Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
In my opinion, a poet who is a true master of poetry is capable of writing in other genres. This is because both the spiritual and technical perspectives of all artistic, linguistic forms originated in poetry. Besides poetry writing as my main everyday endeavor, I write novels as well as cross-genre essays on thoughts and poetics. Over the past few decades, I have written cross-genre essays on thoughts and poetics almost every day and have produced a large number of written materials, i.e., more than one thousand books of notes. In this way, I can involve myself in reality as of both living and poetics, and maintain my acumen for and attitude toward the world and poetry even though this stance and attitude of mine are often secretive, reticent, and self-oriented. Every few years, I would write novels that are very experimental in both the language and genre, that is, unlike the typical novels by other writers, the novels I create are completely cross-genre. By writing novels, I have also trained my patience for and accuracy in observation and expression and endeavored to discern both the relationship and delineation between artistic, linguistic imageries and realistic phenomena to prevent the non-poetic generalization of literary writing and especially poetic writing.

Of course, I must declare that I have always been poetry-centered and that all my writings are fundamentally poetry oriented as only poetry and poetics are the best form and essence of the art of language. In fact, all my cross-genre creations of essays on thoughts and poetics and novels are intended for further self-awakening and illumination in a dimension and from a stance both with enriched language, promoting the expansion and accuracy of mind training and reality observation, and antagonizing the generalized abuse and erosion of contemporary poetry and its artistic, linguistic spirit within modern life and literature. The aforementioned literary choices and endeavors of mine can be described by a metaphor by myself: “Raise the fish of self in my own seawater.”

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received? 
If a poet’s first work refers to one with public influence, then I consider my first poem to be the one created in my sophomore year of college, hand-written in traditional Chinese calligraphy on one or two pieces of cotton paper, and posted on the campus together with the poems by a dozen or so schoolmates. It was indeed a highly sensational public event on campus and the poems were read by many crowds of people during that week of exhibition. At that time, I was seventeen. If a poet’s first work refers to one in print form and circulated publicly, then I consider my first poem to be the one composed in my junior year of college. During that period, my schoolmates spontaneously set up a writing group called “Cuckoo Poetry Club” and recruited me as a member. Our club published a poetry collection by its members by movable-type printing that was titled Selected Poems of the Cuckoo, allegedly 800 copies. A poem by me was included in the collection. At that time, I was eighteen. Even now, I can still recall the title of the poem created by me in my second year of college and posted on the bulletin board in front of the school auditorium was “Writing to a Face Black on the Left and White on the Right.” With an undertone of anachronistic symbolism, it was mainly about people’s self-struggle or reduction between the abstractness and instrumentality of the world from the perspectives of geometry and anatomy. The poem of mine printed in the Selected Poems of the Cuckoo was titled “Unknown Rain Is Burning the Valley Like a Thought or Flame.” The poem depicts how a mystical rain destroyed, like a flame, a city in a valley and its people with the subtle scenes and methods of doomsday. 

These two poems of mine sparked a strong debate on the campus at that time. On one hand, people generally said that they couldn’t understand the poems and that the style was too blue and dispirited. On the other hand, due to these two poems, my schoolmates and friends at the poetry club started to face my rebellious spectatorship and wandering personal state and accept me more than before. 

All these bygones happened more than forty years ago and everything has gone with the wind now. Neither the original manuscripts nor the poetry collection has been saved or can be restored. Thank you for this question. It helps me calmly recap, as if exploring mysteries, the bygones that sank into life and time long ago.

What is the single best sentence you’ve ever read?
Acknowledging the amusing intention of your question, I want to say there are countless, not one, best sentences in the world just like the classics piled up in a library. In the era when extreme technologies and pragmatism have eroded people’s subjectivity and dynamism, I believe the single best sentence is one of my own: “Poetry is the soul of all literature, cultures, countries, nations, humans, and civilizations; we can’t imagine life in a world without poetry; such a world will only be one full of the living dead in which humanity is in the company of ghosts and demons, humans are cold and numb, uncaring and unsympathetic, and lives are worse than death.” I don’t know when I wrote down these words. When I was accidentally flipping through one of my old notebooks, I found them, which were not even labeled with the date of writing.

Did you have formal training in literature/art? In what ways do you continue your creative education?
I majored in language and literature at college and received a relatively systematic and complete education in Chinese literature and world literature. Considering that talent and perception are the overarching factors to determine an artist, writer, or poet, it can be said that the education most desirable to an artist, writer, or poet should be highly individualized self-education. Personally speaking, I achieve self-education mainly by extensive and tireless reading. Not only do I read Chinese literature, art, thoughts, and cultural classics, but I also transcend the visions of my native language by perusing world literature, art, thoughts, and cultural classics. Sometimes, my passion for reading is even stronger than my obsession with literary creation. Meanwhile, I have been keeping a sharp eye and observation toward popular and social fabs and ethos and have been accumulating and analyzing many relevant cases and materials. 

Besides, I think frequent, habitual outings and travels are very important to a language artist. A poet should often plan trips to the outdoors, nature, a strange place, and a foreign country to be able to constantly enrich his experience, cognition, and curiosity about unknown and strange worlds and things, which I believe is a critical approach to activate the artistic creativity in a poet’s life and awareness. Only by enough traveling can an artist, writer, or poet consummate his creative process to the realm in which he can embrace savvy, acquire mastery, and freely push the limits of the genre.

What is your biggest creative doubt? 
My biggest creative doubt is being unable and not allowed to face reality in writing, which, in turn, becomes a kind of resistance to or seek-and-hide game with reality. It will compromise the quality of the art of language. Because of its fine structure brought about by high levels of specialization and technicalization, the modern world itself has acquired the attributes of a genre or alike. Therefore, a significant change in modern writing is ontological rhetoric’s transgressive involvement in linguistic rhetoric, i.e., rhetorizing the ontology with the ontology, the world with the world, and the thing with the thing. Being unable to face reality means that an artist, writer, or poet has to bypass ontological rhetoric and make a detour for a long distance, i.e., exploiting technical rhetoric on a purely linguistic level, to reach reality, which is certainly a very difficult and thankless creative situation and which has subdued or weakened the ability to express and materialize by the humanity of this artistic era and reality.

 What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you? 
Many people have admonished me all the time: “With your talent, why not change your career to novel writing? If you do, you will have a larger readership, a bigger reputation, and higher royalties.” Nevertheless, whenever thinking that if humankind has no poetry, literature will gradually disappear and the ultimate sources of humans and humanity will dissipate, I am more willing to be a poet than anything else. In my opinion, only poetry can embody first-class artistic, linguistic creativity, which is also poetry’s most fundamental stylistic attribute and humanistic significance as a genre. 

