The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “Writing the Speculative Diaspora,” a workshop led by Kyla-Yến Huỳnh Giffin on Wednesday, April 8th from 6:00-7:30 PM EST. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at tiny.utk.edu/sundress (password: SAFTA).
Every story is a diaspora story, and every diaspora story is speculative in nature. In this craft talk and workshop, open to all genres, students will gain an appreciation for diaspora stories and be able to spot and understand the presence of the speculative within them. We’ll discuss perspectives on diaspora narratives from authors such as Ocean Vuong, Viet Thanh Nguyen, R.F. Kuang, and Ling Ma; diaspora stories’ role in challenging western storytelling conventions; and how diaspora pushes against genre, concepts of truth and authenticity, and the confines of individuality and representation. We’ll then discover the speculative diaspora form and its potential, and explore the speculative diaspora through writing prompts such as truth/lie (“speculative truth”)/dream activities and a collective storytelling exercise.
While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to Kyla-Yến Huỳnh Giffin via Venmo: @kylayen or PayPal @KylaYenHuynhGiffin
Kyla-Yến Huỳnh Giffin (they/them) is a queer and trans, biracial, Vietnamese American diaspora writer whose speculative work focuses on diaspora, transness, ecology, empire, and intergenerational histories. They are a Press Editor for Half Mystic Press, a Co-Coordinator for Sundress Publications’ Poets in Pajamas, and an Associate Editor for Iron Horse Literary Review. Kyla-Yến’s work has been nominated for Best of the Net, and appears in The Offing, Oroboro, Vănguard, and other publications. They have been awarded residencies, workshops, and/or fellowships from Tin House, the Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA), Seventh Wave, Abode Press, and more.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present Poetry Xfit hosted by Alexa White. This generative workshop event will take place on Sunday, December 28th, from 2 to 4 pm EST via Zoom. Join us at the link tiny.utk.edu/sundress with the password “safta”.
Poetry Xfit isn’t about throwing tires or heavy ropes, but the idea of confusing our muscles is the same. You will receive ideas, guidelines, and more as part of this generative workshop series in order to complete three poems in two hours. A new set of prompts will be provided after the writers have written collaboratively for thirty minutes. The goal is to create material that can be later modified and transformed into artwork rather than producing flawless final versions. The event is open to prose authors as well!
Alexa White is a mixed-race, neurodivergent writer and graduate of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she earned her BA in creative writing and studio art. Alexa lives in Knoxville, her semi-hometown, and is the Creative Director and Assistant Editor at Sundress. She takes delight in backroads, quarries, and the last few seconds of sunset and redefines her bedtime nightly.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “Word/Play: A Generative Poetry Workshop,” a workshop led by Aerik Francis on Wednesday, December 10th from 6:00-7:30 PM EST. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at tiny.utk.edu/sundress (password: safta)
Wordplay is time traveling: it is an opportunity to explore the history of words and languages while also crafting new futures and directions for words and language. Wordplay can bring fun and pleasure back into the craft of writing. Words can also enact dramatic plays, exploring the nuances of language using sound and employing multiple meanings at once.
This generative writing poetry workshop is an invitation to play with words and engage critically with craft. We will begin with an opportunity to sandbox and play with language based on impulse and intuition. Then, after our warm up writing activity where we will gather a bank of words and sounds, we will spend the workshop discussing tools and poetry related to wordplay with a special focus on homonyms, homophones, and puns.
We’ll draw inspiration from work by authors like Christina Sharpe, Evelyn Berry, Franny Choi, Emily Pérez, and Haryette Mullen before experimenting on our own. By the end of the workshop, we’ll all hopefully have seedlings of poetic writing for future work and more craft tools to bring back into our own craft practices.
While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to Aerik Francis via Venmo at @Aerik-Francis or via Paypal at aerfrancis@gmail.com.
