Poet Martha McCollough chats with me today about her upcoming book Trash Witch.
Welcome, Martha. Please tell us a little bit about yourself.
I was born in Detroit, moved to New York in the eighties, then on to Boston. I have an MFA in painting and had a career as a painter, illustrator, and graphic designer, before I began to write. I now live in Amherst, Massachusetts, on the edge of farm country, close to the Berkshires and the Connecticut River, and can write whenever I want. My poems have appeared in Bennington Review, Pleiades, The Boiler, Bear Review, and Tampa Review, among others.
What do you enjoy most about writing poems?
That a poem can be about anything, from Greek myth to black mold, and that small subjects can open up onto big ideas. Also that I don’t have to be consistent from poem to poem. I don’t think I could ever write a novel–I am too distractible.
Can you give us a little insight into a few of your poems – perhaps a couple of your favorites?
Here’s a poem from Trash Witch, about loneliness, the fear of being bored, and how we distract ourselves from things like getting old. I think it’s sad, I hope it’s also funny. It came together as a sort of collage, something I often do in my work:
What form are you inspired to write in the most? Why?
Most of my poems begin as notes and diary entries that accumulate over time. I begin to see patterns, and lines come together in a kind of collage. So usually they take the form of free verse, or sometimes prose poems.
What type of project are you working on next?
I’m just beginning to accumulate new poems post-Trash Witch. I’m thinking about something I’m calling Folktales of the Aftermath. A sort of myth-colored meditation on history as one long catastrophe through which we somehow live.
When did you first consider yourself a writer / poet?
I was a late bloomer as a poet. I began as a painter, moved to video work which included text, and that evolved into poetry. I started taking my writing seriously in my late fifties.
How do you research markets for your work, perhaps as some advice for not-yet-published poets?
When I find a book of poems I like, I look at the acknowledgment pages to see what journals have published the author’s poems, and then try to do further reading in those journals. If I love the work, I submit there. I also look at Duotrope listings–one journal’s page can lead to others.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I write when I wake up, before I get out of bed–usually just a couple of lines, but it gives me something to start with later in the day, so I don’t have to face an empty page
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A princess/ballerina/scientist. None of those worked out.
Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
Writing is one way of imposing form on a basically chaotic world. I am obsessed with an observation by Gilles DeLeuze: “Underneath all reason lies delirium, drift.” That sounds right to me.
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