PG:I started writing poems before I learned how to ride a bike (in fact I still don't really know how to) but ever since I've started college I've experienced, what seems to be, a long term writer's block. Has there ever been a time in your life where you felt creatively drained and if so how did you overcome it?
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SH: Currently I am the editor of two magazines here at Marist College and I was also the editor of my high school newspaper. Did you have experiences like this that led you to edit and publish Sentence? And if so, what were some of the biggest challenges within your past and current experiences and how did you overcome them?
ReplyDeleteED: I always feel that I am influenced by those around me. How do you feel that you have been influenced by your family? Do you feel that they help you to formulate your words or are do you find family to be a motivational tool?
ReplyDeleteHi Pamela,
ReplyDeleteThere most certainly have been times when I've felt drained or been in creative doldrums. I think most creative artists (as opposed to performative artists) feel that at some point. I try to remember that these things go in cycles; it may be slow now, but in a couple weeks or months I'll have more ideas than I can get to.
It's interesting that you've been writing many years but only recently have been experiencing a block. That suggests that there's something in your current academic environment that you may be allowing to inhibit you. Perhaps there is an abundance of good writers around you, you're impressed by faculty like Prof. Graham, and you want to impress both your peers and your teachers. The poet William Stafford, in a book called _Writing the Australian Crawl_, argues that there is no such thing as writer's block; it's simply a case of having too high expectations. You can always write something; sit down now and you can force something out. Or you could sit down now and, rather than force, just see what you can allow to come out, then take that, work it, shape it, PLAY with it and see how it evolves. If it doesn't become a great work, no great loss. Stafford said that he felt that about one out of every 10 poems he wrote was worth showing to anyone else. One out of ten! My guess is that if you write ten new poems at least one of them will be worth holding on to, working on some more. Writer's block solved!
Another thing to think about is your personal motive for writing poems. I write poems because I want to see what I can do with words, sentences, lines; I want to see what the possible combinations are and how those combinations affect my thinking. For some, the reason may be personal expression, or entertainment, or escape, or eternal glory. Those writing for eternal glory are more likely to experience writer's block. If you're not writing for someone else's approval, then what do you have to prove in your poems? I know that may be a hard attitude to take when you're writing in the context of a college course, though. But I think your profs will value your attempts to find your own path through writing rather than writing for their approval.
Hi Sarah,
ReplyDeleteI was on the staff of my high school literary magazine, which had the unfortunate title of "Paper Wings" (that's a great song, though), and I edited my college literary journal ("Espejo" at SMU) during my senior year. Back then we actually had the contents type set, we had to do paste-up, blue lines, everything by hand. That was great experience, because it taught me what actually goes into the production of books and affected the way I think about how books are put together, space on the page, how visual space corresponds to (internal and external) audial space and time. I'm sure all of this fed into my interest in working in writing projects--book-lenght poems or sequences, unified chapbooks, etc. It also gave me everything I needed to know when I went to grad school and wanted to start a new literary journal (which I called _Concourse_ at Binghmaton University). _Concourse_ gave me two new tools: computer layout (the old one-piece Macs were the big thing then), and organizational experience--in order to establish the magazine I essentially had to set it up as a suborganization of the graduate student organization. Thinking about funding, expenses, group organization all were influential in my later establishment of Firewheel Editions as a non-profit press to publish Sentence and a variety of books and chapbooks. All of these skills later became useful to me professionally both in and outside academia. I worked for about 6 years in technical communications, and those skills were all a bit part of my success.
As a writer and an editor, then, you can gain marketable job/career skills by simply doing what you enjoy. How great is that? The trick is that the landscape is changing rapidly, and the more skills you can obtain in online delivery of content/information, the better prospects you'll have. That's the kind of challenge that faces anyone interested in a writing or college teaching career these days--adapting to the rapidly changing job markets. There are fewer and fewer tenure-track teaching jobs, but there are more and more opportunities to teach in K-12 and perhaps community colleges. There are fewer and fewer newspapers, but more and more online outlets, blogging, etc. that one can pursue professionally. The biggest challenge for me was that stage when I first went from academia to tech comm; it turned out the only real challege was learning the ground rules in a new environment. I knew how to write, and that, along with the other skills I mentioned before, carried me. You'd be surprised how many people out there in technical writing, PR, communications don't write well. If you can write, you can succeed. Then when I did come back to academia, in WestConn's Professional Writing MFA, all the professional writing I'd been doing served me in ways I never thought it would. In fact, I didn't really expect I would be coming back to academia.
Hi Emily,
ReplyDeleteInteresting question, and a hard one to answer. Though my parents encouraged me to read when I was a kid, I don't think they ever thought of "writer" as a possible career avenue and perhaps even thought that I might be wasting my time reading too much in high school, majoring in English and writing, etc. So I think I have conceived of what I do as to some degree in opposition to what was expected of me when I was younger. I think that's true for a lot of poets; there's something inherently rebellious (against the capitalist system, against expectation, against family) in choosing to spend a lot of time writing poems, regardless of whether or not those poems are poems of protest. That was true for me for a long time--about 20 years; and it still is to a large degree.
But as I get older, I have developed a curiosity about the place and people I've rebelled against, left behind. Prof. Graham and I, for example, have been trying to get rolling on a collaborative book about our home state, Arkansas, and some of my other poems are starting to deal with those themes. I think it also has something to do with the election of President Obama.
So the influence of family is complicated and we probably never completely work that all out. But I actually cultivate influence from other sources--books, poets, students, colleagues, music, film, paining and sculpture, news stories, found texts and images. I see my writing as my way of engaging the world in a conversation, and there's no conversation without external influence.
By the way, I'd like this to be a conversation, too, so I'm happy to answer any follow-up questions.
ReplyDeletebc
Professor Clements,
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate your response.I'm going to take some time out and look at the book by William Stafford. I'm pretty sure he nailed it.
I read in an interview on ChicagoPostmodernPoetry that you considered yourself a poet at the age of 2o. I think that's wonderful and somewhat of a revelation for myself. I've labeled myself that for a while which is probably what has been contributing to my writer's block. I feel pressure to live up to that title, when, honestly, I haven't even really found my own voice yet. I shouldn't rush it but rather, focus on developing and mastering the craft. Thank you so much for your feedback. You really helped!
Sincerly,
Pam Gomez
P.S. I, too, am a huge fan of sushi or any Japanese food for that matter.
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ReplyDeleteJM: What was it that made you pursue teaching along with writing and publishing? Do you think your own education played a factor in you becoming a teacher?
ReplyDeleteHi Jackie,
ReplyDeleteI think I wanted to teach almost from the beginning of my interest in writing, because I thought it was the only way to be fully engaged in a community of writers. That turned out not to be true, but teaching does provide a lifestyle that is useful for many writers--in addition to providing an energizing community to feed off of.
There are tens of thousands of people out there who also went through creative writing programs thinking that they would go right into teaching, but who weren't as lucky as I have been. When I say "tens of thousands," I'm not exaggerating. In short, the MFA or PhD in Creative Writing is the only route to a tenure-track position in writing, but only a small percentage of people coming through those programs get the coveted jobs. When I'm on campus I hope we will discuss the history and development of writing programs a bit, and what they've meant for writers.
Pam,
This idea of "finding a voice," I think, can also be related to writer's block, and I think it's also related to writing programs and the teaching of creative writing. Where did this idea come from that one has to find a voice and stick to it? If one neither has to find a unified voice nor stick to it, is that more liberating?
bc