Poet Theodora Ziolkowski is chatting with me about her poetry collection, Ghostlit.
Bio:
Theodora Ziolkowski is the author of the novella, On the Rocks (TRP: The University Press of SHSH), winner of a Next Generation Indie Book Award, and Mother Tongues, winner of The Cupboard’s chapbook contest. Ghostlit (TRP), a collection of poems, is out now. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle, Short Fiction (England), Prairie Schooner, Oxford Poetry (UK), and elsewhere. She lives with her husband and son in Kearney, Nebraska, where she teaches creative writing as an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Read more at theodoraziolkowski.com
What do you enjoy most about writing poems?
The promise of discovery is one of the many things that keeps me writing, across genre. For poetry, however, that discovery often feels closer to the bone. I love uncovering something I thought or felt—and didn’t really know I felt or thought—until after I wrote it.
Can you give us a little insight into a few of your poems – perhaps a couple of your favorites?
Perhaps it is the fiction writer in me that considers Ghostlit to be somewhat of a novelistic collection, in that together the poems work toward a narrative arc. Some of the poems that move most narratively in that direction are long, multi-page poems, and grapple deeply with the themes and images that ground the collection. In one of these long poems, “Lying in the hospital bed, I wonder why every song I love,” the speaker meditates on the collection’s two central relationships—the speaker’s relationship with her ex and the speaker’s relationship with herself, while on the cusp of undergoing surgery.
What type of project are you working on next?
Right now, I’m mainly thinking about and/or jotting down ideas for new work (I became a mom a month ago). I drafted a new novel while I was pregnant and am looking forward to working on it over the summer.
When did you first consider yourself a writer / poet?
I am fortunate to have grown up in a family of writers; as such, reading and writing were demonstrated to me at an early age, and my parents never deterred me from wanting to do what I was drawn to. I have considered myself a writer since I first began writing stories as a kid.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I used to rely on a specific writing ritual. I’d get up before sunrise, don a bathrobe, light a candle. Oh, the luxuries of graduate school! Now, when I’m teaching, I write whenever I can (this typically ends up being in the morning, to assure I get it in). Sometimes, a bathrobe and/or candle are involved, but I’m often too eager to get as much done as I can before life creeps in, so those sorts of writing “accessories” fall by the wayside.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A writer, of course! Though I’m fascinated by other professions and enjoy imagining myself into them in my fiction.
Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
Thank you for the terrific questions, Lisa.
Readers, I hope you enjoy Ghostlit!
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