Blog / Interviews

10 Questions for Xu Xi

March 12, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

Photo credit: Leslie Lausch

In 2010, the second morning of the Year of the Pig is the day after Valentine’s. Hong Kong’s in a good mood. On ATV Home, Harmony News broadcasts a senior citizen activity organized by a Christian social welfare group. Its goal—to reproduce past times by displaying personal possessions these seniors have preserved and staging pop songs and dances they perform, sporting makeup, wigs, and clothing from their youth. One woman could still wear her wedding dress. —from “The View from 2010,” Volume 60, Issue 4 (Winter 2019)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
An...

10 Questions for Lindsay Remee Ahl

March 9, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

You might have a lover who builds you a castle,
and in the field beyond the pond, a lapwing makes her nest.

The long-legged mother, black and white, and beautifully agile,
will pretend to have a broken wing to lure you around and away.

“Lapwing” means “disguise the secret.”
—From “Mythographic Shorthand,” Volume 60, Issue 4 (Winter 2019)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Early on, I was interested in something unnamable that somehow became manifest in the act of typing. It had little to do with content—poetry or prose or an essay for school—something about the typing itself felt vital and important and mysterious. I received a typewriter for Christmas...

10 Questions for Tina Cane

March 5, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

We speak sparingly      to ourselves      indulging instead a devotional of lists
soft tyranny of small needs      abject and quotidian      underneath which
the broad sweep of desire      our machinery grinds      for poverty
—from “Letter for Elena Ferrante: Devotional,” Volume 60, Issue 4 (Winter 2019)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The very first poem I published was in high school—in Dans Le Vent, my school's French Journal. I was studying French, so I submitted this terrible poem called "Le Jardin de Printemps," filled with cloying...

10 Questions for Ama Codjoe

March 3, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

A few times a week, Yiadom-Boakye
painstakingly cuts oil paintings she believes
aren’t up to snuff. Instead of re-priming
the canvas, she reduces it to 2 X 2 ½-meter
pieces. She begins again. This isn’t
an ars poetica. Once, I made love in daylight.
—from “Poem After an Iteration of a Painting by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Destroyed by the Artist Herself,” Volume 60, Issue 4 (Winter 2019)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Just the other day, my mother mentioned, by name, a poem I wrote in high school. What’s special to me is that she remembers it.

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
There seem to be at least...

10 Questions for Matt W. Miller

February 24, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

How they get you is first they give you more
to do by rolling out two more machines
but slowing down each loom to 100 beats
a minute to mitigate the impact of working
two looms at once and this is what they called
back then the stretch out and once they stretch you out
once you get good at working four at once
then comes of course the speed up . . .
—from “A Brief History of American Labor,” Volume 60, Issue 4 (Winter 2019)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Beyond the bad high school rip-offs of Jim Morrison lyrics and Rimbaud’s “A Season in Hell”? I remember writing a poem in high school about a friend who had recently died, and they put it in the school...