad when I was editing Columbia Poetry Review, writing like gangbusters, immersed in poetry classes and applying to grad schools is when I realized this poetry thing had transcended hobby status. (I think that may be a Midwest syndrome, that anything creative one does must be a hobby because you’re not punching a clock and getting paid to do it, and it certainly can’t be “work.”) This period was more like a jumping off point- I still feel like I’m “becoming a poet.”
4) Where were you educated? Was this important?
I attended Columbia College, a small, arts college in downtown Chicago, as an undergraduate. I originally went there to major in photography (and to escape the suburbs), but I ended up “self-designing” my course of study. They don’t allow this anymore, but it was ideal for someone who wanted to roam through film studies, women’s studies, Shakespeare, art history, etc. I would not be writing if it weren’t for the support of my first poetry teacher, Carol Keeley, and subsequent semesters spent as Paul Hoover’s student. Continuing my studies at Brown as a grad student was an ideal, natural extension of my studies at Columbia. I’m endlessly grateful for those who were my comrades in the MFA program and my teachers (Keith & Rosmarie Waldrop, C.D. Wright, Forest Gander, Gale Nelson), who, like Paul and Carol, nourished my writing practice with their generosity, humor, candor and critical gusto.
5) You are a Midwesterner by birth, educated at Brown. How does location affect your work?
I’m still trying to figure out what it means to be a Midwesterner. Is it smiling a lot? Communing easily with flat surfaces? Urban spaces in general, and Chicago in particular, seem important to my writing practice. What one’s likely to encounter accidentally in the course of the day is a regular offering to the spirit of juxtaposition: luxury condos beside crumbling public housing, police in riot gear surrounding peaceful protesters, a clown making photocopies at Kinko’s, a woman pulling a 6 foot penis out of the trunk of her car.
5.1) You are a prolific writer and editor of a magazine and animator of a reading series how do you separate all of these things?
Each has its own cycle. The reading series comes full circle once a month, the journal is a yearly (and then some) project, and the writing cycle is less fixed, which may be why I don’t produce anywhere near enough work to be called “prolific”. I’m always thinking about all 3, so perhaps I’m not separating them at all.
6) What is your favorite food?
Breads and cheeses. Anything that can be consumed in nacho format.
7) Sports Team?
Chicago Cubs, but Ray likes me anyway. (editor's note, three of Chicago's finest poets are Cubs fans, Jesse Seldess, Mark Tardi, and Kerri Sonnenberg, while the poor White Sox have to settle for me, John Tipton, Nelson Algren, Studs Terkel and Saul Bellow) I was raised by Red Sox and Cubs fans. In this system of beliefs, enduring hope coupled with inevitable tragedy is somehow ennobling.
8) Vacation Spot?
Anywhere someone invites me to read. And/or Spain.
9) Curse Word?
Shazbat!
10) As a Chicago writer do you think that Chicago can sustain the recent boomlet in avant garde writing or will all these writers eventually leave for the coasts?
I think a little attrition is to be expected, but overall I’m optimistic that if the infrastructure holds (series, journals, presses, BBQ’s) Chicago will continue to be a vortex for new writing (and its writers). Chicago’s long been a haven for experimentation in music, and I think we’re more than a woodshedding layover for poetry too.
Craft Questions
1) How do you form a poem?
I have a little, daily, debris-catching notebook, and it’ll happen that one of its bits will seed a poem. Then it starts looking for a body, a particular form or process, through which language and thinking takes shape (please forgive any horror film allusions). I’ve used serial matrices (ala Schoenberg), Humument-type extractions from larger texts, Oulipo games, etc. The space such seemingly deterministic elements afford a renegotiation of the lyric is an aesthetic position I routinely find myself in. Far from arbitrary and automatic, the architectures formed by these procedures offer what I find to be a fruitful engagement with contingency.
2) Do you always use collage, Parataxis, fusion cutups or other tools?
I don’t rely on any one method, though I have used the tools you mention. Whether I’m writing within in a determined form or procedure, or a wily run of prose, the text reflects a process of thinking and perceiving that, for me at least, occurs as a fractured experience. My interest in creating musical textures contributes to the disjunctive surfaces of my texts as well.
3) Is poetry an organic or synthetic process for you?
Synthetic. Writing, reading, thinking, cooking: all synthetic. Reading Levertov even.
4) Where do you write? Is Ambiance important? Do you have rituals or habits when you write?
I have a separate room at home where I do most of my writing. I’ve always admired people who can write anywhere, anytime, and I do still try to write occasionally in parks, bars, restaurants, friends’ houses, on the train. But since I write very slowly it’s useful to be near a food source. Regretfully, I don’t have any fabulous rituals like Moises Alou peeing on his hands before every ballgame.
5) In the balance between found language and created language where does your work fall? Do you use many sources?
It varies from poem to poem. "tabulet" is formed entirely of found language (extractions from the New York Times business pages), but more often I find that found language begets "created" language. Found language like bits of conversation, misreadings, mishearings, and signage (a favorite) feed the impetus of a poem more than they script its content.