Blog / Interviews

10 Questions for Ann Lauinger

November 13, 2017 - By Kira Archibald

After the third bite
Adam found himself suspended
between two cities and understood them to be parched
by the contagion of time. . .

—from "Cosmogeny of Shame," by Filippo Naitana, translated from Italian by Ann Lauinger (Fall 2017, Vol. 58, Issue 3)
 

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
The first thing I translated, long before I had any idea of wanting to write poetry myself, was a short ode by the Latin poet Horace. Not a great success!

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
Probably Ben Jonson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and W. H. Auden are the poets who’ve gotten most...

10 Questions for Filippo Naitana

November 8, 2017 - By Kira Archibald

10 Questions for Kimberly Kruge

October 31, 2017 - By Kira Archibald

"Egress: how does it work with the Virgin? Can we ask her for anything? Must we be on our knees? What must we say and how many times? For how much time must we stay? Should we look at her directly? Does it not work if we ask before we thank? Does she work with the faithless and the wavering? Is there a limit to the span of the miracle? Can bodies be transformed? Can a thought be transfixed?" — from "Pilgrimage," Fall 2017 (Volume 58, Issue 3)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.

I started writing very young. In fact, I had one of my first poems published when I was eight years old in an anthology of childrens’ poetry. Honestly, it was not a good poem. I started taking writing more seriously...

10 Questions for Jim Walke

October 25, 2017 - By Kira Archibald

"Dawn ices the sky and drives back the stars. It took the entire night to complete his ascension: moving gear onto the platform—sleeping bag, ropes and harness, water, a little food, the brush and paint cans—using the torch to cut free the billboard’s decrepit ladder as he climbed, leaving the seventy-foot column smooth as an obelisk. He hasn’t brought books. The historical library at the university has its own impressive collection, and he found an ally in the librarian covering the late shift who would order anything that fed his wandering interests. His janitorial duties took at most a few hours each night. Even the graffiti could not slow him [“you are loved,” his current favorite: “spacehorsespacehorsespacehorse”]."...

10 Questions for Catherine Chin

October 17, 2017 - By Kira Archibald

"I have a persistent fear of being a strange person in a normal world. I know this fear is not uncommon. The worl—and I along with it—hopes to be normal, someday. Sometimes, though, it is better not to hope for this. The world has a long history of being strange and surprising, and in difficult times it is useful to think that this strangeness itself can be a resource." —from "Marvelous Things Heard: On Finding Historical Radiance" (Fall 2017, Vol. 58, Issue 3)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
This is a hard question to answer. It brings up memories of that uneven little-kid thick-pencil printing, with half the letters backwards,...