What change would you like to see in the publishing world? 
Different languages and countries, and especially major languages and large countries, should embrace a more open, inclusive, globalized, and anthropological vision and attitude toward the mutual translation of the brilliant works of top artists, writers, and poets to deepen their exchanges, communications, and interactions and contribute to the rectification of the bad, paranoid elements innate in the existing human cultures. I believe true exchanges, communications, and interactions should be classical, elitist, and civilizational. In this respect, we should exert more fundamental effort to completely change the interference and attitude of external factors to improve the current situation. If publishing is always manipulated by capital and commerce, brilliant cultures, regardless of where they are and in which country they are, will gradually lose their civilized attributes and will only have pop and vulgar cultural elements for currying favor with mass consumption and power. Isn’t the Internet like this? From my point of view, the Internet manipulated by capital and commerce is most inhumane and unfair to poetry and can be regarded as a kind of oblivion to humans ourselves in the sense of civilization. Therefore, I think our current publishing systems and patterns need to be reformed fundamentally.

Is there an overarching theme to your body of work, or is each piece a new exploration? 
The overall theme of all the work of any exceptional poet is formed naturally, and so is the whole new artistic exploration seemingly from scratch of every work created by him. Generally speaking, all my poems are themed around humankind including people in different cultural domains, different space-time domains, different historical era domains as well as the natural Earth dimension, astronomical dimension, and the dimension of modern supertechnology. That said, every work of mine is an alternative arrival at or unique exploration of the overall theme and is an extraordinary process of endlessly discovering new worlds, giving meanings new and beyond the ordinary to every word, and creating like the genesis by God. The professional ethics and logic of a poet should be a negation of negation and refusal to repeat. A poet not only should consciously refuse to repeat literary and art history but also should forever alertly refuse to repeat the past self. Refusal to repeat is undoubtedly the humanistic attribute or cultural nature of poetry, the highest paradigm of the art of language that always requires extreme, limit-pushing originality just like the ocean, only by embracing which can one create whales.

When you begin a new piece of work, where do you start? 
This is hard to say as there isn’t any routine to follow. If I must answer this question, I would like to say poetry writing is a lightning-quick opening of language and imagination by a lightning-like inspiration and can start on the street, during a trip, from a meditative gaze and observation, or with a leap in a midnight dream. The birth of a poem is often sudden and unprepared; centered by very symbolic and allegorical imagery created in my awareness in a split second, a structural context is rapidly displayed, awakened, and diffused through the formation of lines from words and then a poem from lines. Poetry is the art of catching lightning by a bare-handed poet and the art of dissecting the relationship between the firmament and the earth according to the principle of lightning. Only with the talent to catch lightning bare-handed can a poet transform the fleeting moment into an eternal covenant and construct for gaining insight into human nature and comforting the common people. Any poet should ask himself or herself honestly: “Do I have the talent of holding lightning as if holding a wooden stick or an olive twig?”

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
Hey, hey, hey! If a person can have unlimited time, it means that there is no death in the world and if there isn’t the risk of death, the world will stop, just like a pure dream, and so will poetry. Nope! What I want to say is that it’s completely possible for a person to have unlimited time and if it happens, I will still choose to write poetry and become a most prominent poet who can have a direct arm-wrestling match with God. Of course, if I could embrace unlimited time, I would be more willing to believe that the entire humankind would have become God or a higher noumenon and the world would have become a structure or existence beyond humanity, and then I would just stop writing poetry and become a lazy, gluttonous, self-loafing guy with only freedom but nothing else.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?  
I have been practicing and creating Chinese calligraphy for more than a decade. 

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received? 
My first work was a piece of translation from English to Chinese. It was published in Readers’ Digest (in Chinese) in 1986 when I was 22. It was one of the most popular media in China.

What is the single best sentence you’ve ever read? 
The single best sentence I have ever read is “To be, or not to be, that is the question.” from Hamlet by William Shakespeare.

Did you have formal training in literature/art? What ways do you continue your creative education?
My major was British and American languages and literature during my undergraduate and postgraduate study from 1981 to 1987 at Fudan University, Shanghai, China. In 1999, I obtained my Healthcare Interpreter’s Certificate from the City College of San Francisco with Kaiser Permanente after nine months’ intensive study. 

Is there an overarching theme to your body of work, or is each piece a new exploration?
I believe each piece of my translation is a new exploration because no two pieces, either in the original language or in the target language, are identical. Besides, I have to resort to a combination of all my knowledge and/or tools to produce a nearly perfect piece of work.

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
If I had unlimited time, I would like to take up the hobby of lyrics writing.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
Over the years, I’ve dabbled in a variety of creative activities, including drawing, painting, sculpting, knitting and cross stitch.

While I was never particularly good at any of them, there were some practical benefits, like having wild sweaters, giving unique gifts to family and friends, and enjoying the meditative calm of creation.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
The first thing I ever wrote beyond journal entries was a short story in junior high, when I was about 12 years old. The piece is long gone now, but I recall writing from the perspective of an ant as its colony went to war with another colony. The teacher liked it so much that he read it to the class.

Did you have formal training in literature/art? What ways do you continue your creative education?
When I turned 30, I entered a period of self reflection. I felt like my life was on the wrong path, but I didn’t know the right one. After much reading and meditation, I realized that writing was my first love. I’d let others steer me away from it for too long. So it was time to go back to university and figure out, once and for all, if I had any talent. University-level English literature and creative writing courses opened my eyes to so many aspects of good writing, and I carry those lessons with me throughout my 30-year writing career.

Whenever possible, I try to refresh and enhance those lessons through online study, whether it’s free workshops or paid courses.

What is your biggest creative doubt?
After 30 years, I often worry that my best work is behind me. Do I have any good stories left in me? Has my writing style gone out of date? That’s why I’m always trying new styles and genres. Creative possibilities are vast, and we have to be willing to explore.

Is there an overarching theme to your body of work, or is each piece a new exploration?
My short stories and poetry tend towards the darker aspects of the human mind. I love exploring the reasons why people do what they do, recognizing that otherwise good people are quite capable of making bad choices.

When you begin a new piece of work, where do you start?
I often start a new piece of work with a title or an opening line that pops into my head. Like any good writer, I jot these down in the moment so they don’t evaporate. Then I take time to meditate on the idea, jotting down anything that might help me grow the concept.

