Several times a month we connect with our contributors showing where they have been, where they are now, and what’s up for the future.
Name: David Sklar Title of Pieces Published in Sweet: “Real Estate“ Issues: 3.2
Find Him: Twitter My pet project The Poetry Crisis Line is on Facebook.
Still in New Jersey, but a few inches to the west.
Find more from David on the Poetry Crisis website.
What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?
Surviving.
Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?
I’ve been working on this thing called the Poetry Crisis Line, which is sort of a cartoon, sort of an intertextual experiment, at the web address I listed above.
These look super fun and we are going to check out the rest!
Who is your favorite author?
I can only pick one? I mean, maybe I can narrow it down to Toni Morrison, Charles Baxter, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Joy Harjo, T.S. Eliot, Richard Brautigan, Walter Tevis, Shel Silverstein, and Ursula Le Guin. But I’m sure I’m leaving someone out who I’ll think of shortly after I click Submit.
What is your favorite poem/essay/book?
My favorite poem is “The Abortion,” a traditional poem from Santal, India translated by W.G. Archer, that appears in Technicians of the Sacred, edited by Jerome Rothenberg. It deals with a couple of different castes grieving the baby they could not bring to term. It is heartbreaking but not judgmental, and the flow of it is ceremonial, but not in anything like a fixed meter that I’ve ever seen.
What inspires you to write?
Not enough, lately, though I’ve been working on getting my good habits back.
What are you reading right now?
That is one of the good habits I’m trying to get back. I read poetry a few times a week, but I’m not in the process of reading any book-length works at the moment. My favorite poem that I’ve “recently” discovered (probably late 2020) is “Aboriginal Landscape” by Louise Gluck.
What is your favorite sweet? We would love for you to share a recipe or link to place that serves it. Pictures are great, too!
You can find Joey, associate professor of English, at Brigham Young University in Provo, UT, where he runs the MFA program, and I co-edits Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction with Pat Madden.
What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?
In November of 2020, University of Nebraska Press published by my second book–Delusions of Grandeur: American essays. It’s a collection of 10 essays that examine our American obsessions with race, class, faith, and family. Essays cover everything from toy guns and bad grammar to plasma donation and apocalyptic thinking. Also: playground brawls, white privilege, JV football, sex and death, Trayvon Martin, The Tohoku Tsunami, Early English grammars, shame, fatherhood, and a tent city in Lubbock, Texas.
Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?
I’m writing a book on creative writing professionalization for Bloomsbury. It covers all the stuff writers need to worry about when they’re not actually sitting at the keyboard. How to make the most of a writing group, what to do at a conference, how to finish big projects, how to submit work, prepare for graduate school, find a mentor, etc.
Who is your favorite author?
Impossible to narrow it down to just one–so how about a few: Brian Doyle, Eula Biss, E. B. White, James Baldwin, Virginia Woolf, Lia Purpura. I’m a big fan of big ideas and beautiful prose.
What is your favorite poem/essay/book?
Two essays I always come back to: “Meteorites” by Brian Doyle. A tutorial in capturing teenage summer magic. And Eula Biss’s “Time and Distance Overcome,” the most poignant lyric essay out there.
What inspires you to write?
Margaret Atwood said it best: “Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that’s wrong. They know less, that’s why they write. Trying to find out what everyone else takes for granted.”
What are you reading right now?
Southbound, by Anjali Enjeti. And Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, by Samin Nostrat
What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?
Release of fifth book of poetry, “Shoreless”, published by Persea Books in October 2020. Most recently, I had a poem appear in the anthology “Beyond Earth’s Edge: The Poetry of Spaceflight” Edited by Julie Swarstad Johnson and Christopher Cokinos. The poem is titled “A Lady Astronaut Tests for Space.” I also just gave a reading on March 11th with Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers for “Poetry at the Dalí” which can be watched on YouTube.
What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?
Since Borderlines was published, my second full-length poetry collection came out, Revolutions We’d Hoped We’d Outgrown. It was shortlisted for the Clare Johnson Award in Women’s Literature from Jane’s Stories Press Foundation. I also co-edited with Andrew Shattuck McBride the anthology, For Love of Orcas, which won a Nautilus Books Silver Award.
Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?
I’m working with my agent getting ready to send out a memoir that includes the essay published in Sweet, and also finishing an essay collection and my third poetry collection
Who is your favorite author?
I couldn’t possibly pick a favorite, but of living writers, Rebecca Solnit, Rick Barot, Claudia Rankine, Ana Maria Spagna, Pam Houston, Donna Miscolta, Ira Sukrungruang, Lidia Yuknavich, Kathleen Flenniken, and Natasha Trethewey always wow me. I could easily add 100+ more names to this list. We’re really lucky to live in a time when we have access to so much great contemporary literature.
What is your favorite poem/essay/book?
I don’t have a favorite, per se, but I could read Marylin Robinson’s Housekeeping over and over. The same for Rebecca Solnit’s Field Guide to Getting Lost.
