Friday, May 27, 2016

Editor Profile: Rena Mosteirin




1. Who are you reading right now?

The books on my bedside table are all poetry at the moment:
Anne Carson The Beauty of the Husband
Lucille Clifton Blessing the Boats
Keetje Kuipers Beautiful in the Mouth
Jessica Fisher Frail-Craft
Kevin Yang An Aquarium
Denise Duhmel Two and Two


2. Do you write on paper or use your computer to generate a first draft?

Computer. I have a light laptop that’s always with me. When I have an idea and I can’t pull out my laptop I use the notepad app on my phone.


3. What books/authors do you keep coming back to?

Every morning I open up Moby-Dick and type a line out of the book into Twitter. I’m tweeting the whole book as a way to deepen my relationship to the text. I’ve done a series of erasure poems based on it. Every year at Christmas I re-read Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Be Here Now by Baba Ram Dass is written in this funny, crazy, loving way and the illustrations are gorgeous. In fiction I can’t get enough Shirley Jackson, Siri Hustvedt, Louise Erdrich, Ann Beattie, Cristina Garcia. Sandor Marai’s work stays with me long after I’ve turned the last page, especially Embers. My poetic obsessions currently are Rainer Maria Rilke, Claudia Rankine, Julie Carr and C.D Wright.


4. Are you working on a larger project right now?

I’m working on a young adult series called Red Barn Records about a group of female best friends who are brilliant: an artist, a musician, a horsewoman, a budding engineer and computer scientist. Together they create a recording studio in a red barn the summer before their senior year of high school. They record a folk-punk record and make a podcast detailing the superpowers of their neighbors in this small town in Vermont. The podcast reveals stunning truths about their neighbors and reunites two prisoners of war.
            They navigate a coming-out, an eating disorder, a first love and a love-triangle. In the second book, which I’m just finishing the first draft of now, they take on sexual assault and transgender teenage hood. I love this project. The characters feel real to me. There was a time in my life when I lived in a red barn with a bunch of dazzling women, and working on these books gives me a chance to honor that time.


5. What inspires you?

                        The Fourth Wave of feminism inspires me and motivated me to make Bloodrootlit.org happen in a digital way. Other digital projects of mine include an end-word map generator which is a tool I wrote to help poets write sestinas—the code itself is a sestina!—the Moby-Dick Twitter project, and my poetry blog White Whale Crossing which is like a digital notebook and home to 355 of my poems. When I started blogging, I was having this recurring nightmare of being buried alive. That was an inspiration too—I realized in order to make the nightmare stop, I needed to get my voice out there. I want to be heard.

Friday, May 20, 2016

Editor Profile: Phyllis Katz



l. Who are you reading right now?

I am reading Ruth Stone’s What Love Comes to  and In the Galaxy  and Jane Hirshfield’s Come Thief.  I am drawn to Stone’s work because she was so prolific and captivating in her 80’s and I am just turning 80 myself.  I like her wit, her intellect, and the strength and confidence of her voice.  I love the artful, deceptive simplicity and truth of Hirshfield’s poems.  I’ve for the first time been reading her Ten Windows, a wonderful follow up to Nine Gates, both books offering very fine insights into how and why poems work.  I have also just finished Major Jackson’s powerful new book Roll Deep.

2. Do you write on paper or use your computer to generate a first draft? 

I have composed exclusively on the computer for many years; however, I am now doing first drafts in a notebook before I touch the computer, and I am finding this process both more thoughtful and more generative.

3. What books/authors do you keep coming back to?

Pindar and Horace and Neruda for their odes, Sappho for the beauty and mystery of her largely fragmentary poems. Emily Dickinson is a favorite as are Robert Frost and David Ferry.  I am also repeatedly drawn to the work of Maxine Kumin, especially The Long Marriage. I go back frequently to Jean Connor’s beautiful A Cartography of Peace, a marvelous book of clear and deep poems, beautifully executed.


4. Are you working on a larger project right now?

I am beginning to put together a third book of poems, very tentatively entitled Pindar’s Daughter.  After a long unavoidable hiatus, I am determined to make real progress before winter sets in again.

5. What Inspires You?

My husband of 56 years died in January. I have recently written a number of poems born from feelings of loss and grief. Even these poems, however, are often triggered by nature, as well, especially by animals or birds, by works of art or music, or by recent political or social events such as the tragic massive migrations from Africa and Syria. For general subject matter I try to follow the wise observations of my 95 year old poet friend Carol Armstrong, whose recent book is so aptly entitled Everything Waits to be Noticed.

Friday, May 13, 2016

Editor Profile: Ivy Schweitzer


1. Who are you reading right now?

I am reading Vievee Francis’ new book of poetry, Forest Primeval, because she is coming to teach at Dartmouth (lucky us), Laura Foley’s Night Ringing, and Frances Fogelin’s Once It Stops, as a result of their recent, terrific poetry reading at the Norwich Bookstore. I also just bought Rumi: The Book of Love edited by Coleman Barks, which I am eager to dive into.

2. Do you write on paper or use your computer to generate a first draft?

I write almost completely on my computer, even for first drafts. I sometime jot down notes on scraps, but then I cannot read them! I also jot down ideas on my macbook air, which has become almost an extension of my brain and hand. I love the ease of cutting and pasting; typing is like playing a musical instrument with keys.

3. What books/authors do you keep coming back to?

I always seem to come back to Whitman and Dickinson (with a dose of Emerson’s formidable essay “The Poet,”) but that might be because I teach them frequently and my next big project will be blogging a poem by Dickinson everyday for the year 1862 (when she wrote, according to some estimates, 364 poems!). I also bought A Year with Rumi: Daily Readings, to read along with the gal from Amherst. But I also have more contemporary touchstones: Marilyn Hacker’s Love, Death and the Changing of the Seasons, when I want to immerse myself in the sonnet form and raging love of women, any of Grace Paley’s poetry when I want to give my political and ethical anger form, Lucille Clifton for amazing concision and general wallop, Anne Sexton for pure anguish, Li Young Li for passion and whimsey, among others. 

4. Are you working on a larger project right now?

Yes, I am putting together a manuscript of poetry tentatively entitled Undammed, and I am embarking on research for the Emily Dickinson blog described above. Just won a small grant to begin working on that project this Fall when I will be in residence in London.

5. What inspires you?

Life inspires me. Courage, euphoria, despair and above all connection, the human connection. What we cannot live without Oh, and the changing of the seasons (which Hacker borrowed from Keats, another absolute favorite of mine). 

Monday, May 9, 2016

Launched

Check out Bloodroot's Inaugural Digital edition here:
Bloodrootlit.org

Let us know what you think in the comments section here!

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Launching Soon!

Our anticipated launch date for Bloodroot's inaugural digital edition is Friday, May 6th.
Stay tuned!