Issue 6.1 Contributor Interviews

joshua allen

“It was meant to be ambiguous in the sense that the image wasn’t intended to be or represent a single thing; rather, it was intended to have a broadly associative effect, with no single interpretation being definite or predominant.”

tyler arndt

“I think any attempt to articulate “silence” is bound to fail. By its very nature, and despite our most earnest attempts, silence defies expression.”

tanner barnes

“The poem definitely comes from a real place within me. I am six months sober. The poem originates as a result of my brother and my roommate telling me that I have been much more hateful since I’ve gotten sober.”

william braun

“As I was reading the accounts of people who had been through situations similar to mine, I kept coming across the phrase ‘walking on eggshells,’ used to describe the constant fear of startling or upsetting one’s partner.”

william doreski

“Multiple histories overlaid are intrinsic to the modern-postmodern aesthetic as I see it developing through Pound, Crane, Proust, Joyce, Faulkner and Ashbery.”

cal freeman

“I have trouble, as a poet, allowing images to be themselves; I think I’m always interpreting them according to the tensions in their idea lives, and I’m unable to divorce them from the socio-cultural realm that frames them.”

karla keffer

“Art has a way of insinuating itself into people’s brains, and hearts, in a way that making pronouncements against hatred and injustice doesn’t quite achieve. We need to make art right now, so much art.”

Ben Kline

“Growing up in Appalachia, on a large working farm busy with hay, corn, timber, cattle and much more, shaped my writing by providing me with a some skills quite useful to writers: self-sufficiency, appreciation for learning and science/logic, dedication, persistence, patience and self-worth.”

carrie la seur

“We become complicit, and my story’s about that too, how we become the thing we submit to.”

nicholas molbert

“I wanted this poem, being fundamentally an elegy for my grandfather, to hold artifacts and memories from that place where my grandfather will always be.”

linnea nelson

“Voice is often the aspect of poetry that I find myself most drawn to, and it may be what I attend to most closely in my own writing.”

holly pelesky

“I knew I had a lot to say about being a birth mother, but the thought of writing a memoir was daunting me, someone with always-shifting attention.”

kevin rippin

“I reduce the poem to its essence, eliminating extra words and phrases until I hear my voice emerging.”

sherre vernon

“In a world saturated with information, I think we sometimes forget that words were human’s’ first magic. Words bless, they curse, they build histories and destroy relationships.”

kris willcox

“Most of the fiction I’ve written in the past few years has been flash fiction, and while I’d like to claim that there was artistic intent here, it’s really because I don’t have a lot of time and stamina right now for longer pieces of fiction, so I work with what I have: little chips of time and palm-sized ideas.”