What inspires you to write?
Reading others’ works (including in Sweet!) inspires me, as does spending time in nature. There’s nothing like hiking a trail, away from everyday concerns, to free my mind, instill a sense of awe, and allow the imagination to thrive.
What are you reading right now?
My nightstand has a stack of fabulous books. Carolyn Forche’s memoir “What You Have Heard Is True,” Rick Barot’s poetry collection “The Galleons”, Jhumpa Lahiri’s Italian memoir “In Other Words,” Jericho Brown’s “The Tradition,” and a stack of books from Copper Canyon Press, including “The Essential Ruth Stone.” I’m also reading submissions for Wandering Aengus Press and its imprint Trail to Table Press, so I’m fortunate to have a deep bounty of reading riches right now.
What is your favorite sweet? We would love for you to share a recipe or link to place that serves it. Pictures are great, too!
My husband makes a cinnamon-oatmeal pancake with fresh berries that has just the right amount of sweetness. With a little butter, maple syrup, and a mug of hot coffee, it’s my favorite way to start the day, though, truth be told, I’d eat them for dinner, too.
Thank you, Jill, for taking the time to reconnect with us. We look forward to seeing more of your work in the future!
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While I’m still picking blueberries from the farm down the street from my house in Olympia, WA, when in season (even during the pandemic), I now host a weekly live international, intersectional, intergenerational reading series on Facebook, Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry, and a monthly reading series, The Collectibles, with Headmistress Press, based on their lesbian trading card series.
What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?
Eavan Boland published my poem “Gratitude Workshop, 1991” in her final issue as editor of Poetry Ireland Review in December, 2019, and of course, watching Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry group emerge out of the shadows of Covid has been astonishing, nourishing, and inspiring. I’ve enjoyed connecting with poets and their poetry from around the world.
Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?
My debut collection of poetry, Boats for Women, came out in March, 2019 from Salmon Poetry. I am starting to organize the poems for my next collection, The Glass Studio, due out from Salmon in 2022 or 2023, and I am beginning preparations for my third collection, an erasure poetry project based on Walter Lord’s 1955 classic about the Titanic disaster, A Night to Remember. Then there’s always the curation of the special event readings for Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry. Upcoming this spring/summer will be readings that celebrate the life and poetry of Eavan Boland, express solidarity with labor/fertility rights on May Day; bear witness with Asian-American/Pacific Islander women poets, and a 40th Anniversary tribute to Salmon Poetry. And that’s just by the end of May! In June we’ll host our 2nd Annual Poetry PRIDE Parade. All virtual, of course, nestled between our New Books Showcase readings.
I have a top ten or so of poets I return to often and necessarily. Easily, however, at the pinnacle of that poetry peak is Elizabeth Bishop. Not only do I absolutely adore and admire her poetry, but Bishop’s example of a poet who did not rush to publication gave me permission to feel comfortable with my slow, meandering journey (Boats for Women took 21 years from completion to publication).
What is your favorite poem/essay/book?
Now this one is much harder. I can’t exist without these books about poetry: Muriel Rukeyser’s The Life of Poetry and Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider. The book of poetry I have cherished for years is Suzanne Gardinier’s The New World (Pittsburgh). Poems I most share with people: Marie Howe’s “What the Living Do”; Li-Young Lee’s “One Heart”; and William Stafford’s “A Ritual to Read Each Other”.
What inspires you to write?
The quirky, poignant, unfathomable, prismatic aspects of humanity. The desire to discover something about myself and my connection with humanity that I could not perceive/receive in the conscious world.
What are you reading right now?
I continue to gobble up all the literary print journals I’ve accumulated over the years as well as reading or rereading anthologies. A few anthologies of note: All of Us: Sweet, the First Five Years, Poetry 2008-2013; Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Occupy the Workspace (Lost Horse Press); Even the Daybreak: 35 Years of Salmon Poetry; and HERS: a poets speak anthology (Beatlick Press and Jules’ Poetry Playhouse). I’m also reading lots of collections. I’d like to mention: Eduardo Corral’s Guillotine (Graywolf), Tamara J. Madison’s Threed: This Road Not Damascus (Trio House), and Hilda Raz’s List & Story (Stephen F. Austin State University Press). Then there’s always a book about some aspect of the Titanic disaster for good measure.
What is your favorite sweet? We would love for you to share a recipe or link to place that serves it. Pictures are great, too!
I know you will not believe me, but this is my favorite question that I always look forward to reading! It’s the essence of Sweet! My favorite sweet is a confection made in Gloucester, MA, at Nichols Candies, a family-owned candy store that’s been in Gloucester since 1932. The sweet: a pink wintergreen dollop of a wafer mint that literally melts in your mouth. Divine!
We’re thrilled to announce “The Suicide Hotline Voice Says My Feelings are Normal” by Lisa K. Buchanan is the winner of our Flash Essay Contest judged by Brenda Miller. Thank you to all of the wonderful writers who entered our contest!
