Tell us about your CNF piece “Isle of Refuge” in Volume 22. How did it come to be?

A few years ago, I was in Bermuda over spring break researching the life of Mary Prince, an abolitionist from the nineteenth-century. I couldn’t stop thinking about how this fantasy island with pink sand beaches and translucent, aquamarine water had been a place of torture for its enslaved population. “Isle of Refuge” is the first of a series of essays following in Prince’s footsteps.  The second is “Saltworks.”  

What excites you as a writer? What turns you off, makes you turn away or stop reading a piece of writing?

Free-writing and exploration of an initial idea excites me. Finding out that someone has already written what I want to write is deflating. I’ll stop reading until I get over myself. I won’t read deliberately or inadvertently racist, sexist, or homophobic writing. It’s just lazy.

What was an early experience that led to you becoming a writer?

Editing my high school literary journal with my best friend, who is now a filmmaker. Initially, I wanted to be an actress—I grew up in LA, but I’m too body conscious to be on screen, so I “lettered” in theater. At some point, I started writing my own characters instead of pretending to be someone else’s. 

What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work? Do–or have–you had any mentors in your writing life?

Toni Morrison’s ability to write in any genre. I went to graduate school to learn how to be a better reader of her books. Reading Sonia Sanchez’s homegirls and handgrenades taught me that poetry could be a sharp knife. When I finally met her in a workshop at Cave Canem, it was transformative. Other writers that excite me include Jaquira Díaz for her honesty and exquisite structure; Jesmyn Ward for her courage and shattering subjects; Vievee Francis and Safiya Sinclair, whose poetry tells the stories I want to hear about what it means to be a woman in the diaspora at every stage of life. 

Do you practice any other art forms? If so, how do these influence your writing and/or creative process?

I am also a poet. Creative nonfiction is similar to poetry in that I have to force myself to be economic with my diction, and not overwrite. But I do feel like poetry allows me to give in to the lyric and occasionally indulge my image-making impulse. Each genre has its own set of parameters and demands.

What craft element challenges you the most in your writing? How do you approach it? What is your quirk as a writer?

Writing convincing dialogue in creative nonfiction is a challenge. Making it sound authentic even if it’s not exactly how it was. In my poetry and fiction, I use the imagination as a shield. In creative nonfiction, you have to let yourself be vulnerable or readers disengage. I’m a very private person, but I also have a deep need to speak my truth and sometimes that wins out over my preference for abstraction.      

How does the current political climate influence your art or creative process?

What is it the Hulk said in The Avengers movie? “That’s my secret, Captain. I’m always angry.” Sometimes writing helps me cope; other times I do yoga. I just contributed to a collection in a forthcoming series from Terrain called Letter to America. Being part of a collection that addresses our current climate—political, social, and environmental—felt like a productive way to channel cynicism and disappointment. 

What are some themes/topics that are important to your writing?

I love museums, special collections, and old books. In another life I may have been docent or curator.  I’m weirdly attracted to decay, plantations ruins, the foundations of castles, a forest after a fire. Also, my kids; when they stop playing baseball and video games long enough to take notice of the world, their insights can be shattering.

 What does your creative process look like? How does the environment you are in shape your work or where do you like to write?

I write in the morning. Later in the day I don’t have the clarity to generate new work. I can revise in the afternoon, but I need my kids to be gone or otherwise occupied. I used to work in cafes, roaming like an itinerant James Baldwin in search of the perfect latte, but there was too much instability. Now, I put my faith in habit instead of inspiration.

What projects or pieces are you working on right now?

I’m always working on multiple projects at the same time. I just finished a new poetry collection, Grimoire, which will be published in 2020 by Autumn House Press. Right now, I’m outlining a CNF piece about coral cities and black girls who surf. In preparation, I finally learned how to swim with the correct form: I stopped being afraid to put my face in the water and found the right rhythm to freestyle.    

Cherene Sherrard is a writer and scholar of African American and Caribbean literature. She is the author of Dorothy West’s Paradise: A Biography of Class and Color and the poetry collection Vixen from Autumn House Press. Her work has recently appeared in The Rumpus, the Journal, Terrain, and The New York Times Magazine. She teaches in the English department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. You can find more about her and her work at her website here.

1. Tell us about your fiction piece “Jim” in Volume 22. How did it come to be?

I had a short story collection that was evolving for years and finally it evolved into a cesspool of a novel. I knew it was, and so I ended up revising it, but that’s one of the pieces that’s survived into the final manuscript, though there are those who think it incongruent with the rest.