Aerik Francis is a Queer Black Latinx poet born & based on the lands of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute peoples currently known as Denver, Colorado, USA. Aerik wants us to come together and gum up the gears of the machinery of the empire toward all of our collective liberation. Their poetry chapbook MISEDUCATION (New Delta Review 2023) can be purchased online or in person, and their newest poetry chapbook BODYPOLITIC is forthcoming with Abode Press in 2026. Find more of their work on their website phaentompoet.com or via social media @phaentompoet.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present Poetry Xfit hosted by Brynn Martin. This generative workshop event will take place on Sunday, November 30th, from 2 to 4 pm EST via Zoom. Join us at the link tiny.utk.edu/sundress with the password “safta”.
Poetry Xfit isn’t about throwing tires or heavy ropes, but the idea of confusing our muscles is the same. You will receive ideas, guidelines, and more as part of this generative workshop series in order to complete three poems in two hours. A new set of prompts will be provided after the writers have written collaboratively for thirty minutes. The goal is to create material that can be later modified and transformed into artwork rather than producing flawless final versions. The event is open to prose authors as well!
Brynn Martin (she/her) is a Midwesterner at heart, but she has spent the last decade living in Knoxville, where she received her MFA in poetry from the University of Tennessee. She is an Associate Editor for Sundress Publications and the event manager for an indie bookstore. Her poetry has appeared in Contrary Magazine, Rogue Agent, FIVE:2:ONE, and CrabOrchardReview, among others.
This event is brought to you in part by grants provided by the Tennessee Arts Commission.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “The Intersection of Religion and Mental Health in Poetry,” a workshop led by Maya Williams on Wednesday, November 12th from 6:00-7:30 PM EST. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at tiny.utk.edu/sundress (password: safta).
Regardless of the religious, nonreligious, irreligious, or spiritual worldview we identify with, the culture of religion continues to be an influence on people’s mental health. We will look at poetry by Adrienne Novy, Eugenia Leigh, and Maya Williams to learn how suicidality, spiritual bypassing, and religious related trauma in poetics can impact us. We will also make time to write in response to prompts inspired by the poems.
While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to Maya Williams via Venmo: @MayaWilliams16.
Maya Williams (ey/they/she) is a religious Black multiracial nonbinary suicide survivor who was selected as Portland, ME’s seventh poet laureate for a July 2021 to July 2024 term. Eir debut poetry collection, Judas & Suicide (Game Over Books, 2023), was selected as a finalist for a New England Book Award. Their second poetry collection, Refused a Second Date (Harbor Editions, 2023), was selected as a finalist for a Maine Literary Award. Their third poetry collection, What’s So Wrong with a Pity Party Anyway?, was selected as one of four winners of Garden Party Collective’s chapbook prize in 2024.
I wrote my first book when I was six years old. Of course, this was not what you would typically think of when someone says they’re writing a book. This was a stack of printer paper that I had stolen from my mother’s printer, folded in half, and stapled carefully down the spine to make a book-like shape. Then, I wrote the story of a troublesome kid named Henry inside, affectionately named after my kindergarten best friend. By the time I was done, the pages were riddled with misspelled words, badly drawn stick figures, and accidental pen markings. But I had finished a book, and that was the first time I felt like I had actually accomplished something.
For years, I continued this pattern, making my mom viscerally angry by “wasting” her perfectly good printer paper. Then, I found out that I could use spiral notebooks instead, and I began to write there. Most of the time, these little stories were never finished. My brain was always swirling with ideas, and each time another would come up, I would think it was better than the last and immediately get to work on it instead. It wasn’t until I discovered my very first book while cleaning out my desk one day that something clicked. I had loved that story so much because it had someone I loved in it. I had used my own experiences, as well as his, to create a story that meant something to me. And when I showed the original Henry, several years after they had already moved to a different school, the tears in their eyes showed me that it meant something to them, too.
From that moment on, my approach to writing changed. I was no longer looking to empty the contents of my brain’s creativity on the page; I was looking to make people feel, to find a way to evoke the same feelings I had when I read my favorite books. Even before I could analyze literature properly, I knew what their authors were trying to say. Every novel that I loved and cried over had a message, and I began to find ways to put my thoughts and opinions into my own stories.
Now, I find that writing is power. In an era where critical thought and originality is shunned rather than celebrated, all I can do is write. Sometimes, that means writing think pieces that will never see the sun in my journal. Other times, it looks like poring over the third draft of my debut novel, looking for meaning in every word. Either way, the writing I do alone empowers me to write for others, to share stories that makes people think, feel, and see themselves represented in a space where they may not have been previously.
