In The Field is a series devoted to highlighting the writing life and artistic process of our contributors.

1. Tell us about your poem in Volume 20. How did it come to be?

“Joy, Apoptosis” came out of a need to imbue my writing with some amount of joy and tenderness, something so readily found in my daily life but less so in my work. I wanted to tackle the challenge of balancing the sacred domestic with the dread sacred, to resign myself to the fact that the world can be both irredeemable and beautiful all at once.  

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

I honestly thought I’d become a statistician! I was an avid reader but thought creative writing was out of my reach.But my wife (girlfriend at the time) had read the absolutely worst rhymed and metered love poetry I wrote for her when we were undergrads and somehow thought there was value in them. She suggested I take a creative writing class and here we are. She was, and still is, my most important reader.   

3.  How has writing shaped your life?

Writing has allowed for a certain kind of focused care and intent to be put into my words and actions. People wield themselves and their words with such reckless abandon; I find the intentionality of writing to be a balm against harm, a way to not only understand our own impact but those of others as well. Whether poetry or prose, my life and its actions, I have tried to make each word count, each movement to mean something.

4.  What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work?

I could fill notebooks trying to answer this question succinctly. In the interest of brevity, I’ll stick to poets. There are writers like Li-Young Lee and Louise Glück who have been touchstones for decades, poets whose work strikes the core of me. Then there are more contemporary writers and thinkers like Meghan McClure who is never far from my mind. We have Kaveh Akbar’s joy-centered activism and divine-minded writing, Paige Lewis’ open-hearted devotion to wonder and curiosity, Devin Gael Kelly’s penchant for transformative vulnerability, Stephen J. Furlong’s quixotic personality combined with a drive to do good, be good, write and review well. I’m in perpetual amazement and made humble when I think of these writers. 

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

I’m working on a manuscript of poems that balance domestic panic with joy and softness, poems with an anxiety-induced tenderness. I’m also working on a book of “craft” essays, ones that mix memoir and my cultural lens (I am half-Japanese and moved to America when I was nine) while looking at a particular aspect of writing.

Visit Michael’s website here.

In The Field is a series devoted to highlighting the writing life and artistic process of our contributors. 

1. Tell us about your short story in Volume 20. How did it come to be?

A threat of violence at my daughters’ school ended as a non-event, but the idea that we now have to face such things—with official communications and potentially life-or-death consequences—left its mark. Through the eyes of the narrator in this story—Threat Response–, I found myself exploring that lingering threat, in different circumstances and with very different outcomes. The piece went through many drafts, but the second-person point of view came from the beginning. I found it essential for this narrator, to enable her to speak through a deep sense of guilt and admit other ugly feelings.

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

I had English teachers in high school who encouraged my writing, and I had the foundation in a love of reading and language. I’m kind of a late bloomer in becoming a real “writer” generating my own creative work. In hindsight, I think parenthood sparked that need to write for me. The world became more amazing but also weightier. I felt greater responsibility and inadequacy. One of the first pieces I wrote for myself as an adult was about taking my two-year-old to her first day of preschool on September 11, 2001, when news of planes flying into buildings began seeping through the radio.

3.   How has writing shaped your life?

I studied journalism in college, held jobs in communications, and worked as a freelance writer. Writing fiction and creative nonfiction—beginning with a blank page and no instructions—reignited my enthusiasm for learning. I took creative writing classes and ultimately completed a low-residency MFA program (at Queens University). Beyond the insight into craft and the helpful deadlines, these experiences connected me to a new community. I’m continually inspired by my fellow writers, and the opportunities I’ve had in the last few years to teach creative writing classes in Chicago have been some of the most rewarding “work” experiences of my life.

4.  What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work?

I love short stories and their power to reveal the strange and poignant aspects of human behavior. Mary Gaitskill’s collection Because They Wanted To gets at bleak topics with surprising humor and captures feelings in an incredibly physical way. Lori Ostlund’s collection The Bigness of the World inspired me to write my first fan email. I still fall in love with single stories by unfamiliar authors in literary journals—and get excited when The New Yorker delivers a piece by Rivka Galchen, Yiyun Li, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Tessa Hadley, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, George Saunders, and more.

From a process standpoint, I discovered Ron Carlson Writes a Story and Alice Mattison’s The Kite and the String last year. Carlson’s book is deceptively simple but for me both validated and articulated the sentence-by-sentence process of getting a first draft down. Mattison covers more territory, sharing the underlying philosophy of letting the imagination lead. I recommend any writer struggling with the publication side of writing read Mattison’s sane and compassionate last chapter, “Revising Our Thought Bubbles.”