2. What excites you as a writer? What turns you off, makes you turn away or stop reading a piece of writing?

I’m pretty open as to form, but I want to see that somebody is doing it for a reason. In other words, a bunch of exciting action doesn’t equal narrative tension. And a bunch of big words doesn’t equal beautiful language.

3. What was an early experience that led to you becoming a writer?

You know people ask this a lot and it’s a good question, but honestly I don’t really have an answer beyond that I didn’t know anybody who was a writer, and I wanted to be one. My dad did read The Martian Chronicles and Louis L’Amour, however, and I think this sharpened my taste for something different early on.

4. What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work? Do–or have–you had any mentors in your writing life?

Honestly though it can be a mess. I’m extremely excited by Native American fiction in the last few years. Finally there is a plethora, all writing different genres. Rebecca Roanhorse is writing fantasy. Kelli Jo Ford has a collection of short stories coming out. Brandon Hobson was shortlisted for the National Book Awards, and of course there’s Tommy Orange, the last three of these writing what I call realism to avoid the snottiness of literary fiction. Then there’s Daniel H. Wilson who is writing science fiction, Natanya Ann Pulley has a collection coming out that’s fairly experimental, and David Heska Wanbli Weiden has a thriller coming out soon.

5. Do you practice any other art forms? If so, how do these influence your writing and/or creative process?

If poetry counts as another art form, then yes, though I don’t write poetry anymore. I thought it had died, but it’s actually reincarnated itself into some of the more experimental pieces that I write, as I try to borrow a bit from poetic form.

6. What craft element challenges you the most in your writing? How do you approach it? What is your quirk as a writer?

Ultimately I think, like a lot of people who think of themselves as literary writers, I struggled with structure. A lot of folks think it shouldn’t matter, but I really do. I think that experimental pieces are great and they’re great for short pieces, especially ones attempting to describe an inner landscape. But for my money, I like a longer piece to be more traditionally narrative, with dialogue and action and some sort of structure. I had to learn the hard way to ignore my peers and chart that stuff out before I started the novel.

7. How does the current political climate influence your art or creative process?

I don’t think it really influences my work directly. Of course being American Indian, I’m always keenly aware, pre-Trump, of how American politics affects our communities, from urban to reservation. I am noticing that more Native writers are being paid attention to, so I guess that’s some small silver lining. It shouldn’t have taken that much.

Erika T. Wurth’s publications include two novels, Crazy Horse’s Girlfriend and You Who Enter Here; two collections of poetry; and a collection of short stories, Buckskin Cocaine. A writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, she teaches creative writing at Western Illinois University and has been a guest writer at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee and was raised outside of Denver. You can find more of her work at her website here. 

Tell us about your poem “Mother” in Volume 22. How did it come to be?

I came across Warsan Shire’s epigraph from her poem “The House” that I used in my poem “Mother” via an AFREADA x Africa Writes Competition in which we were asked to use her line “Mother says there are locked rooms inside all women” as a writing prompt. 

What excites you as a writer? What turns you off, makes you turn away or stop reading a piece of writing?

The last two short pieces by Leo Tolstoy I recently finished via audiobook, i.e., “The Candle” and “The Three Questions” really excited me as a writer. There was so much truth in those stories that serve as teaching tools for the betterment of humanity. What turns me off is pretentious erudition. Writing that throws esoteric words left and right on the page just to sound learned. Mostafa Nissabouri is the latest example of a poet I’ve read whose erudition comes off as natural when putting pen to paper. 

What was an early experience that led to you becoming a writer?

Rap / Hip-Hop music. When I was in the 7th/8th grade, I started writing raps on a regular basis. This was crucial to me (I learned to write in the English language in the 6th grade) because I was using metaphors, similes, and various rhyming schemes, internal rhymes, end-rhymes, consonance, assonance, etc. I didn’t know the terms at the time, but for over a decade, I would write raps on a regular basis, and then I transitioned to children’s poetry, and by 2007, when I started writing poetry, I had been writing constantly for almost two decades.  

Photo credit: Eduardo C. Corral

What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work? Do–or have–you had any mentors in your writing life?

The Old and New Testaments in The Holy Scriptures are my major influences as a poet and creative thinker. It is incredibly rare for me to read a book more than once, even if I love the book. For example, I absolutely loved Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), Richard Wright’s Native Son (1939) and Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible (1998), but I’ve only read them once. There are so many books that I’ve read that I adored when I first read them, but I move on to the next one without looking back. Perhaps, I learned this from Lot’s wife. The Bible is an exception to this rule. It’s the only book that I constantly read and have done so from a very early age.

