Contributor Profile: Florence Fogelin

1. Who are you reading right now?

I just finished Gould’s Book of Fish, before that A Brief History of Seven Killings.  An Andrea  Camilleri novel (I forget which one), set in Sicily, for R&R!!  Poetry: Pamela Harrison and David Sullivan. I just bought The Sound and the Fury, having seen a superb production last year in NYC.


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

I let things rattle around in my head, often for quite a long time.  Then I write on paper: a scrap, a notebook, or sitting down at a proper desk.  I resist putting it into the computer, because it looks “finished” when it isn’t. Then many revisions.


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

Seamus Heaney, Alice Fulton, Wanda Syzmborska—and of course Robert Frost is always in my head.


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

I have a title: Explanatory Value.  A number of poems I’m not yet happy with.


5. What inspires you?

Visual, visual, visual.  But what to make of what I see?  Meaning and metaphor must kick in.  And of course, the usual things: love and death.

Contributor Profile: Giavanna Munafo

1. Who are you reading right now?

I read David Bezmozgis's The Free World and Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me and this winter, and was blown away by both of these very different books. Now I am well into the second book in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, having just finished Deborah Harkness's Discover of Witches trio. Both of these historical novel series are fun romps featuring time-travel and feel a bit like beach-reading training. Since I’m several years into a draft of my first novel, I'm gobbling up fiction of all sorts to learn how it’s done. As for poetry, I am carrying around and about to read Kay Ryan’s most recent collection and, very happily, a first edition, signed copy of Judy Grahn’s 1978 The Work of a Common Woman that I found in Northampton last weekend at Gabriel Books.

Also, on the suggestion of writer/dancer/teacher and new friend Megan Buchanan I am reading A Woman’s Thing, “The Mothers and Grandmothers Issue," which is lovely and full of insightful writing. It's available in print and online at awomensthing.org

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

Almost always I draft and revise on my adored Macbook Air, which I take everywhere. I jot down tidbits — ideas and quotes — on my phone's Notes app, too, and, rarely, on paper if some is handy. The exception to this rule is when I am actually on a beach or shoreline, and then I write longhand on paper and enjoy it immensely. Last summer I kept a journal during a vacation in Maine. It was the first journal-writing I have done in many years, and it was a powerful reminder of how differently ideas and words emerge in this mode. I even illustrated some of the entries  — not being a visual artist this was a leap and really opened me up to creative receptivity.

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

Morrison’s Beloved, over and over. And if you haven’t heard her read it, download it now! 

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

Several. As mentioned above, a first novel called After Thomas about a 40-year old, reclusive, ex-history professor named Josephine who assumes responsibility for raising her infant nephew when, at the books’s opening, her sister and brother-in-law are killed in a car accident. The book, which takes place over the course of one year, is about Josephine’s process through grief, her reckoning with the haunting yet curative presence of her dead sister, and how she reclaims a hold on life. I have also been writing, off and on, a family history or memoir project. In the fall I spent about a month obsessing on Ancestry.com and hunting down stories from relatives.  Lastly, having been a poet since girlhood, I keep an eye on the life of my poems, organizing them into sections for possible books, sending one or two out to journals every now and then, and occasionally writing a new one.

5. What inspires you?

The sea. Loss and suffering. Joy and adventure. Teaching. Reading. Sitting down and tapping out the words.

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.

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.

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). 

Launched

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Launching Soon!

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