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

I’m submitting a completed short story collection to a few contests and small presses, and I’m writing and revising new stories. I attempted—and think I pulled off?—my first story with an omniscient point of view. Other recent pieces have had a more humorous tone while somehow allowing politics to creep in. I think about writing a novel—I think I should write a novel—but that’s the desire for publication talking and not my creative impulse yet. I’m trying to let my imagination lead.

Visit Linda’s website here and follow Linda on Twitter here.

In The Field is a series devoted to highlighting the writing life and artistic process of our contributors. 

1. Tell us about your poem in Volume 20. How did it come to be?

I was in a workshop with Terrance Hayes and we were looking at definition poems. So when I got home I tried to write one. I thought I’d take it a step further and use the various definitions of the word “between” in a sentence, as you often see in a dictionary. Inadvertently, the sample sentences somehow started to form a kind of narrative. Being a writer with a strong narrative bent, I’m always interested in finding ways to subvert the traditional linear trajectory of storytelling. Using the nonliterary form of the dictionary entry was a fun and sneaky way to do this. The use of blanks came later—I thought it would be interesting to leave spaces in the poem, inviting the reader to participate in the poem’s meaning-making. This gave the poem an element of surprise and unintentional humor, as I’ve found when I’ve performed this poem in readings.

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

As far back as I can remember, I’ve always loved writing in little notebooks. I read the Diary of Anne Frank when I was about nine and have been a diarist ever since. My first diary was a small clothbound Hello Kitty notebook with a lock. I wrote down everything in my Catholic schoolgirl script, even the most mundane things, addressing them to an imaginary friend named Daisy, e.g. “Dear Daisy, Today I woke up, brushed my teeth, and played with my dog, Wiglet . . .” and so on. Being an avid reader, I also enjoyed copying down esoteric quotes from books I’d read, whether or not I grasped the full meaning or implication at that tender age. e.g. (from The Little Prince) “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.” Back then it was more about the pleasure of getting things on paper than about the writing itself, then later looking back at how the pages filled up and made the shape and story of a life—my life! I was a serious, introverted child with a small circle of close friends and a huge inner life, prone to daydreaming. Most of the time, I felt “on the fringe of things,” an observer, looking on. I think this all made fertile ground for becoming a writer.

3. How has writing shaped your life?

I see writing as a kind of “spackling” that fills up the cracks of life, giving it form and a kind of solidity.Being someone who lives so much in my head, writing offers a kind of grounding to the airiness of thought, idea, and dream. When I write a poem, I like to begin by hand (as opposed to on a laptop) with a fountain pen on thick paper. I like the sound and feel of the nib scratching across the paper fibers. It’s gratifying to see all the swirling thoughts and feelings take shape on the page and become a “thing” you can actually see and read and carry around in your pocket. The habit of keeping a diary or journal has stayed with me over the years, and has definitely helped me process some of the most intense emotional experiences and major life transitions I’ve been through. But the ephemera—the scraps of daily life—that could easily get lost or go unnoticed ends up in there, too. Most importantly, writing for me has always been a way of figuring out what you know, and even more importantly, what you don’t know.

4. What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work?

Books: Little Women. Anne of Green Gables. Little House on the Prairie. Sadly, I didn’t have access to many books by writers of color when I was growing up, but my father, an avid reader himself, had the good sense of giving me books about strong women writers who forged their way bravely in a world of men.

Later, Filipina writers like Gilda Cordero-Fernando, Doreen Fernandez, Marianne Villanueva, and Barbara Jane Reyes taught me, in my early education as a writer living in America, that only you can tell your story—with your particular lens—and for that reason alone it is worth telling, worth being heard.

Anything by Sharon Olds. Elizabeth Bishop. Li Young Lee. Yusuf Komunyakaa. Some writers I’ve been reading lately that inspire and amaze me are Ada Limon, Rick Barot, Aimee Nezukhumatatl, Tracy K. Smith, and Natalie Diaz.

The Filipino artist Hermes Alegre, whose art graces the cover of my first collection, Blood Orange, inspires me. His paintings are often portraits of Filipina women against a stunningly detailed and lush backdrop of Philippine flora and fauna. He told me that he often would take walks in the wooded area near his studio but without pen or paper, committing the green landscape of flowers and foliage to memory, then trying to recreate it on his canvas from a mental image. The results are vibrant, imaginative, and even somewhat fantastic or hyper-real. Living away from my homeland, I’ve often had to do this in my poems—recreate images of home from memory and fill up the blank spaces using my imagination. So perhaps this is why his work speaks to me.

