15 Questions with LIZ AHL
1. Hey Liz, got a favorite writing prompt?
Not a particular one, but more of a general type — I am a fan of having to use certain words (a certain number of words from a list, for instance) to draft a poem. For instance, a brainstormed list of sonically related words (trout, roust, rowdy, ouch, chowder), or, for another example, extending the supreme pleasure of playing Scrabble by then trying to cobble, say, a dozen of the words from the board into a poem.
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2. Hey Liz, do you carry a notebook? Got a phrase
dashed in there that you just can’t shake?
I carry many notebooks. I have notebooks for the writing classes I teach, and I work through the writing prompts along with my students. I have smallish notebooks of various sizes in various bags that I carry. I haven’t combed through them recently — that’ll happen in another month or so after school’s out and I have a little more gathering/reflecting time. For now I’m just filling them and hoping there’s some good stuff in there. I love notebooks, especially slender ones I can fill up fast and feel like I’m being productive. I also have a couple of fountain pens I tend to use when writing in the notebooks. The physical feeling of a good pen on good paper really lights my fuse.
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3. Hey Liz, got three words to describe your poems?
Conversational, narrative, speculative.
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4. Hey Liz, what’s your submission process like?
I have managed to send work out every month for the last couple of years, so now I’m trying to maintain that as a habit. I appreciate the convenience of Submittable and other submission apps, though I also currently have work out at journals that still prefer snail mail. I use Evernote to track my submissions — each journal or contest has its own note, into which I add submissions as I make them. Then I have folders for work that’s currently out, publications pending, current opportunities, archives. It’s a decent enough system. I used to use the notecards, which I enjoyed. One day the cloud’s gonna blow up and all my submission records will be gone, but I won’t mind, because if the cloud has truly blown up, I might have bigger worries.
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5. Hey Liz, got a favorite musician? Care to share it?
So many. Soooooooooooo many. One for every day, maybe. Today, I’m thinking how I’d like to be Beth Ditto when I grow up. Here’s a song/video that always puts me right.
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6. Hey Liz, got a favorite quote about poetry?
That Tom Robbins quote from Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, works for me: “Poetry is nothing more than an intensification or illumination of common objects and everyday events until they shine with their singular nature, until we can experience their power, until we can follow their steps in the dance, until we can discern what parts they play in the Great Order of Love. How is this done? By fucking around with syntax.”
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7. Hey Liz, where’s your ideal place to write?
Someplace I’ve never been before, someplace nudging me with its newness. Being away from the comforts and routines of home has been imaginatively productive for me my whole life, due in large part to being an itinerant Navy brat. When I’m not able to travel (most of the time!) reading poetry and novels and short stories can often transport me to a new place, more metaphysically, with similar effects.
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8. Hey Liz, what’s something poetic about New Hampshire?
Not many people know that poetry was actually invented in New Hampshire. The unofficial motto of the state is Live Free Verse or Die.
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9. Hey Liz, any artwork that inspires you to write?
Writing in response to visual art is one of my favorite things to do, both on my own and with students. I’ve written poems inspired by the works of Noguchi, Charley Harper, and Picasso, to name three, as well as by artists I know personally. I did a project in 2015 where I used the artwork on postage stamps (from around the globe, from several decades into the past) as the seeds for poems.
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10. Hey Liz, any poets you think should be household names in poetry households?
First of all, I love the notion of a “poetry household.” For some reason, that made me visualize vast bookshelves which housed a mix of cookbooks and poetry books. In addition to a copy of the Moosewood Cookbook, such households should have work by Muriel Rukeyser , Terrance Hayes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Grace Bauer, and about a million others if I don’t just stop right now.
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11. Hey Liz, got any go-to revision techniques?
Time and distance tend to most frequently work in my favor. Walking away for a while has been a good step for me in the revision process.
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12. Hey Liz, is there a journal you think everyone should check out?
Tuesday, An Art Project , I am a longtime fan and amateur practitioner of letterpress printing, as well as a fan of alternative formats for presenting texts on paper. Tuesday hits both of those for me, along with including great visual art in their issues.
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13. Hey Liz, what’s the last non-poetry book you loved?
A recent one was the novel, Station Eleven by Emily Mandel. The world she created just sucked me all the way in and wouldn’t let me go. Another is Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng. Just so devastating and beautiful/awful/beautiful.
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14. Hey Liz, what’s the last great poetry book you read?
There are so many in the last several years, but I’ll just stick to the first one that leapt to mind. Ross Gay’s third collection, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude . Full of long, lush poems I want to read aloud to my beloved friends over and over again. Gay’s first book, Against Which, would have been my answer some years back. He’s just an incredible poet with a truly distinctive voice writing poems I feel like I didn’t even know I desperately needed to read. What a gift.
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15. Hey Liz, any books on poetry you’d recommend?
Muriel Rukeyser’s The Life of Poetry. Because it might also be called The Poetry of Life.
[This Q&A was conducted in April 2016 and first published, via Facebook and Twitter, in May 2016.]
A Dozen Nothing 