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
I’ve been feeling the pull towards podcasting for some time now. With unlimited time, I would dive into learning how to do it properly, from the technical aspects to the business considerations, trusting that my natural creative impulses will take care of the rest.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?  
As a literary translator, I have dedicated to translation and especially transcreation for nearly twenty years, from which I have profoundly understood the paramount importance of literary creation to translation and especially transcreation, which is a kind of secondary creation in some sense and to some extent. So, in my free time, I also write English essays and poems out of my passion, consciousness, and whim.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received? 
To be frank, I composed my first poem in Chinese when I was about fourteen years old. I was on a train to my hometown in Shandong Province with my dad and sis. Amazed by those beautiful sceneries enroute, I suddenly felt the urge to express my feelings and yearning. From that day onwards, I didn’t write any poem until about nine years later when I was at graduate school in Wuhan City. Even now, I still keep those two poems in my notebooks.

What is the single best sentence you’ve ever read? 
The single best sentence I have ever read is Scarlett O’Hara’s last words in Gone with the Wind: “After all, tomorrow is another day.” It taught me a way to think about and handle difficult situations, that is, life is full of possibilities and I should always cherish hope and try to start anew “tomorrow.” 

Did you have formal training in literature/art? What ways do you continue your creative education?
The literary training I have received is mixed, e.g., graduate training in Interpreting and Translation Studies at Wake Forest University for a few months, training in literary writing for two weeks each year for altogether four years as a trainee of 2nd Shaanxi Province One Hundred Outstanding Young and Middle-Aged Writers Support Project led by the Publicity Department of the Shaanxi Provincial Commission, carried out by Shaanxi Writers Association, and managed by Shaanxi Literature Institute. Also, I attend all kinds of workshops, symposia, conferences, etc. and write academic articles as a way to continue my education in literary translation and writing.

Is there an overarching theme to your body of work, or is each piece a new exploration?
There isn’t any overarching theme to my body of work and each piece I create is a new exploration. In this way, I can bring my creativity to the fullest and try different writing styles and techniques. In fact, believing learning is lifetime, I have spared no effort to hone, polish, and improve my translation and writing skills, so I would in no way stick to a fixed theme, style, or technique.

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
If I have unlimited time, I would like to connect all of my literary practices and experiences together, research them in-depth, and work out some common findings about them, e.g., from perspectives like the imagery, the sound, the rhyme, and the rhythm. 

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create? 
I mess around with visual art occasionally, although that's mostly just for fun – I have a few art pieces in my books, particularly Shining Wire (https://elliottdunstan.storenvy.com/products/28783417-the-shining-wire-physical-copy) and Revenant's Hymn (https://elliottdunstan.storenvy.com/products/36800423-revenant-s-hymn-paperback). I can't draw faces, so I've just tried to work around it with my composition choices! My main other discipline, however, is drag. Every month or two I get the chance to get up on stage in a weird outfit and lip-sync, and it is so fun. You can find my drag stuff at @trixieroselee (https://www.instagram.com/trixieroselee/) on Instagram – I'm still a baby at it, but it's an amazing outlet, and so deeply tied into queer history. 

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received? 
I've actually been writing poetry since before I can remember. I have no recollection of my first bit of writing; but I do remember my first attempt at a novel. I was about eight, and the  main character was called Mimoyo, which is how I remember I had watched a few episodes of Inuyasha at the time and didn't...really understand how other languages worked yet. It wasn't very good! But my parents were really encouraging, and I remember my mother dutifully sitting down to read it every time I finished a new part and listening to me chatter on about it at the dinner table. 

What is your biggest creative doubt?
I think every writer is afraid of being judged, so I don't think this is hugely different – but in the last ten or so years, there's been a particular rise of people who essentially want to bring back censorship. Often they'll have stated good causes in mind, but in practice, they're bullies – Tamsyn Muir was on the receiving end of some of this, as was Maya Deane, but smaller, less visible authors and artists particularly in the fan world are victims of it every day. I say this because I find myself self-editing to avoid bringing them down on my head. I'm disabled, I'm trans, I'm a survivor of violence – but sometimes I'll catch myself going “oh, this is too far, I'll get backlash, I should change it—” or “I don't think this is a good idea” to things that are supposed to be uncomfortable, supposed to make readers squirm a bit. Bigotry is uncomfortable! So that's already disconcerting, realizing that that censorship has leeched into my own head. But on top of that, it makes me question my fundamental commitment to anti-racism, disability activism, et al. That fear of backlash overshadows my genuine attempts to be inclusive and committed to leftist causes in my work, and I worry that it impacts my work more than I even realize. 

What historical time would you most like to live in?
Unfortunately for the ethos behind this question, I'm Deaf, Jewish  and clinically insane, so not a lot of winners! There's a few I wouldn't mind visiting – 1960s New York and San Fran, New Orleans in the late 1800s, Germany in the High Middle Ages – but probably the winner is Ireland after the fall of the Roman Empire. If nothing else, I might get some background on the King Arthur stories. 

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
I usually try to finish books twice; sometimes I'm just in the wrong mood, or I wasn't getting into it right. I'm afraid my most recent “absolutely not for me” DNF was The Traitor Baru Cormorant. For no particularly bad reason, I should add! It's just that... nobody who recommended me the book gave me a warning for math. There is so much numbers. And accounting. And – and I do not like economical worldbuilding enough for this. But I'm sure there are many nerds who hear this and suddenly get very interested, so go for it. 

What is the most unbelievable thing that has ever happened to you?
I'm so excited you asked this. Most of my eligible answers are a bit depressing, but I get to tell you about Cluny. My girlfriend and I live in an apartment building with some... interesting residents. Well, last year or so, our next-door neighbours were getting evicted. Which, to be clear, I'm not happy about, but there were clearly some circumstances. How do I know this? Because my girlfriend came home from work one day about two months after they'd left, came into the bedroom white as a sheet, and said, “There is a rat in our kitchen.” As it turned out, the folks next door had been breeding rats. You are, for what I hope are obvious reasons, really not supposed to do this. But the poor fellow in our kitchen was not a wild rat; he was one of theirs who'd escaped while they were leaving! They hadn't even noticed! Obviously we couldn't kill him. I didn't like the idea of killing a rat as it was, and finding out he was just a pet meant, no way. So we tried to coax him into a cage. He got used to going in and out of it, and started only going to the cage – so far, so good. But every time we got close he'd bolt, so we got a live trap. He got good at escaping from the live trap! But we were buddies. He'd deliberately get into the live trap when he knew I was about to get home from work so I'd come over and say hi and give him some peanut butter. Eventually, we got him into a tote and got him to the rat rescue. We kind of wanted to keep him – but he's with other rats now. Rats are very social. His new name is Todd, he cleaned up very very nicely, and I get to be proud of spending three months coaxing this little creature out of my walls. 