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

I’m working on putting together my second collection of poetry, which is both exhilarating and terrifying. As an editor of the Chicago-based poetry journal RHINO, and having recently relocated from Chicago to Los Angeles, I’m currently working on establishing a presence for the journal on the West Coast. With the help of a few editors and friends, I recently hosted RHINO’s debut at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, with a book fair exhibition and a reading featuring some of our West coast contributors and friends to celebrate the launch of our current issue. This year, I’ve taken on the role of book reviews editor for RHINO. We just released the second issue which is available here. Lastly—and always—I’m working on writing and sending out new poems.

In The Field is a series devoted to highlighting the writing life and artistic process of our contributors. 

1. Tell us about your poem in Volume 20. How did it come to be?

One of my first cassette tapes ever was Purple Rain. I listened to it so much on my headphones that the tape finally one day snapped from wear. I was devastated. “Will of a Prince” was just a visceral response to hearing the news that Prince died (and without a will).

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

Leaving home at 17 (with my life savings from working part-time jobs since I was 14), in my old Mercury with the vague goal of seeing as much of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico as I could. This was before cell phones, internet, GPS, etc. I had a Rand McNally atlas of North America and a sleeping bag and tent. Mainly, I wanted to get as far away from North Dakota as possible. Along the way, I started jotting down random thoughts and observations, which began to naturally take on the form of poems. I was super frugal and so my savings lasted a couple of years, and then I’d work at temp labor agencies that paid at the end of the day, and other jobs wherever I was, but I still always had a lot of free time on my hands. I’d visit used book stores during this time. Usually there was an overabundance of dog-eared Russian novels for a quarter or fifty cents. I didn’t pay attention to much in high school, but went through all the Russian books I could get my hands on, then got into other kinds of classic and modern literature from other countries (Japanese, French, Latin American, etc.), finally ending up with the newer, more contemporary American literature, because it was the most expensive. In retrospect, some of the used book store workers who’d recommend things were like nerdy angels. Since then, I’ve always preferred buying used books. The more worn, the more trustworthy, I feel.

3. How has writing shaped your life?

In the Bhagavad Gita, it says: “You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities, nor be attached to inaction.”

This is an ideal, of course, for saints and angels. But, in a way, all art-making endeavors, or anything you really care about, is like farming. . . It feels good to see things grow, develop, from deep, inner seedness, which then blooms and then, if everything works out, goes out into the world so that people can perhaps partake in the fruits of your labor of love. I like to think it’s the quality and specificity of love in the fruit of your labors that really nourishes another person’s own inner seedness at the deepest level, whether it’s a poem or building or meal or song or painting or child or, equally possibly, even a business report. Along the way, if you do your work, you get to taste and be sustained by the very source of this aliveness and love on multiple levels while you’re however briefly in contact with it as the “creator” of it.

So writing helps keep things in perspective. And, for the record, unlike is articulated in the Bhagavad Gita, I do think it’s perfectly fine to pilfer from the orchard of your labors for survival. Or, at least for an artist, it’s only natural. I suspect this urge to eat the fruits of your own labor has something to do with what the writer Thomas Moore noted: “Soul is to be found in the vicinity of taboo.”

But it’s not just human artists. You get a feeling that mulberries and grapes in decline on the vine themselves want birds to get drunk on their own private experience of fermentation.

All artmaking can be addictive like this. For a poet, a poem is a “fix”. . . but a fix from the mind’s, and body’s, and sense’s shallower addiction to society’s drab, corrupt construction of the world and cosmos. And so, at some point, to survive spiritually as an artist, to manifest the full integrity of your art, you just have to give yourself over to the art, as in love.

4. What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work?

Lately, and from that period I mentioned earlier, almost anything by Yukio Mishima. Earlier this spring, I spent a few days writing about the Armory Show at the International Fair of New Art in New York (31 nations’ artwork represented). It’s overwhelming, two giant hangers that once housed war equipment, now crammed with art in little stalls like a super high end flea market. I was able to take my time wandering around, spending time with the pieces; all speaking in their very different languages and dialects and attitudes and tones and styles and forms. Much of Mishima’s work is like the very few pieces of art that I experienced as having the deepest stores of power. I don’t find it the most formally interesting, it’s not flashy or fashionable like most of the art work at the Armory Show is, by necessity and design; but it does inject something uniquely vital into your core.

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

I have a new collection of poems that’s forthcoming in March (2019), called Mitochondrial Night (Coffee House Press). That and other poems and stories.