Blog / Interviews

10 Questions for Maryam Haidari

January 19, 2022 - By Salar Abdoh and Edward Clifford

My mother does not know a lot of things, and yet she remembers many things. When I tell her over the phone that I am thinking of learning how to sail a boat, she does not ask how it is that I could do something like this in Tehran, a city far from the sea [...]
—from "Hoor-Al-Azim," by Maryam Haidari, Translated by Salar Abdoh

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
In 2012 I was traveling north from Beirut to Tripoli. It was the first time I was in Lebanon and I was determined to see my friend up in Tripoli. But ISIS had already crossed over from the Syrian border into the north of Lebanon. My Lebanese friends forbade me to go, saying that if ISIS found out I was Iranian they would surely kill me. I went nevertheless....

10 Questions for CAConrad

January 14, 2022 - By Edward Clifford

My last (Soma)tic poetry ritual, “Resurrect Extinct Vibration,” used audio field recordings of animals who have become extinct in my lifetime. The ritual momentarily returned the music of the disappeared back to the air, the body, and the land.
—from Ignition Chronicles, Volume 62, Issue 4 (Winter 2022)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
My first poem is from 1975. My mother began making me sell bouquets of flowers along the highway, and it turned me into a reader. Think about that year 1975; absolutely nothing digital in our hands to distract us. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday became many hours of forced isolation for me, and reading was the solution.

One Thursday, when I was at the library getting...

10 Questions for Jennifer Schomburg Kanke

January 11, 2022 - By Edward Clifford

Five miles from Buchtel
              the snow has turned to rain,
                            the creek laps the edges of the road.

Tomorrow the ground
                will freeze again, flood
                              trapped, no place to go
—from "Rt. 13, Late May," Volume 62, Issue 4 (Winter 2021)

Tell...

10 Questions for Craig Santos Perez

January 7, 2022 - By Edward Clifford

I drop my daughter off at her first day

of preschool—re-opened after a year closure.

Masked teachers, unvaccinated children.
—from "Preschool Sonnet during the Pandemic," Volume 62, Issue 4 (Winter 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first poem I wrote that was published in a literary journal was titled, “The Lust of Emperors,” and it was about how soldiers are sacrificed during war, and it includes a memory of my dad, who was drafted to fight in the American war in Vietnam.

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
I have been deeply influenced by an older generation of Pacific Islander writers, including Albert Wendt, Haunani-...

10 Questions for Jeannine Hall Gailey

January 4, 2022 - By Edward Clifford

Milkmen returned to their jobs.

Sales of private jets and air purifiers went through the roof.

There were shortages, but they were short-lived:coins, toilet paper, bleach.
—from "Things I Forgot to Tell You about the End of the World," Volume 62, Issue 4 (Winter 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
One of the first poems I remember writing was when I was seven years old. We lived near the Oak Ridge National Labs (and my father consulted there) where some nuns just a few years ago were arrested for protesting building nuclear weapons, or the nuclear waste, or just trespassing on the grounds? Something. Anyway, to me it was a very sinister seeming place. I wrote a very clever (I thought) poem about...