Whose work do you feel most resembles your own? 
Poetically? It's sort of a mix of Poe and T.S. Eliot, I'd say, although I have to admit I have a complicated, rather vicious relationship with Eliot. Quite aside from him spelling his name the wrong and bad way, he was a jackass. (I've actually written a poem longer than The Wasteland just to spite him.) Prose-wise, it really varies depending on the project – I find myself vibing a lot with T. Kingfisher, A.G.A. Wilmot and  Susanna Clarke. 

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create? 
Hmm. Twenty years ago, my mother and I visited the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo . At one point, while looking at some pop art, I mistakenly claimed I could replicate one of the simpler pieces. Mom, being Mom, suggested I should try. My effort was a disaster. 

I recently built a wooden staircase that runs down a hill. It's functional and the neighbours tell me it looks nice. Does that count? 

For a time, I earned a living in software development. Some might consider that an art.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received? 
I'm one of those people who always thought they had a novel in them but never tried. But then in my middle age, I did, Like my earlier attempt at painting, it was also a disaster. I was told the plot was tortuous, there were too many characters, and the writing was clumsy. I decided to take some creative writing courses. They helped. Maybe I should take some art lessons.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read? 
In 1945 our parents went away and left us in the care of two men who may have been criminals. It's the opening line from Michael Ondaatje's novel, Warlight, and it caught my attention!

What is your most evocative memory?
It depends on when you ask me. At the moment, it's the time when I worked at a children's sleep-over summer camp for underprivileged kids from the inner city, many of whom had never seen the countryside. I was 17 and put in charge of a dozen ten-year-old boys. About four days in, I noticed that one of the boys, a nice kid, smelled awful. After some gentle coaxing, he told me his mother had always wiped his bum for him and rather than figure it out for himself, he decided to poop in his pants. I convinced him to  change his clothes and explained the basics of bum wiping. The incident highlighted the ridiculousness of our world, its unfairness, and how difficult it is for some people to cope. I wish I could remember the boy's name.

What is your biggest creative doubt?  
That I'll never write like Michael Ondaatje.

What historical time would you most like to live in? 
The 1980's. I'd like a do over.

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
Lord of the Rings. It's one of those books I'd heard about all my life. People raved about it. Fantasy isn't my favourite genre, but the book jumped off a yard sale table and I took it home for a dollar. I found the plot tortuous, and there were too many characters. At least the writing wasn't clumsy.

What is the most unbelievable thing that has ever happened to you?
Everything is believable because it happened to me. It's more difficult to believe what happens to others.

Whose work do you feel most resembles your own? 
Not Michael Ondaatje. I've not tried to emulate the work of any specific writer. But I'm sure it happens unintentionally. I do try to follow Elmore Leonard's 10 rules for writing, but I'm no Elmore Leonard either.

What does your creative process look like?
Sometimes, something in my life will trigger an idea. I sit at my computer and type, not knowing where the story will take me. Sometimes it works, and sometimes I write myself into a corner. Some might say I'm a pantser rather than a plotter.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?  
I dabble in lots of things. Admittedly most of them are writing: flash fiction, short stories, creative nonfiction, movie reviews, movies, plays, essays, obviously poetry, etc. Other than that, I’ve been doing pencil sketches and doodles in a semi-serious but nonacademic, nonprofessional way since high school. I like to film things. I’m getting into analog photography. Acting was a big part of my life for a long time and I still dream about it. I’ve been singing in choirs for fifteen years, and as an extension of that I do some music composition, turning poems into choral arrangements. A college course on sonic art put me on to taking ambient field recordings and mashing them up into something unexplainably different. Now I’m in an EDM era so I really want to get into music production and/or DJ-ing as a hobby. When I eventually learn how to sew, I’d like to make puppets. 

I really don’t think I have a natural talent for any of these things, by the way, but I love them no matter what and I do them because I want to get better. 

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received? 
In my sixth grade language arts class we were all given poetry prompts periodically over the course of the school year, so by the end we each had a nice thick portfolio. I still have mine. There was a sort of gallery event where we all set up our binders around the room and I think parents were even invited to go around and peruse everyone’s work. My teacher graded them afterwards, and when I got mine back I saw she’d written a few sentences of feedback. I asked my mom what “prose poetry” was and what “beyond the scope of the curriculum” meant. My mom was like, “Oh, yeah, you wrote in paragraphs. Everyone else broke up their poems into lines, because that’s what poetry is, that’s what she was trying to teach.” I was humiliated and shocked. Flipping through my portfolio, I suddenly couldn’t believe I did what I’d done. Because I knew what poems typically looked like and I’d read my classmates’ poems, and at the time I didn’t see that they were any different from my own. But sure enough, my poems were big, descriptive blocks of text (not that there's anything wrong with that).

What is your biggest creative doubt?  
I worry that there’s always a better way to say the things I’m saying. Often that doubt comes in the form of thinking I simply may not have the skill to serve my ideas in the way that they demand to be served, and sometimes it’s that I get so deep into doing something a certain way that I wonder if the way I’m doing it is going to come across as stupid, and that I’ve been missing a more effective way to do it the whole time. 

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down? 
The House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber. The story itself is right up my alley and I was really pleased to have found it, but the prose is too lyrical and intricate for me. I’m a slow reader already and I was having a hard time getting through it. I’m going to keep recommending it to everyone though. It deserves the hype. 