My poetry is at times very dark, and so is The Bible, e.g., “They killed the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes. They then put out his eyes, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon.” 2 Kings 25:7 (NIV)

My poetry is at times surreal, and so is The Bible, “Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a human being, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle.” Ezekiel 1:10 (NIV).

My poetry focuses heavily on the speculative, e.g., magical realism, and the miracles of Jesus in the four Gospels, e.g., walking on water, fit into that category. My poetry, as in “Mother” is also heavy on documentary poetry, as is The Bible, e.g., “The descendants of Judah: Perez, Hezron, Karmi, Hur and Shobal.” 1 Chronicles 4:1 (NIV).

Not to mention the aphorisms found in The Bible, e.g., Proverbs & Ecclesiastes. I also use aphorisms in my poetry. Of course, poetry itself can be found in The Bible, i.e., The Song of Solomon and the Psalms.

My poetry mentors are my thesis advisors in graduate school, Kyle Dargan and David Keplinger, and in undergraduate school at Indiana University-Bloomington, Christopher Citro, Maurice Manning and Maura Stanton. All of the five poets, aforementioned above, have always been incredibly supportive of my poetry from the very beginning

Do you practice any other art forms? If so, how do these influence your writing and/or creative process?

During my sixth month stay in Kibbutz Evron in Israel, I came across a t-shirt that in the front read “Same, Same” and the back it read “But different.” Baseball, softball and wiffle ball are the same in that they all use a ball and a stick to get on base. I write poetry, including prose poetry, but also flash-fiction (rarely nowadays) and children’s poetry (also poetry, but usually best told with the help of visual aids, e.g., illustrations), which in a way all three are the same, same but different. Wiffle ball would be poetry, since it makes the least amount of money. Baseball is fiction, which also makes a killing financially. 

What craft element challenges you the most in your writing? How do you approach it? What is your quirk as a writer?

Formal poetry challenges me the most. Many years ago, I took an 8-week online poetry course with the formalist poet Moira Egan, and we workshopped some of my formal poetry, e.g., sonnets, villanelles, even a sestina I wrote. I’ve also written pantoums, haikus, limericks, etc. I believe it’s important for a poet to try writing in form because it restricts your writing style and helps you to think differently. Writing in meter, pentameter, is something that I avoid. I prefer writing my sonnets using strict syllabic line counts. But, perhaps, in the distant future, I will dedicate some serious time to that strenuous endeavor.

As to my quirk as a writer, I will just quote a small part of Kyle Dargan’s jacket note that he wrote for my debut poetry collection: “Blue Whale Phenomena introduces Steve Castro as a relentless storyteller and story interrupter—inventing narrative moments or instead etching his brilliant quirks into the narratives with which we were born into the world.”

How does the current political climate influence your art or creative process?

Even though my forte as a poet is the speculative and the documentary, I recently wrote a political poem, i.e., “Xenophobia” published in [PANK] – Latinx : Latinidad 1.0 issue. I wrote “Xenophobia” because I was really bothered with how Trump’s rhetoric emboldened people to be openly racist. About two years ago, I was speaking Spanish with my mother at a gas station on the west side of Evansville, Indiana, when an older white male, yelled our way, “speak fucking English.” The racism that was internalized and whispered are now shouted from the housetops, as the saying in Luke 12:3 goes.

As an editor, I also try to shed a light to issues regarding social justice. When I was the poetry editor at Folio, I came across a very powerful poem written by Cortney Lamar Charleston titled “Six Shot on Fergusson, Missouri” dedicated to the memory of Mike Brown. There are political/social justice elements embedded into my documentary poems at times, such as in my poem “Ancient Brown Skin,” which can be found in my collection Blue Whale Phenomena. 

What are some themes/topics that are important to your writing?

As mentioned above: documentary poetry, and the speculative, e.g., magical realism, surrealism, fantasy, fabulism, absurdism, etc. Plus, ekphrastic poetry and writing prompts, are mostly how I construct my poems.

What does your creative process look like? How does the environment you are in shape your work or where do you like to write?

My creative process varies. It sometimes (not often) comes from a prompt like the origin for my poem “Mother.” It sometimes comes from a line or an idea that I put down on my voice recorder. Sometimes, I just sit down or lie down, and start writing from scratch or I may sit in silence and think until the opening comes to me. There are times when I listen to my ideas in my voice recorder and then I write the poem in my head, and when it is finished or sufficiently finished, I start writing it down. As for how the environment shapes my work, I at times write apocalyptic pieces about our environment in total chaos, e.g., “The One.” 

What projects or pieces are you working on right now?

