Blog / Interviews

10 Questions for Lucas Jorgensen

August 27, 2021 - By Marissa Perez

I hide from people. I have a big nose & don’t brush
my teeth. My silhouette is long, splattered
with lumps, bulging. This is to say: I’m ugly,
I want to be unique. Since I was little,
I’ve loved goblin sharks, their trapdoor jaws
—from “Self-Portrait as Goblin Shark,” Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first piece I wrote was a sort of ode to the streetlamps outside the dorm I stayed at in my first year at Florida State. I was taking an intro to poetry class and we were reading the early modernists, so it had all that high brow poetry voice stuff. I believe the first line was “Core of hot yellow, shine out!”
...

10 Questions for Lynne Thompson

August 25, 2021 - By Marissa Perez

I don't want to pluck my burr from your flesh
nor do I want to be kind    Or if I am to be kind,
    I want to be a kind of chameleon,
                                        night-blue flourescent.
—from "When Nothing Else Will Do," Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2022)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I can’t recall the year but when I wrote “How I Learned Where We Come From”, it led me to recognize that I had an “original voice”. The poem is...

10 Questions for Darla Himeles

August 23, 2021 - By Marissa Perez

When Jesus casts demons into pigs,
they leap from steep banks

to sea. Some translations suggest
lake. The water, salt or fresh,

muffles a mania of snouts.
—from “Pigs that Ran Straightaway into the Water, Triumph Of,” Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
When I started writing in earnest, in middle school, I wrote by hand in journals and spiral notebooks that are likely currently decomposing in a Los Angeles landfill. That time in my life was tumultuous and difficult, and I journaled and poemed to carry myself through it. Because trauma does strange things to the brain, I don’t remember anything I wrote then; probably I was bouncing between...

10 Questions for Varun Ravindran

August 20, 2021 - By Marissa Perez

Lovely as milk, smooth as a knell,
bodiless and meade of breaths,
a blue bed of pollen,

lace, mesh, the sea ran
like a prayered tongue, the waves
—from “The City Opposite Nineveh,” Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
When I was younger we moved around India a lot, and so I went to a handful of different schools. An English vocabulary test was usually a part of the application to these schools, where you had to write an essay using all the words from a provided word bank. Those essays were my first pieces.

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
I’d wager my most formative influence is Virginia Woolf. More...

10 Questions for Merridawn Duckler

August 18, 2021 - By Marissa Perez

while I’m outside at the dull resort, near two women trying to read
and claim to have managed so far ten pages
which is nine more than me
as I google the etymology of pugilist
which one philosopher accused another being.
—from “near the new year, the philosophers fight on a FB page,” Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
One of the first poems I ever wrote was about my friend getting pregnant at a party I threw in a forest. I was only fifteen and didn’t really grasp the consequences but I always remembered the title which was “Last Birthday Party in Forest Park. “Maybe part of me did understand this was the end of certain...