What does your creative process look like?
I get an idea, and if I don’t know what to do with it right away then I have to wait for a spontaneous burst of energy or an epiphany of some sort. Sometimes the idea is a line, and sometimes the idea is a vibe or a voice or a technique, and sometimes it’s inspiration from someone else’s work, and sometimes it’s a very original and very complete concept. I’m happiest when I’m getting inspiration from somewhere, but no matter how an idea comes, the work itself always has to happen out of nowhere; I can’t manifest a decent line or note or image out of intensely focused thought or out of an intense desire to render it. Deadlines are usually very tough for me. There’s a screenplay that I’ve been “working on” for over a year, and at this point I know exactly what I want it to be, but I haven’t figured out how to put most of the scenes into words and really follow through. I’m trusting that one day I’ll just realize, and it’ll be worth the wait. When I get in the zone I can be capable of some pretty cool things. Once I've gotten all the stuff down, editing it can actually be really fun.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?  
I went to charter arts elementary and high schools, so I have a base level of experience and knowledge in a bunch of different arts. Growing up, my favorite disciplines (besides poetry, which is my one true love) were watercolor, classical guitar, choir, improv, digital art, collage, and fiction. As an adult, I don’t have time to keep up with all of that at once, so I usually flit from thing to thing--I’ve tried shape note singing (which I love and recommend to everyone), doll making, knitting, and stick and poke, to name a few. The past couple of years, I’ve been really into textile mending, both visible and invisible. I enjoy it because I can mend while watching TV or listening to a podcast, the projects are really portable, it reduces my carbon footprint, and it saves me money. My favorite type of mending is visible darning, which I’ve been using to fill in holes and reinforce threadbare socks.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received? 
I’ve seen a lot of really interesting and surprising poems by eight year olds, but the poems I remember writing when I was eight were not good, to say the least. The first poem I ever published was about flying on a butterfly’s wings, with a refrain that went something like, “beautiful, amazing, majestic.” My parents told me it was brilliant and I sent it to a scam website that published every poem it received in an anthology that the authors could buy for $49.99 (when you factor in inflation, that would be almost $100 today). My parents did not purchase it, so I have no record of that poem or any of the others that I subsequently sent them.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read? 
This is so hard to narrow down! It’s easier for me to start with the most beautiful poem I’ve ever read. So from Anne Carson’s, “The Glass Essay,” I’ll share this sentence: “It is as if we have all been lowered into an atmosphere of glass.”

What is your most evocative memory?
Every time I’ve come back to the Pacific Northwest in late summer or early fall after being away for weeks or more, I’ve opened the car window or stepped off the train or out of the airport terminal and smelled blackberries in the air. 

What is your biggest creative doubt?  
Sometimes I worry that I don’t know what poetry is, or what it’s supposed to be.

What historical time would you most like to live in? 
I was the child of evangelicals in the 90s in the suburbs of Seattle. Only as a teenager in the late 00s did I learn about the riot grrrl and grunge movements. Years ago, I watched this documentary about single punk moms in the 90s and early 00s called All’s Well and Fair (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1838D33A693BB716), and I mourned the fact that I was in the right place at the right time with the wrong parents. If I could, a part of me would love to replace my evangelical 90s pacific northwest childhood with a punk 90s pacific northwest childhood. Another part of me is really attached to the childhood I had and the person it made me.

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
I am currently reading at least seven different books, one of which I started in 2019. It’s a thick biography called, Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured, by Kathryn Harrison. Joan of Arc is my favorite historical figure, but history has always been my worst subject, and I find biographies very hard to get into. I’m always optimistic that I’ll make headway in this book, but the reality is, I’ll probably never finish it.

However, the 30-or-so pages I’ve been able to get through were full of interesting stuff. My favorite of Joan of Arc’s miracles was that, although she changed her clothes and slept among her male comrades, there are many reports that no soldier ever felt lust when looking at her body. I’m not a fan of the whole virginity/purity/holiness thing, but there’s something about this miracle that grabs me. Maybe the fact that it’s considered a miracle? And if she didn’t actually radiate divine boner-killing energy, I can imagine this claim rising out of the friendship and loyalty she cultivated with her soldiers. Also, it sort of reinforces her status as a gender outsider--the men she fought alongside called her a woman, but they didn’t interact with her as if she were a woman. Most of all, it’s just funny to think about her having divine boner-killing energy.

What is the most unbelievable thing that has ever happened to you?
This is really cheesy, but falling in love. Growing up afab in the church, I was very turned off by the idea of being the wife in a heterosexual, godly marriage. I wanted to fall in love, but I didn’t want the type of romantic partnerships I saw play out among the adults in my life. When I realized I was gay, I felt like I could finally see a future in which I was happy. And then I fell in love with my best friend and pined after them for three years. When we finally got together, I had this dread (based on the fact that, at the time, most media depictions of gay romance ended in death) that one or both of us would die within the month. For me, the most unbelievable thing is that we didn’t die, that, so far, we’ve spent eleven years loving each other and understanding each other on a level that no one else has managed to understand either of us. The most unbelievable thing is that I’m happy, when my entire childhood I believed happiness was impossible.

Whose work do you feel most resembles your own? 
I worry that if I give the name of a poet I admire or aspire to write like, it will feel undeserved. So, not a who, but I take a lot of inspiration from psalms, fables, parables, and folk tales. I’m a huge fan of caesura, parallel construction, and that syntax that goes “subject object verb,” which is something they do a lot in Russian, “Я тебя люблю,” or, “I you love.” As far as content goes, I think of my poems as parables, or fables without morals.

What does your creative process look like?
I get an idea, and then it stays in my head for days or decades. Over that time, I’m consciously and subconsciously formulating a poem, so when I finally write it down, it’s very close to its final version. Sometimes I force it and write the poem down before it’s ready--I did this a lot during my MFA because of assignment deadlines. When I force it, I just get very angry with the poem, knowing it’s not where it’s supposed to be, knowing all these technical ways to make it into something else, but also knowing those technical things won’t make it into what it needs to become.

The poem I published on Alphanumeric, "I am sitting in my childhood bedroom watching a stellar jay preen on the lowest branch of the apple tree I planted on Arbor Day in kindergarten,” came to me in a dream almost completely formed. I wrote it down the next day, made some edits within the week, and it was pretty much done. I wrote it eight years ago and am still happy with it.

On the other end of the spectrum, I just finished a poem that took me seventeen years to write. I discovered this seed of a poem when I was a teenager riding in the passenger’s seat of my pastor’s son’s car. It was just me and him alone, which rarely ever happened. He was a very popular but extremely awkward guy, and I never knew what to say to him. I had, at that point, decided that if I felt awkward around a guy, it must have meant I had a crush on him. I had none of the other feelings people described as being crush-like toward any boys, so whenever I was hanging out with an awkward guy, I was in this mental turmoil of, “is this a crush? It has to be, because if it isn’t then I’ve never had one. But it isn’t fun at all. I don’t want to be around him,” etc. etc. So we were not talking, because he was super awkward and because all of this heterosexual nonsense that was going through my head, and I was worried that he could read my thoughts. I imagined my thoughts launching from the top of my head up into the air, and then falling back down into his head, the path making a parabola. I loved that image so much, but I couldn’t figure out how to fit it in a poem. I tried writing it down in different ways over the years, but nothing worked until this summer. The poem, as it is now, doesn’t have the pastor’s son or any of the heterosexual nonsense in it, but I really love what it has become. I haven’t published it yet, so you’ll just have to wait to read it.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?  
In addition to writing, I’m passionate about contemporary dancing, theatre acting, and podcast creation. Essentially, anything that allows me to express myself through movement or my work.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received? 
I remember writing my first short essay about the adventures of a cucumber sandwich when you eat it in elementary school. I loved it (unlike my classmates!) 