I recently finished a children’s poetry book called Poems for genius children with dictionaries who like to read and ponder, and also poems for brave children who aren’t afraid of the dark. Once I edit it/revise it, the hard part will come, meaning, I will start looking for illustrators that are interested in collaborating. 

Steve Castro’s book Blue Whale Phenomena was published in May, 2019. You can find more of Steve’s work on his website www.thepoetryengineer.com, and follow him on Twitter: @PoetryEngineer. 

Tell us about your poem “Run the Jewels” in Volume 22. How did it come to be?

I had read, several times, of the horrific lynching of Chinese in Los Angeles in 1871, but was surprised that there was so little awareness of it in the American consciousness. In a way, poetry and writing is a type of history, a type of memory, and I felt like it was an incident I should write about. To do my part in the intervention, you know, as the history of Asian Americans is often intentionally erased and dismissed.  

What was an early experience that led to you becoming a writer?

I was a refugee in a large, poor family who turned to books as an escape and solace. When I was very young, I discovered the joy of creating worlds, and my own stories. There was never just one thing – it was many things. Dungeons and Dragons, books of all genres, theater, comics, and so on.

What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work? Do–or have–you had any mentors in your writing life?

(photo credit: Anna Min)

Yes, too many to name here. But special shout outs go to David Mura, Diane Glancy, and Diego Vazquez. 

How does the current political climate influence your art or creative process?

I’ve been a writer across more than two decades of upheaval, struggle, and growth, and I’ve tried to be engaged throughout those years in the world around me. So I can’t say that the current political climate has changed me that much. I don’t mean to say that things aren’t terrible—but to a degree, things have always been terrible. But there has also always been change, and growth, and I try to hang on to that.

What are some themes/topics that are important to your writing?

Resistance against the constant erasure of Asian American people. At heart, that’s what drives my work.

 What projects or pieces are you working on right now?

I’ve been tinkering with a Vietnamese American zombie apocalypse novel for years. Also trying to write a weird book full of poetic and not so poetic essays, as well as more children’s books.

Bao Phi is the author of two poetry collections, Sông I Sing and Thousand Star Hotel, both published by Coffee House Press, as well as two picture books for children, the 2017 Caldecott Honor and Charlotte Zolotow award winner A Different Pond, and My Footprints, both published by Capstone. He works at the Loft Literary Center and lives in Minneapolis with his daughter. You can find more about Bao at his website. 

In The Field is a blog series devoted to highlighting the writing life and artistic process of our contributors. This week we continue with our series now featuring contributors from our most recent issue, Vo. 22 “Tending to Fires”. Vol. 22 is now available for sale in our online shop.

1. Tell us about your cnf pieces “Driving” and “My High Horse” in Volume 22. How did they come to be?

“Driving” was written as a draft in a journal in the summer of 2014, when my brother and I were driving back from Provincetown where we had indeed just scattered our mother’s ashes in the Atlantic Ocean. I didn’t recognize it as a “piece” until I began putting together all the poems I have written about my mother’s last year-and-a-half of life and the subsequent recovery from that. As a kind of coda to our time together as brothers, “Driving” is now the last piece of that [forthcoming] book, The Things. 

“My High Horse” was written, I believe, in 2018, when I was beginning to notice that, although most of my friends and I are “progressives” we have become very quick about judging other people’s motives and worthiness. When I was a kid, my mother, whenever she caught herself or one of us saying something mean about someone else’s life, would often say something like, “Of course, being perfect myself…” as a way to puncture any self-inflation going on. It made us laugh, and brought us back to earth. “My High Horse” was written in that spirit, at a time when I could feel myself getting very angry about choices I saw some of my fellow citizens making. One of the principal dangers, I think these days, is the belief that “everybody is awful” or “I hate everyone” or “people suck.” You have to have hope in other people to get real (meaning large-scale), but it’s hard to do that if you’re just stuck in hate and fear and anger. At that point, my mother’s self-puncturing voice appeared, almost as an exercise to recognize what kind of High Horse I was sitting on, what beliefs keep me in that sad saddle.

2. What excites you as a writer? What turns you off, makes you turn away or stop reading a piece of writing?

As a writer: Getting past the boredom and irritation of my own writing and finding some metaphor or swerve of phrase that changes everything. What turns me away from reading: not finding anything new in terms of information or surprising in terms of language or complicated in terms of emotional depth.