If you take one thing about me away from this post, let it be this: my writing is my activism. The world can be an incredibly dark place, but it is up to us to not only find the pockets of light but to create them and share them. In truth, my writing has never been about me; it’s been about the people I love, the people I have met and have yet to meet, and those who cannot write or speak for themselves. It’s been about you, the person who is reading this blog post, and those who have already passed and will never get the chance to. The written word has a long history, one full of pain and joy. I aim to tip the scale and make the joy a little bit greater than the pain.
“There are two ways of spreading light; to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”
— Edith Wharton
Shelby Hansen (she/her) is a creative writer and self-proclaimed fantasy maestro hailing from the northern plains of Texas. She recently graduated from the University of Tennessee’s English program with a focus in Literature and Creative Writing, where she won several awards for her fiction. Her writing often focuses on womanhood, identity, and the reclamation of the self. This is reflected in her debut novel, which she hopes to publish soon. When she is not writing or teaching today’s youth, she enjoys reading, crocheting, swimming, and spending time with her two cats, Stella and Gemma.
On my sixth, Barney the Dinosaur-themed birthday party in our small, but festive, house in Damascus, a close friend of mine named Sarah gifted me my first ever English book— every six-year-old’s dream. A fairytale book for every day of the year that her mom had probably picked out, it had a light pink hardcover filled with knights, princesses, dragons, and castles. As a little girl who just wanted some Barbie’s and Build-A-Bears, I was a little disappointed by such an underwhelming, educational present. But now, almost 16 years later, that gift is the only one I remember and the one I am most grateful for.
My traditional Korean father was always busy when we lived in Syria: he constantly had to travel to Asia for his fabric business, so he would usually be gone for three to four weeks at a time. Yet he never missed any of my birthdays, and my sixth was no exception. We spent, without a doubt and without any excuses, every day from my sixth to seventh birthday reading a fairytale out of Sarah’s book. Even though each story was relatively short and simple (almost half a page), it took me hours to read because my English vocabulary had not yet been developed. With the help of my father, I learnt a lot of big words in 2008 like “immediately”, “specifically,” and “nonetheless,” just to name a few. From that year onward, I picked up English much more easily than my Syrian peers.
Because of Bashar Al-Assad’s dictatorship and the war in 2011, my family and I were forced to relocate to Cairo for two years before moving again to Jeddah in 2014. In Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, as a confused and angsty teenager, my love for books really grew and I was able to find what I gravitated toward as a reader and writer. I loved read anything and everything. Even more than that, I loved talking and arguing about anything and everything. I would spend lunch time in my social studies teacher’s room (thanks Mr. Daniel) with my three best friends talking to him about the world, books, the school system, and anything that came to mind. My inquisitive and curious quality that was fostered in that classroom has been a core part of me as an adult. I was devastated to have to say goodbye to him in 2017.
In high school, my father advised me to begin reading Camus, Sartre, Dostoevsky, and Kierkegaard, sparking my love for literature and philosophy. These authors inspired me to write more, and I began exploring my creative and artistic side, joining art classes, choir, and even picking up where I left off with playing piano. I was able to truly discover my two passions, literature and music, and chose to pursue them at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. I am grateful for the opportunity to do what I love at Sundress Publications, and I am excited about what life has to offer me.
Noor Chang is a writer and aspiring editor with a rich, multicultural background. Half-Syrian and half-Korean, she spent most of her life in the Middle East, specifically Syria, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates before moving to Knoxville, Tennessee, to pursue higher education. She is a student at the University of Tennessee, double majoring in English Literature and Jazz Studies. Noor’s diverse upbringing has shaped her perspective and fueled her passion for storytelling, leading her to explore a variety of creative avenues, including writing, music, and cultural exploration. An avid pianist, Noor enjoys playing music with friends and immersing herself in different genres. Her love for travel allows her to experience new cultures and she hopes to continue traveling for the rest of her life. In her free time, Noor is often found with a good book, making music, or working out to stay active and grounded.