What is the single best sentence you've ever read? 
The best sentence I’ve ever read is ‘Memento mori,’ a Latin phrase that translates to ‘remember that you will die.’ I first encountered it at 18, and it has since become a guiding principle in my life—etched both in my mind and as a tattoo.

What is your most evocative memory?
There are a million of them. I tend to feel memories in a funny way because of synesthesia.

What historical time would you most like to live in? 
I am more than happy to be living in a third world country in late stage-capitalism (not).

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
Recently, I started reading ‘Sal-e’ Balva,’ a novel by Abbas Maroufi. Its captivating storytelling and enigmatic tone drew me in. However, I decided to set it aside temporarily because I felt I wasn’t fully absorbing its value and depth.

What is the most unbelievable thing that has ever happened to you?
Being born!

What does your creative process look like?
A flowing trip inward, It’s almost effortless. I just use mediums to project this trip of self-reflection, Love and suffering. 

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?  
I began my creative life as a musician and songwriter—guitar, piano and voice. I played many gigs and recording sessions as a working, self-taught musician with some very talented players. My songwriting has had a significant effect on the structure of my poems—an amalgam of verse and stanza. I try to infuse my poetry with a degree of musicality that assists recital. I have continued my composing over the years and my music cues are used on cable television programs.

I’ve dabbled in photography, making my images free to use by nonprofits and news sites, within certain licensing restrictions. My images are used on websites throughout the world.

I also create visual art which I’ve paired with writings for children due to the fact that my art skills are at the kindergarten level. The website is called “Writing The Child.” 

 http://WritingTheChild.com

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
My poetry and prose efforts began in my late teens. I was more interested in music. But once I left home, my humble living accommodations and poverty inspired me to seek some kind of solace from writing poetry and journal entries.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read? 
For me, there is no “best,” but rather those creative achievements which reside in the higher atmospheres of human endeavor. And so:

“A small drop of ink may make a million think.” ~ Lord Byron

Did you have formal training in literature/art? What ways do you continue your creative education?
I have a bachelor’s degree in journalism and completed post-graduate studies in American literature.

What is your biggest creative doubt?  
That what I see in myself as genuine is merely a façade.

What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
For me, the best advice has come from teachers who focused on the nuts and bolts of the writing craft. But turning such practical advice into creative writing is a highly individual act. I’m not sure that can be taught. There is no one size fits all. The worst advice amounts to a teacher’s lessons in “How to be me.”

What change would you like to see in the publishing world?  
Less dominance of poetry and uniformity of style by the academic world.

Is there an overarching theme to your body of work, or is each piece a new exploration?
Each poem I write reflects a different pathway, and yet there are dominant attitudes of mine within the subject categories of my writing, such categories as family, love, freedom, and so on.

When you begin a new piece of work, where do you start?
When I begin a new work, I stop talking and listen, listen and listen to those more earnest voices trying to get through the cacophony my everyday life. I always say: “In poetry, the writing is the thing that comes last.” 

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
Dancing!

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?  
I played trumpet from middle school through college. I haven't played since then, but I am in a musical family, and music is a natural way for me to relate to the world. I can't imagine life without it.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received? 
When I was two or three, I composed a song to the tune of "Mary Had a Little Lamb." It went like this: "Magic kite is flying high, / Flying high, / Flying high. / Magic kite is flying high, / Way up in the sky." My parents loved it.

What is your most evocative memory?
Being at the beach with my father as a small child. I describe the whole experience in the poem "Opening the Hand," which you are publishing.

What is your biggest creative doubt?  
That I don't have anything new to say. 

What historical time would you most like to live in? 
I've always wondered what it would have been like to be a young adult in the 1960s (I was born toward the end of the decade). I love the music and the idealistic energy of that period. But I'm also thankful that I spent my childbearing years under the umbrella of Roe v. Wade.  

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down? 
Dirtbag, Massachusetts, by Isaac Fitzgerald. At first I found it very engaging, but as it goes on, it's repetitive. The guy is a self-destructive alcoholic, and even the drastic things he does to try to break the pattern (going to Burma as a humanitarian smuggler) don't seem to do it. He justifies going to bars because his parents never went to bars and it's a way to get back at them, somehow(??). As a self-reflective study of addiction, I much prefer Caroline Knapp's Drinking: A Love Story. 

What does your creative process look like?
It looks like many different things. I may start with an experience, a question, something I've heard on the radio, a new word I've discovered. Sometimes I've had good luck writing from prompts, while other prompts leave me cold. I usually start my poems on paper, but if I'm already on my laptop when an idea comes to me, I'll just start a new document there. Once I was walking around the track when an idea came to me, so I used my phone's voice recorder to capture some lines. Revision usually happens on the computer: it's easier to see how the poem will look on the page. But I don't save my changes over the original, so I have many files with titles such as "Sunrise," "Sunrise2," "Sunrise3," and so on. I have occasionally submitted the wrong version of a poem, so I need a better system.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?  
My “day job” is marketing and graphic design, so I’m often asked to create posters and other assets. My graphic discipline nicely pays off with my writing work, since I can create fun visual materials for my pieces. 

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received? 
As far as I could remember, I was always writing stories. Even when I barely knew how to write I’d draw comics with stick figures. My initial story telling was in first grade when I acted out a story about me and my invisible friend, who, of course played lots of trick on me, including kicking me in the butt. The class and teacher loved it so much, they asked me to performed it for another class. 

What is the single best sentence you've ever read? 
“She would have been a good woman,” The Misfit said, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”  -A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Connor

Did you have formal training in literature/art? What ways do you continue your creative education?
Yes. I studied Writing, Publishing and Literature at Emerson College in Boston. My concentration was Professional Writing, in the hopes of finding ways to write for a living. But I took as many Creative Writing classes as I could. When I moved to Los Angeles, I took a few additional writing classes at UCLA. But, as always, I feel the best way to learn about writing is to read, read and read some more. 

What is your biggest creative doubt?  
That my stories will never reach a wider audience. 

What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
Work on only one writing project at a time and don’t start another until that one is sold/published. Though the business end of writing is important, the act of creating should always be the priority. For me at least. 

What change would you like to see in the publishing world?  
A few less “pay to be published" sites and more advocacy to get writers paid. I know it’s not the most lucrative industry, but at the least, I wish reading fees could be abolished. 

