10 Questions for John A. Nieves
- By Marissa Perez
I had a hole in my pocket I used
to fall through when I was little. There
was never anyone there, just the sound
the dark makes when it's ignoring you
and the smell of coins someone found
—from "Just Below Away," Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)
Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
One of the first pieces I wrote was a lyric exploration of how I constructed my idea of my maternal grandfather. I had never met him and had only been afforded scraps about criminality and aggression and abandoning my grandmother, aunt and mother. In the poem, I tried (and failed) to trace his outline, to figure out how he fit in the story of my very young, teenage life.
What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
Honestly, so many. I owe a ton to Daniel Simko, Jake Adam York, Yusef Komunyakaa, Larry Levis, Alexandra Teague, Nicky Beer, David Hernandez and Kevin Prufer for helping me see the possibilities of the lyric—the way it can stretch and surprise while still be revelatory. I owe very much to Nicholas Samaras for helping me understand the costs of craft choices. Also, my current and former students influence my writing all the time. I will name a few who you should definitely check out: Jordan Durham, Caroline Chavatel, Emma DePanise, Ella Flores, Ellery Beck and Adam D. Weeks.
What did you want to be when you were young?
I wanted to be a cartographer, a writer, a member of a punk band or a teacher. I got to do three of those things literally. I hope I have at least figuratively dipped my toe in cartography.
What inspired you to write this piece?
I had entered a challenge to write a collaborative project with one of my former students, Emma DePanise, via correspondence. We would each write a poem centered on a place, send them to each other, then write a poem using another place responding to something in the other person’s last poem. It became a collaborative chapbook project called Heresongs. This poem arose by combining an elegiac tone in one of her childhood poems about a swamp with my own childhood memory of a friend, now passed, whose room I used to hang out in. I remembered the wonder every little thing could bring and the terror of not understanding all of the forces influencing our lives. I wrote the poem to try to capture the feeling of that person in that space, to make memory true by letting the surreal dance with the real enough to hold, for a little while, the way those days vibrated in my chest—a tiny squeaky elegiac note played on a taut but fraying string. I hope I did the memory of both person and place justice.
Is there a city or place, real or imagined, that influences your writing?
I am a very place-oriented writer. The haunts of my childhood certainly show up, but really any place I have been or wish to go to can find its way into a poem. I love capturing places with certain functions, too: bars where shows were played, cars during road trips, ditches when the stray cats gather. Things like that. I think the soul of a place is often decided on by the function the people in it assign it. I also love the tension possible when that function is subverted. For me though, place is always defined by those who inhabit it, or at least think deeply about it.
Is there any specific music that aids you through the writing or editing process?
Music is absolutely central to my writing. Some of the great punk and indie lyricists haunt my work: John K. Sampson, Blake Schwarzenbach, Bob Nanna, Eric Bachmann, Isaac Brock and many others. I also find pianists move my poems. I love to write to Tori Amos, Tom Waits, Billy Joel and even some piano-driven Belle & Sebastian. But really, nearly any music can get me going, can knock me out of my natural rhythm and teach me a new way to hear the world.
Do you have any rituals or traditions that you do in order to write?
I am a note taker. I jot down ideas and observations. I scribble bits of rhythm and lines. Often when I compose, I am looking through those scraps and trying to rub a few together to see what takes. I also love research and I use it in much the same way. I am always hoping to find two or three disparate threads that suddenly want to make music together.
If you could work in another art form what would it be?
I would love to be in a band again someday. I don’t have a shred of time now, but maybe some years down the road. I love making music. I love the way the world vibrates when I get to play it to a live audience.
What are you working on currently?
I am working on a project that looks at places of mutability, places where our ideas of ourselves or the world change: ports, astronomical observatories, retirement homes. I am interested in places that almost force us to re-understand our place in the world.
What are you reading right now?
So many cool books! I just finished Kevin Prufer’s masterful The Art of Fiction. I loved Valencia Robin’s Ridiculous Light, Catherine Pierce’s Danger Days and Lisa Ampleman’s Romances. I am currently obsessing over Kimberly Grey’s Systems for the Future of Feeling. I love exploring a new book. I almost always read them twice, the second time just to think about how I might teach them in my classes.
JOHN A. NIEVES's poems appear in journals such as Crazyhorse, Southern Review, Copper Nickel, North American Review, and Poet Lore. His first book, Curio, won the Elixir Press Annual Judges Prize. He’s an associate professor at Salisbury University and an editor of The Shore Poetry.