Language and storytelling. Analyzing it, creating it, and sharing it with others. I truly believe it is the reason we are all here. To experience, perceive, imagine, and record. Those are my bread, butter, oats, and OJ. I am the individual toaster that seals everything into place. A hearty Literary Breakfast to carry along wherever I go and remind me that life isn’t always so scary, and when it is, I just have to write about it or read a good book.
To say that my passion for storytelling began with just one book or just one author would be an overstatement. on January 27th, 2001, I was born to two beautiful people with big dreams. Their dreams were so large that they had to take a backseat for their baby girl. My mother had her sights on journalism. This is something I truly admire: her desire to know and share vital information, and shed light on the news of the world that maybe the next journalist wouldn’t.
My father, however, taught me the beauty of writing, and storytelling through his music. My dad wanted to make it as a music engineer and lyricist. He taught me all about the structure of a story within a song and letting your heart and soul craft a melody. For that reason, for me, the processes of creating music, creating literature, and even analyzing it go hand-in-hand.
The first time I was unable to break myself away from a book, I knew I wanted everything to do with them. I was seven years old, and it was a biographical title on the Titanic. It was the only book in the house, and I was determined to read it cover-to-cover. The next time I got that feeling, I was nose-deep inside a Barbie book. I forget the name of it, but Barbie and friends go to summer camp and hilarity ensues. It was a glossy hardback with about sixty pages. At least it felt like sixty back then.
The two titles that have most influenced my tastes today and my writing overall have been Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”and Roald Dahl’s“Lamb to the Slaughter.” Being introduced to those masterpieces in the eighth grade, I thought, “Yes… this is where I want to live,” so I moved in and I never left. Sure, I thought that giving praise to these titles made me edgy and that somehow made me feel better, but I know there was something more than my teen angst powering that feeling.
I see my journeys with writing and reading as markers for where I am in life. For example, when I first began writing as a preteen I wrote from pain, and as a form of escapism. Now I write because I have such beautiful visions in my head, and I want to make them real. Now I write and read because I may have something important to say or to learn.
My perspective changed when I was about seventeen, during a shift at my barista job. I was finishing Frankl’s A Man’s Search for Meaning during a lull period, and the next person who came up to buy something got an earful of analysis and praise for the book that he didn’t ask for as I frothed his latte. I expected him to engage but he didn’t… rightfully so. I probably seemed like a crazy person. He simply took his coffee, gave me a “You have a good day now,” and left.
I could only laugh at myself at that moment and forgive myself for being so moved by something that I would talk to a stranger like I’d known him for decades. Everything has been kind of light and airy since then, more or less, and I find something ethereal to fuel me in everything I read, and I try and put a strong message in everything I write.
Jahmayla Pointer is a three-time National Goofing Around Award winner and specializes in consuming gothic literature and horror films. Jahmayla’s playful and observant nature, and deep love of horror, magic, and literary thrills led her to pursue an English and Creative writing degree four years ago. She began taking creative writing workshops in her senior year of high school and fell in love with working with others on various projects. During her sophomore and Junior years at Southern New Hampshire University, she’s also done Men-tee and beta reading work for authors local to Cincinnati, most notably Victor Velez, author of A Triduum of All Hallows. Jahmayla was an ACES member briefly through which she received several beneficial developmental opportunities including courses through the Poynter Institute. During her downtime, she likes to spend time with friends and family, dance, write short stories, and read in copious amounts. Something that means a lot to Jahmayla is grassroots work and helping people directly through mutual aid and acts of service, she puts this passion into action by working with a group of good friends to develop education tools and encourage high literacy in her local neighborhoods.
Welcome back to Lyric Essentials, where we invite authors to share the work of their favorite poets. This month, Erika Walsh joins us to discuss the work of Chelsey Minnis, and the importance of taking risks in poetry, whether it be through form or humor, and how bending expectations in writing can be freeing. As always, we hope you enjoy as much as we did.
Ryleigh Wann: When was the first time you read Chelsey Minnis? Why did her work stand out to you then?
