Blog / Interviews

10 Questions for Jennifer Sperry Steinorth

September 9, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

When one braids together
a horse
and a fence

it isn't pretty:
mangle of mane and wire, twisted legs
cedar splints. Once

on a hill
in a far country
I watched some horses across a dust road
—from "Range," Volume 61, Issue 2 (Summer 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Hmmm. One piece, back in undergrad, I remember clearly. I was studying with Diane Wakoski; her workshop method was unusual. Each week we passed around copies of our new poems and read them aloud without comment, while she took notes. After, we watched as she arranged the poems from “best” to “worst”; then we workshopped in that order—“best” to “worst...

10 Questions for Tess Lewis

September 8, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

You must go to Brno to see the rain. There are writers who have written almost exclusively about Brno and almost exclusively about what it's like when it rains there. Brno in the rain is a sadder place than anywhere else in the world, but in a less personally inflected way: the Brno rain washes sadness clean of all private elements, of all despondency and dejection, until it is nothing but immaculate, essential sadness.
—from "The Rain of Brno: Ivan Blatný and the Moravian Portuguese Poet," by Karl-Markus Gauss, Translated by Tess Lewis, Volume 61, Issue 2 (Summer 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
The first book I translated was Peter Handke’s...

10 Questions for Ryan Mihaly

September 4, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

You unwittingly keep a catalogue of embarrassments on hand, lifetime-deep, ready to be flipped open to any page should the right moment present itself. The right moment is usually wrong, conventionally speaking: the bus driver doesn't want to hear it, no matter what stop you're at; stramgers waiting for the crossing signal don't care; but whenever you happen to remember calling an old friend by the wrong name, or the time you lost all sense of language during an interview, or the failed attempts at elegance, the story comes bursting out.
—from "[B]," Volume 61, Issue 2 (Summer 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I wrote several chapters of Animorphs fan fiction when I was in third or...

10 Questions for Bitite Vinklers

September 3, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

—a window opens and shuts;
doors swing open, for a moment wind
dances in, dances
back
out, and again doorposts, doorposts,
        and hinges unyielding
        as warriors,
        and high doorsills,
        and locks, locks,
        like women
        in armor.
— from (siege) by Baiba Bičole, Translated by Bitite Vinklers, Volume 60, Issue 3 (Fall 2019)

A preface: I was invited to participate in this interview almost a year ago, at the time that my translation of a poem by the contemporary Latvian poet Baiba Bičole appeared in the Fall 2019 issue. Although I intended to do the...

10 Questions for Pat Dubrava

August 31, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

"What are you doing here?"

Betania was standing on a corner, two blocks from home. Nervous. She wore an old dress and had her hair loosely tied up in a bun. If it weren't for the carelessness of her appearance, she might have been taken for a novice prostitute.

"What are you doing here?" Álvaro repeated his question.

"There's a jeep in front of the house," she responded.
—from "In Front of the House, All Nigt Long" by Agustín Cadena, Translated by Pat Dubrava, Volume 61, Issue 2 (Summer 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
Having been a poet, I decided to find a Mexican woman poet to translate. I had no training, a basic knowledge of Spanish...