On “The Suicide Hotline Voice Says My Feelings are Normal,” Brenda Miller said:
“‘The Suicide Hotline Voice Says My Feelings are Normal’ is a remarkable essay. Shocking, is the word I might use: shocking in the incident it describes, shocking in its vivid imagery, shocking in the way we travel through time in this compressed space. We inhabit this essay with the author, floating with her as we try to fully comprehend what we’ve seen, and wonder how we’ll keep living now.”
David is a Philadelphia native, but these days you can find him in Washington, DC, where he lives with his family and works at Georgetown University. He teaches creative writing and literature at the Center for Jewish Civilization and promoting student-centered teaching at the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship.
What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?
I’m excited to say that I’ve had four books published since those publications, including two collections of poetry—We Were the People Who Moved (2015) and Some Unimaginable Animal (2019)—but I think the biggest accomplishment is just coming back to the page again and again. Books are great—it’s an unbelievable privilege to get to share my work with other folks—but the foundation is the writing. So I think that’s the most important accomplishment any writer can point to. #amwriting
Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?
I’m finishing edits on a novel due out in 2021 (Tachyon Publications). It’s called How to Mars and it’s a sci-fi novel about an ill-advised one-way mission to Mars; the small group of Marsonauts, who went in order to escape life, unexpectedly have to get ready for the first pregnancy on another planet.
Such a cruel question! Just one? Well, fine—I guess my favorite author is (and I’m sorry to say that this author has a really long name): Toni Morrison Jane Kenyon Yehuda Amichai Basho Salman Rushdie Rainer Maria Rilke George Saunders Stephen Dunn Virginia Woolf. Long name or not (Toni Morrison for short?), that’s a great author!
What is your favorite poem/essay/book?
Again, kind of cruel—but this time I’ll really honor the request. In the world of poetry I’ll go with Jane Kenyon’s Otherwise.
What inspires you to write?
One of the main things is my hunger to show the power and importance and even magic of ordinary moments and things.
What are you reading right now?
Five books (I always read a lot of things at once): Hanif Abdurraqib, A Fortune for Your Disaster. (poetry) Jim Gaffigan, Food: A Love Story. (non-fiction) Layla Saad, Me and White Supremacy. (non-fiction) Jeff Vandermeer, The Time Traveler’s Almanac. (fiction) Craig Steven Wilder, Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities. (non-fiction)
What is your favorite sweet? We would love for you to share a recipe or link to place that serves it. Pictures are great, too!
Heritage India, a restaurant in DC, makes a bread pudding that is a religious experience.
What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?
So much has happened to me since “How to Pray Like a Girl” was published–personally, literarily, and existentially–but perhaps the coolest thing is that my collection of poetry, View From True North (Southern Illinois University Press, 2018), won the 2017 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Award. Adrian Matejka chose two winners that year–me and Monica Berlin. My book went on to win the 2019 High Plains Book Award Poetry and to be shortlisted for the 2018 Julie Suk Award. Diane Seuss blew my mind when wrote about my book, “Henning’s ravishing music is in revolt against the trauma of the book’s narrative, just as her sonnet sequences provide the ballast of history, of virtuosity. Sara Henning, a ‘trickster,’ ‘an heiress of disaster,’ has composed a radical masterpiece.”
Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?
Yes! I just finished up edits for my third book manuscript, Terra Incognita, a collection of poems focused around grief and the manner in which we pathologize the unknown. Latin for “unknown land,” Terra Incognita is a term used by cartographers to describe terrains that have been unmapped or otherwise undocumented. My objective for these poems is to explore and resolve the paradoxes of grief and its assimilation, weaving together my mother’s death from cancer, her mental illness, my husband’s hospitalizations, and re-occurrent miscarriage. Several poems from the collection won the 2019 George Bogin Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.
Who is your favorite author?
I love too many to narrow it down, but Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, and Mary Oliver are three poets very close to my heart.
What is your favorite poem/essay/book?
I have too many favorites to name, so I will share two with you. I love Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day,” particularly the question at the end: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?” Asking myself that question has helped me to escape a difficult childhood and to work on living my best life in small, beautiful ways. My second choice is Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s “Song.” I don’t believe in perfect poems, but I truly feel that this one is perfect in every way.
What inspires you to write?
I write to understand the world around me and the world inside of me.
What are you reading right now?
I’ve been re-reading Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space. I’ve also been spending quite a bit of time with Jane Kenyon’s poems.
What is your favorite sweet? We would love for you to share a recipe or link to place that serves it. Pictures are great, too!
I really love salt water taffy. I was born in Savannah, Georgia, and when I was a little girl, my mom would take us to River Street Sweets, the oldest candy store in the city, where I would watch the folks who worked there stretch it on a 100-year-old taffy machine! My childhood tastes like still-warm taffy, as if you took sugar and mixed it with the sea.
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