Is there an overarching theme to your body of work, or is each piece a new exploration?
I’d say it’s 50/50. I do my best to challenge myself to explore do ideas and types of story. But many times I come back to telling stories of those who are not who’d be considered “mainstream”. I often say I write about the three Gs: gays, geeks and goths. 

When you begin a new piece of work, where do you start?
Often, just with a pen and a notebook, and writing down as much of the story as I can in one sitting. 

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
Learning musical instruments. Guitar and piano specifically.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create? 
Thank you so much for this question. I have always had this close admiration for photography outside of poetry as an alternative to telling my stories I cannot ordinarily, and easily tell as a reserved person. Because most times, irrespective of my discipline as a communication student/journalist, I still have this modicum of talking sparingly. 

So, the rest of what I should say is captured in photography as a craft in art. Probably talking about beauty, accidents, and poor infrastructural display in governance, (bad roads, etc) using my smartphone camera in the shortage of digital cameras like Canon, or Nikon. 

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received? 
I was 17 when I wrote what looked like my first work back in secondary school. Funny enough, it was a romance—a lovey-dovey poem I crafted as a boy without a lover. Yes. It is funny. It would beat people’s philosophy of love, that one does not know the camp of thieves without rubbing shoulders with them. But, the truth is, creativities see beyond direct experiences. 

Although, two of my classmates then were in a pupa relationship. I had watched them several times holding each other’s waist, looking at each other, eyeball to eyeball, and sometimes wetting their lips in the process after Wednesday's compulsory Games Activities at school.  One question led to another, and she responded, “I see love. Nothing more”. So, I quickly titled the poem, “If You Ever Leave”, which she, my classmate’s lover took home from my desk. I later found a letter maneuvered on my desk the following morning, which read what I was not interested in...

Conscious enough in 2018, I wrote what was received greatly audience-wise on social medium, (media)—Facebook. It was shared by the netizens. Because it bothered the political shenanigans at home. And, it is witty to say, that a poet is a man of all weather. Sufficing to say, for me, that the ill-infested political system at home is bittersweet. Because for a poet, every door, closed, is a door, open. Everything is advantageous. Call it death!

What is the single best sentence you've ever read? 
My single sentence which I even repeat in my prayers is, “Everything good will come”. A sentence credited to a Nigerian-American novelist, Sefi Atta. I first read the sentence somewhere when I was worried about something before I realized it is the title of a novel by Sefi, about a girl growing into a woman in Nigeria and England. This sentence is not only loved by its conciseness, but also buried in high optimism. You need to read it repeatedly so you come to terms with the aesthetics. I wish I could frame it on the wall of my heart. I just wish I could. 

What is your most evocative memory?
Yes. The crisis I know remains an indelible evocative memory that keeps returning to find me home. Although, I was not in the canoe that got wrecked. I only left my bones somewhere beside the captain. 

However, it always reminds me how my feelings should not be free from worries about the dead without ritual publicity. It could come in the form of one, or two of the victims visiting my sleep and all that, especially the under-reportage coverage the media gave the chaos.

And I am happy I have written credited to the crisis and some of the pieces have been published in International journals/magazines.

What is your biggest creative doubt?
Well, if I ever doubted my creative strength, it should be not gaining access to international magazines, or journals, let alone receiving a shipped contributor’s copy(ies) from outside my shore.  It is not an inferiority complex thing. 

The thing is, there is this feeling of not improving in your art after a series of turndowns from home publishing houses. They would return my email with a big blow. 

But, as minutes are lost into hours, days into weeks, I began to penetrate them, and then to international. Just google my name, you will read them online. 

What is the most unbelievable thing that has ever happened to you?
It is fine. This is a subsequent response. If truth be told, one of the unbelievable things that ever happened to me was, winning the 2022 Neptune Prime Poetry Prize. It was a national outing. 

Of course, there is this self-doubt slugging it out with people who started writing before you. You would think it is just an outing—somewhere lost between pessimism and optimism. When I learned about the names I floored, all I did was lie down on my floor; brandishing my hands heavenward. 

That said, just as Abraham perceives Isaac, so does the award. Because it came at the point of rescue from the lake of destitute as an undergraduate in the university; nursing my wounds myself to settle a series of fees. The following day, I walked straight to the school bank to pay my fees. 

What does your creative process look like?
Well, my creative process has always taken the shape of amoeba. I mean, I do not write like most creatives. What I am trying to say is, as a Nigerian student, combining engagements of commanding meals to your table, and then, the process of creating words can be shitty, to say the least, especially at the intensity of the former. There's a porous lacuna between creativity and footing for bills as a young person, and student. Of course, you cannot satisfy your writing as much as you thought. 

Remember, time is not your girlfriend you ask to wait for a pickup at a junction.

And, as a trainee journalist, I left night as a cocoon for writing, sometimes. And, I always work and pray to grow past this shitty stage where the basic needs do not suppress the secondary ones. Perhaps, someday, I will outgrow it. Just someday. 

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create? 
I'm also a composer/musician and when I can find time, a painter. Once upon a time I was also an actor.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?  
I've also written and published a number of tabletop roleplaying games, including Minus Spiral (https://vorpalcoil.itch.io/minus-spiral), a tragicomedy where anything you try to do fails, and 'Til Death, a two-person game of necromancer romance.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received? 
I started writing short stories in elementary school, and was blessed with a mother who supported my ambitions, even if my stories weren't any good yet.

What is your biggest creative doubt?  
I crave the impossibly grandiose, ideas bigger than are feasible to compress onto the page, and fear trying to cram too many of them into a given work.

What historical time would you most like to live in? 
I often feel I missed out on the New Wave science fiction scene of the 60s and 70s, although in most regards I'd rather just live in the future.

Whose work do you feel most resembles your own? 
Although I don't know if I'm there yet, I have long aspired to write half as well as Jorge Luis Borges.

