10 Questions for April Goldman

- By Marissa Perez

Happiness: a wind through a blight of poppies.

It takes a long time to unlatch something like that. To open up a parenthesis
that looks like a burning
red poppy.
—from "[Longing]," Volume 62, No. 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first poem I wrote in what felt like my own voice was when I was in my early thirties. Long, long after I completed my MFA. I'm really susceptible to other people's opinions, so it took me a long time to be brave enough to write in the way I liked. This particular poem was about pumping gas and looking at the weeds and flowers and bees around the gas station.

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
In poems, I love using long, prose-like lines, so naturally I love reading fiction. My favorite book from the past few years is Lucia Berline's selected stories A Manual for Cleaning Women. For poetry recently, I've loved Chen Chen's When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities and most everything I've read by Diane Seuss.

What other professions have you worked in?
In college, I worked at the library circulation desk where I date stamped books. I loved to use that rubber stamp!

What did you want to be when you were young?
A conservationist especially for North American gray wolves.

What inspired you to write this piece?
I was thinking about how structures can feel very soothing. Like feeling the gravel and dirt under your feet. For example, mapping and storytelling are structures that can feel good to get inside of.

Is there a city or place, real or imagined, that influences your writing?
The Sierra Nevada, where I live. We have bears, coyotes, deer, grouse, woodpeckers. . . Lots of these creatures make their way into my poems.

Is there any specific music that aids you through the writing or editing process?
I have to say Cardi B. And lately Lil Nas X. Music that is fun to dance to.

Do you have any rituals or traditions that you do in order to write?
Dancing alone in my house or hiking in the sunshine. I want my poems to move, so I have to move too.

If you could work in another art form what would it be?
Gardening. Helping other living things along to do what they want to do.

What are you reading right now?
The novel Peace Like a River by Leif Enger. It's different than what I usually read. For the past 10 years, I;ve been reading mostly books by women. This book has a loving masculine energy.

APRIL GOLDMAN is a graduate of the University of Houston’s MFA program in poetry. Her recent poems appear in Narrative Magazine, The Journal, and Third Coast. She lives in Truckee, California, and is on Instagram as aprileli.