Erika Walsh: It was initially a bit disturbing to me that I couldn’t remember the exact moment I encountered Chelsey Minnis for the first time, but then it felt kind of fun and cool, as though she were part of my life all along; like there was never a time before her. I know for sure that the first book I read by her was Bad Bad, and that the first singular poem I read online by her was “Clown,” but I can’t recall how I came to find her, or which came first.
I remember being tickled by the wild aesthetics of Bad Bad, with its pink and white striped cover, a seemingly random drawing of a two-headed fawn at the center of the book, and “bad” reviews highlighted on its back cover, such as “Her poems take some getting used to” and “Many won’t find her…acceptable at all…” These poems took real risks, such as covering multiple pages nearly entirely with ellipses. I was especially struck by Chelsey’s “Anti Vitae” which made me laugh out loud, as it listed her “failures” as a poet, such as “Mispronounce ‘Kant’,” “Told poems ‘lack agency.’ Have to ask what ‘agency’ means,” and “Told that poetry is ‘loose’ by future poet laureate.” It was so refreshing to read poems by someone who is clearly an artist and a poet, but not in a way that adheres to any arbitrary expectations of the literary world as an institution.
RW: How has her writing inspired your own?
EW: I love how genuinely funny Chelsey’s poems are. I began writing poetry thinking there was a “right” way to write a poem, and my poems came out feeling stifled and forced as I tried to bend them into shapes I thought may result in others taking me more “seriously” as a poet. Now that I’m in my MFA, I think I maybe for the first time feel like I truly have the space and support to write poems that are less “safe.” I feel more free to not only write poems that are “weird” or “experimental” (but still aesthetically pleasing), but also to write poems that are absurd and maybe even a little bit crude, maybe a little bit ugly. Chelsey’s writing also shows me that there are not only many ways to write a poem, but also many ways to be a poet, and that validation from other poets or from literary institutions can only take you so far. Writing the poems you want to write solely because you want to write them is the real pleasure.
RW: Why did you choose to read these poems specifically?
EW: “A Speech About the Moon” (from Zirconia) puts me into a trance state every time I read it. It initially feels almost like a punch line, to have the poem start with one line about the moon before moving on to the birds and the fish and the sea, which quickly become the real adhering images of the poem. Then you begin to realize this poem is haunted. Whatever is haunting you rises to the surface as you read it, but in a surprisingly gentle way; gentler than you could have imagined. This poem gives you the space and permission to settle into the feeling; to not flinch away from your fear. I consider “Clown” (from Bad Bad) to be a classic. As I mentioned before, I believe it’s the first poem I ever read online by Minnis. This poem makes me laugh out loud, especially the last few lines: “You can’t imagine how jolly/ everything is. And the fright wigs… I don’t want to be a clown but I’m/ sure to be one. My mother was a clown.” Every time I read these lines, I know with absolute certainty that they must be true; that there is something clown-like in me, and in my ancestral lineage, and perhaps in every person who comes across this poem. Somehow, we’re all connected by both the fact that we are clowns, and the fact that we don’t want to be them. “Men Cry Because of the Heat” is another poem from Bad Bad that just makes me laugh. It really embodies the feeling of absurdity in Chelsey’s poems. The droll delivery of the speaker adds to this feeling. This poem also is in ways a parallel to “A Speech About the Moon,” with its attention to similar images, such as crying, ice, and birds. But unlike the speaker in “A Speech About the Moon,” the men in this poem aren’t paying attention; “If a bird lands on their shoulder….they don’t even think about it…they can’t realize anything…about birds.” The speaker in “A Speech About the Moon,” is alone with her thoughts, whereas the men in this poem have help (“You have to cut their shirts into half shirts….”). The sadness in this poem does not, after all, arise from the same place, or from an “enchanted misery.” It is only the heat.
RW: What have you been up to lately (life, work, anything!)? Got any news to share?