What does your creative process look like?
I put on longplays of video games as a background when I'm coming up with ideas, then isolate myself by laying down in bed to work out the details. Actual writing takes a fraction of the total time spent working on a story, I only do fairly minimal second drafts.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create? 
I write short stories because they are pieces that I can think about and finish in the time available to me (which often is not very much), and which can then be shared. I have written from a young age, working on projects that often were unfinished because of other demands, and which I then did not get back to in a period where they still felt alive to me. Sadly, two of my daughters have a serious illness which is not recognised as existing in Australia, chronic Lyme disease. I am the main earner in our family and caring responsibilities have fallen much more greatly on my wife. We made a decision some years ago that I would spend a period as the main carer for one of our children which meant taking time off work. To keep healthy in that period, I wrote short pieces that could be worked on in the gaps between caring, medicating, schooling etc. This allowed me to finish pieces and have a sense of achievement. I managed to publish some of these, and when I returned to work I decided to put aside the longer projects and concentrate on these. When I was younger and there seemed to be infinite time available I also wrote a lot of comedy sketches, some radio plays and screen plays. If I have any talent, meagre such as it is, it is in writing, but I would be happy to write for other than just on the page.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read?
I am going to cheat here. Nothing I have read sticks with me in that way (other than chunks of "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock"), it is always things that I have heard. I agree with Anthony Burgess that Pontius Pilate gets the best lines in the Bible, and his quotes in the liturgies of Easter week stick with me: "Truth? What is that?", and "What I have written, I have written". (From the same liturgies, "Now, Barabbas was a brigand.") For something more secular, two lines from David Byrne: "Things fall apart, it's scientific" and "Say something once, why say it again?".

Did you have formal training in literature/art? What ways do you continue your creative education?
I come from a very working class background and I was the first person in my family to receive any sort of education beyond the age of 15. The entirety of my education has been focussed on career because I come from a time and place where that is what working class people and families did to progress if they could. It is different for my children who I guess are middle class and I encourage them to follow dreams and passion, but I have no regrets about my own training and how my parents encouraged me. If I have any training in literature, it is from being an avid reader. If I continue any creative education, it is through continuing to read, trying to develop broader interests in art and cinema, and taking advantage of opportunities for new artistic experiences that come my way.

What is your biggest creative doubt?
Nothing unusual here - that what I do is of no worth and that nobody will have any interest in it or take any pleasure from it. Those doubts are real and very valid. However, I take the same pleasure in writing that I take in reading, and now I write for my own pleasure. I enjoy the process especially when I am in the flow and am in a different relationship with time. I laugh at my own jokes. I revel in the weirdness. I am never going to be interviewed by Paris Review, I am never going to make a Granta List, and that is ok. I write my stories, I polish them, I send them out. I take pleasure in creating them, I take pleasure in them being accepted and published if that happens, I take pleasure in going back and reading some of them, and I try just to be me doing my thing. I cannot do anything other than that. Often the Black Dog barks to remind me that my stories are all shit of course.

What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
You know, I cannot think of a single thing. I've received plenty of bad advice, sometimes from very good and very well-meaning people, in all other parts of my life. Maybe to be honest, this is because of how personal creativity is to me. I rarely speak to anybody about it. I interact with books about it, and I suppose I take on what suits me and everything else drops away without me thinking about it. It might be different if it was the major part of my life, but while it is very important to me, it comes far down a list, after family and work and so on. Creativity is a grace and a blessing, a gratuitous added bonus after putting food on the table and helping with homework and going to work and caring for a sick child and so on - there, I said it out loud.

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
It would be good if you could add youth and a modicum of talent to the gift of unlimited time. Music - voice training and learn an instrument, and understand more about music. Learn half a dozen languages well. I was at my fittest when learning karate - could you also add leg flexibility to your list please? It would have been nice if my side kicks were more than 6 inches above the floor. If I had unlimited time, I would probably do nothing at all but revel in it, but if I had a chunk of limited time, I would finish a novel.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?  
Before I became more interested in poetry, I actually used to write lyrics/songs with my piano and my guitar. I would post them to Youtube and then share them on Facebook for my family and friends to see. I have since taken a break from music, but I still enjoy playing my ukulele and guitar from time to time! 

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received? 
The first time I wrote a poem was for my Pop-pop. I had to have been in 3rd or 4th grade. He loved it so much, and he still has it framed in his office. 

What is the single best sentence you've ever read? 
“We accept the love we think we deserve” - Charlie, in Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Honestly, I make it a point to read that book once a year. 

What is your biggest creative doubt?  
When I submit my poetry to different online magazines/journals, I read through the poetry they have already published to see if my work could fit among the others. Often, I find the poetry that is accepted for publication is so unique and abstract, which makes it beautiful in its own way. When I reread my own work, I think perhaps it is too basic to be seen as creative talent. 

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down? 
Flight and Metamorphosis by Nelly Sachs translated by Joshua Weiner is a book I tried very hard to read and ultimately decided to put down. I remember reading the opening words from Weiner, and he stated that Sachs herself said that perhaps her poetry would be too hard for most to understand, but someone encouraged her to put it out there anyways. I am sure there are many well-studied literary critics who have/will continue to read her work in awe, but I was one of those who simply could not understand, therefore enjoy, her poetry. 

What does your creative process look like?
I try not to sit down and just think of something to write about unless I’m bored. A lot of the time, surprisingly, I get a phrase stuck in my head while I’m brushing my teeth, and I jot it down in my notes on my phone, and I try to create something from that phrase later in the day. Sometimes, I will also try to pull a very clear memory from my past and elaborate on it through my poetry as a means to try to process the event.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?  
As a collector of old advertising and paper of all descriptions, I collage to justify the hoarding.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read? 
The Leopard, by Giuseppe Di Lampedusa (translated by: Guido Waldman) is filled with evocative sentences, such as: “The sun, which was still far from its blazing zenith on that morning of the thirteenth of May, showed itself to be the true ruler of Sicily; the crude brash sun, the drugging sun, which annulled every will, kept all things in servile immobility, cradled in violence as arbitrary as dreams.” (p.38)

What is your biggest creative doubt?  
It changes depending on who I’m comparing myself to. When I’m stuck, Sarah Manguso’s Green-Eyed Verbs (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/books/review/green-eyed-verbs.html) is the ultimate motivational reality check. To wit: “All writers will envy other writers, writing. No one who reads is immune. To write despite it I must implicate myself, to confess myself, silently or on the page, that I am envious. The result of this admission is humility.”

What historical time would you most like to live in? 
Kind of a fan of the Ottoman Empire, classical-era (~1453-1566).

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down? 
Erica Berry’s Wolfish. I try to avoid any form of entertainment featuring animals, because the narrative inevitably features animal suffering and/or people being rotten to animals. But I really wanted to read Wolfish. Berry’s writing, her imagining of the brave and historic trek of one wolf is magical. Ultimately, this made the story more heart scorching. I did not finish the book and cannot forget the bits I read.

What does your creative process look like?
Being hard on myself> being good to myself> sticking to a writing schedule > refusing to compare my writing schedule to the schedules of others> creating deadlines> letting myself have vacations> feeling unproductive> refusing to compare my output to the output of others> letting myself off the hook> being hard on myself, ad infinitum.