3. What was an early experience that led to you becoming a writer?

There were so many [experiences], practical and mystical, that led me to writing, and which easily led to something else—entomology was an early love, as was psychology. I loved looking at the natural world and I was deeply interested in trying to figure people out. I’ve always wondered about the lives of small things—ants, bees, slips of the tongue, whispers in a crowded room. But the central moment was when I was 16 or 17 and went to a poetry and fiction workshop for high school students. I said beforehand that I wanted to work with the fiction writer because I thought maybe writing a bestselling book would be a way to be someone.The fiction writer was, however, very dour. But Judith Kitchen was the poet, and when I heard her read and talk about art and life, the room lit up for me. I’d never seen an adult who so-loved her life. I switched workshops and followed her. Later, she ran workshops at some local libraries, and I went until she recognized something in me was in need of her attention. She invited me to meet with her a couple of times, read early poems, and urged me to follow writing as a way to live in the world. She was the key that unlocked the door.

4. What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work? Do–or have–you had any mentors in your writing life?

I have had many wonderful role models, teachers, and friends over the years: Liz Rosenberg, Milt Kessler, Lynn Emanuel, Ed Ochester, Toi Derricotte; my writing pals Geeta Kothari and Jenny Johnson in Pittsburgh, and Liz Ahl, Noah Stetzer, and Jan Freeman elsewhere. Friends on Facebook and Twitter are a constant source of inspiration and challenge. My literary heroes are Eduardo Galeano, E.B. White, Emily Dickinson, Carl Phillips, Kimiko Hahn, Emerson, among many, many artists.

5. Do you practice any other art forms? If so, how do these influence your writing and/or creative process?

In 2017, I started painting and drawing, after not having really done it since the mid-80s as an undergraduate. I had two books I was, and still am, working on, and painting gave me a chance to do something that had silence in it. Painting is so much of the body; I find it occupies me when nothing else can ease my anxiety. At the moment, writing and painting are in separate worlds, although my new book of poetry, Little What, features a painting of mine as its cover, so maybe there will be occasions for dialogue.

6. What craft element challenges you the most in your writing? How do you approach it? What is your quirk as a writer?

Plotting in a deliberate way is my challenge. Which is probably why I never ended up writing that bestselling novel that would have made me rich. I would say I have a sense of dramatic structure, which I can usually count on rising up as I work.

7. How does the current political climate influence your art or creative process?

I stopped writing in 2017 with Trump’s inauguration. I really couldn’t believe what had happened and was terrified by what was now likely to happen to the country. I had no hope. I was angry and frustrated and full of grief. What finally helped me pull out of it was, as I said, painting, just making shapes of color on a canvas or page. Sometimes just drawing lines and reading people like Lynda Barry or looking at Paul Klee or Milton Avery paintings. And then teaching helped too. I was surrounded by undergraduates who still had hope, who needed to see that hope was still possible. Talking to them, making writing prompts for them, I began to write again in my journal. Writing now usually means putting together a lot of little scraps, sentences, lines, until they start to add up. Before that, I usually wrote a whole first draft fast and then revised down. Now I start with pieces and revise those into bigger pieces.

8. What are some themes/topics that are important to your writing?

Usually, I start with a question or a scene or an image and work from it until I get to something I didn’t expect to find.  The only time I start with a theme is when a literary journal like Creative Nonfiction has a call for something. I wrote my first long essay for their Animals issue, a topic I am quite interested in, and more recently for their Marriage issue, a theme I had a lot of questions about. Otherwise, my themes are the ones that every writer has—attending to the details of the world, exploring the self, testing the limits of my language where I can.

9. What does your creative process look like? How does the environment you are in shape your work or where do you like to write?

Weekdays, I walk the dog, take him to camp, then go to a cafe to work for a couple hours. Weekends, I walk the dog, give him a peanut butter Kong at home, then go to a cafe and revise or submit. That’s the basic structure of my days. Because I’ve become an administrator and a husband, and so have less free time than I used to, writing now usually means putting together a lot of little scraps, sentences, lines, until they start to add up. I like working in a cafe because I can steal language from other people. Or use their conversations as starting points for my own wandering.

10. What projects or pieces are you working on right now?

I’m currently working on a second book of poetry/short prose, tentatively titled The Things, about my mother’s death, of which “Driving” will be a part of. A book of autobiographical essays is nearly done. And finally, there are some new prose/ pieces that seem to be accumulating into something.    

Jeff Oaks’s first full-length collection Little What was published by Lily Poetry Review Books in September 2019. His prose and poetry have appeared most recently in Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, The Missouri Review, and the Kenyon Review Online, as well as in the anthologies Brief Encounters: A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction and My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them. He teaches writing at the University of Pittsburgh. You can find more about Jeff at his website jeffoaks.wordpress.com/.