EW: I was recently named Poetry Editor of Black Warrior Review, the literary journal affiliated with my MFA at the University of Alabama, and will begin this position in January 2024. I’m very excited about this, especially since this is a journal I’ve been reading and following for many years! The 9th issue of A Velvet Giant, an online literary journal which I also edit and co-founded, also just came out last month. In terms of my own writing, my poem “My Baby” was recently published in Pigeon Pages. I have two poems coming out in VIBEin early 2024 (and the folio is available for preorder right now!) I’ve been writing lots of fairytale inspired poems lately, and have been writing ecopoetry as well and thinking about the connection between the violences humans commit against our planet and against each other. In terms of more life-related news, I recently moved into a new apartment with my partner. I’m planning a puppet show with one of my best friends, and starting to get back into studying tarot. I’m thinking about the future in a way that feels mostly exciting.
Chelsey Minnis studied creative writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is the author of several collections of poetry including Zirconia (2001), which won the Alberta Prize; Bad Bad (2007); and Poemland (2009). She lives in Boulder.
Erika Walsh is an MFA candidate in Poetry at the University of Alabama, poetry editor of BlackWarrior Review, and co-founding editor of A Velvet Giant. Erika’s creative writing has been featured in Hotel Amerika, Booth, Pigeon Pages, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Peach Mag, and elsewhere. She has been awarded residencies from Sundress Academy of the Arts and Art Farm Nebraska, as well as a fellowship from Brooklyn Poets.
Ryleigh Wann (she/her) hails from Michigan and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. She earned an MFA from UNC Wilmington where she taught poetry and served as the comics editor for Ecotone. Her writing can be found in The McNeese Review, Longleaf Review, The Shore, and elsewhere. You can visit her website at ryleighwann.com
Following the republishing of his bookWhat To Do If You’re Buried Alive this past month, Michael Meyehofer spoke with Doubleback Books editorial intern Camelia Heins about the choice behind the title along with reasons behind his references to religion, connections to the Midwest, and the use of comedy.
Camelia Heins: Your title really hooks people in and the title itself is the name of one of your poems. What inspired you to name this collection of works What To Do If You’re Buried Alive? Why did this poem specifically stand out to be the name of the entire collection?
Michael Meyerhofer: The original version of that poem was about three pages long and was inspired by research I did on actual people throughout the ages who’ve been inadvertently buried alive but lived to tell the tale. Gradually, though, I whittled it down until it ended up as the fairly short poem it is now. Since that one already felt like an allegory for dealing with depression—or, really, any kind of struggle that feels overwhelming and insurmountable, but probably actually isn’t—and a lot of my poems can have a bit of darkness or sardonic humor in them, it seemed like a fitting title poem for the collection.
CH: You section off the book into two sections, “Scars” and “Tattoos.” I think these words are particularly interesting, especially with how tattoos themselves can be seen as scars or as art. What is the significance behind sectioning off the book this way? Can you explain your reasoning behind choosing these two words?
MM: To be honest, I actually have to credit my late friend and mentor, Jon Tribble, for that! Many years ago, I was at critical mass in terms of having way too many poems that I was trying to fit into manuscripts, and he kindly volunteered to take a look at what I had. It was his idea to arrange the manuscript in two sections, with “Scars” and “Tattoos” used to distinguish between formative events and later, more deliberate choices. I eventually added what became the title poem and tweaked a few small things, but overall, it’s still as he arranged it. Jon was a kind, brilliant man, and like hundreds of poets out there, I owe him a lot!
CH: Many of your poems include some sort of unexpected twist or may catch people off guard. What influences can you attribute this style to? What kind of impact do you intend to make with these twists in your poems?
MM: I’m sure I’m far from the first person to say this, but I feel like there’s a lot of similarity between poems and Zen koans. I’ve always loved how koans end on a twist that makes sense in a way that’s wild and transcendent but can’t really be articulated—the way they tug our brains in directions we didn’t even know were possible. For most of my writing life, poetry has been an exercise in teaching myself to stop white-knuckling whatever story or meaning I’m trying to get across and just trusting the piece to end itself.
CH: It’s clear your work contains a touch of comedy and satire, seen in poems like “My Mother Sent Me” and “Dear Submitter.” Can you talk about how you use comedy and satire and what kind of effect these elements have on your work?
MM: There’s something transcendent and almost spiritual about humor—how it can let the air out of the worst tragedy and remind us in an instant that there’s a touch of absurdity in all our struggles and grief. Some of that might also come from growing up in Iowa, a state that’s beautiful but also rather stark and isolating, where deadpan humor is a must for getting through harsh winters surrounded by icy roads and fallow fields.
CH: You make quite a few religious references in your work, mentioning Catholic school, confessions, and more. Are you religious? How does your own religious background, whether positive or negative, influence your work?
MM: I grew up in a pretty religious small town and attended a Catholic school—I was even an altar boy, and spent many hours in a white robe seated at the impaled feet of a graphically carved Christ! As you might imagine, I was also dreadfully emo, pondering mortality and suffering from a very young age (inspired, I’m sure, by all the time I spent in hospitals because of birth defects and health problems). So I was fascinated by religious stories because they were the first places I went looking for answers. Later, I took every religion and philosophy class I could in college (I’m the annoying guy who could sweep the Bible category in Jeopardy). Ultimately, I came to realize that my religious interpretations weren’t Catholic so much as Zen Buddhist, and to really chafe at the sense of bashful shame and unnecessary guilt that seemed to permeate a lot of those early lessons—but those feelings and religious iconography will always be with me, I’m sure.
CH: As someone with a connection to the Midwest, I found it interesting and personal that you included many connections to the Midwest region and suburban/rural life. The poem “Suburbia” particularly stood out to me. How do you think a non-urban, more suburban/rural background shapes your work? What’s the appeal of focusing on suburban or rural life?
MM: I’ve lived in cities (of various sizes) for pretty much all my adult life, and I’ve come to see California as my home these last 9 or so years—but if you cracked my skull open, you’d probably still find a lone farmhouse surrounded by fields and tree-covered hills. The beautiful starkness of the Midwest has always seemed to me to be the perfect illustration of what it means to be human—there are people who love us, sure, but ultimately we’re on our own, so you’d better start figuring stuff out.
CH: I love your poem “Strata,” especially the imagery of lying on someone’s grave to understand the universe. I just have to ask, have you ever done that? And whether you did or didn’t, what was your reasoning behind choosing to use an image like this?
MM: Thank you! Yes, I have done that, actually. I don’t recall where the idea came from, but I’ve more or less always had the sense that if you want to reach any kind of understanding, you have to keep your lens clear and cast off as many inhibitions and taboos as you possibly can. That might be why I’ve always had a great deal of respect for spirituality and curiosity but almost none for ritual and dogma. I think irreverence can be an amazing artistic, spiritual, and intellectual tool, so long as it’s sincere and not just performative.
CH: Outside of your poetry work, I notice you also write fantasy novels. How would you say the idea of fantasy plays a role in your poems, if any?
MM: I’m a terrific nerd in real life! I grew up reading science fiction and fantasy, so for me, there’s not that much difference between a poem, a novel, a short story, etc.—just slightly different attempts at the same thing. There are countless ways that I think fiction has helped my poetry, and vice versa—from imagery and storytelling to maybe a bit more awareness of how something actually sounds to the reader. Both sides also feed into my nerdiness too. When I’m not reading or writing, one of my favorite things is to watch documentaries about science, history, religion, etc. In fact, I love lifting weights (probably another thing tied to my childhood) and will often exercise while playing videos in the background on physics, mythology, and strategic analysis of battlefield tactics used a thousand years ago—it all gets thrown into the blender that is my brain for later use.
Michael Meyerhofer is the author of five poetry books, six poetry chapbooks, and two fantasy trilogies. He has won the James Wright Poetry Award, the Liam Rector First Book Prize, the Whirling Prize, and other honors. He earned his B.A. from the University of Iowa and his M.F.A. from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He grew up in Iowa where he learned the value of reading novels, lifting weights, and not getting his hopes up. He currently serves as the Poetry Editor of Atticus Review and lives in Fresno, California. For more information and at least one embarrassing childhood photo, visit www.troublewithhammers.com.
Camelia Heins (she/her) is an undergraduate student studying English & Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. Born and raised in Orange County, California, Camelia has been active in her community through service, engagement, and both creative and journalistic writing. She enjoys reading and writing poetry, listening to several of her Spotify playlists, collecting plants, and playing with her cat, Moira.
