I took a break last week from interviewing contributors to The Liberal Media Made Me Do It, the anthology of NPR and PBS poems I edited, published by Nine Toes Press, a division of Lummox Press. Heres a new interview with contributor Joan Cacciatore Mazza: 1. As your website shows, youve published six books, none of them poetry. Rather, youve worked as a psychotherapist, particularly focusing on dreams. Since Freud at least, dreams have been likened to literature, and indeed seem to spring from the same mode of thinking. Does this concern flow over into your writing, poetry and fiction, since you do both? If so, how? If not, what are your primary themes and topics as a writer? Your M.O.? I retired from doing therapy and dreamwork in 2005 when I moved to Virginia. In some ways, my interest in dreams brought me to poetry. They both use concise language, metaphor, and strong/strange imagery to get their messages across. Dreams, like good poems, are layered with meanings. I mostly write poetry now, although I occasionally write fiction and personal essays as well. As for themes, I write whatever is in foreground: personal worries, ecological concerns, food and cooking, and the pleasures of the change of seasons. I write every day, an average of a poem a day, and send it to an email list of friends who have asked to receive it. These are mostly first or second drafts. Having this M.O. keeps me writing and revising since I know there are people who expect the poem with their morning coffee. It’s about showing up. I trust the quality of my poems is improving. 2. You responded to the NPR prompt by sending work to The Liberal Media Made Me Do It! . Do you frequently write to prompts? What kind? Do you often write about things youve heard or seen on public media? Quite often I’m prompted to write about issues in the news, although it’s difficult to write directly about politics and also compose a poem that’s more than a rant. Stories such as those on RadioLab and This American Life move me emotionally, including the personal stories of friends and strangers, so some of my poems are narrative. But I’m also stimulated by reading science books, such as Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us and Life: An Unauthorized Biography by Richard Fortey, as well being prompted to write about the natural world around me. I live in the woods with a small pond behind my house that I can see from my office window. Herons, deer, hawks, fox, raccoons, and opossums come here regularly. I do use prompts from books as well, such as those in The Crafty Poet by Diane Lockward and in Wingbeats and Wingbeats II edited by Scott Wiggerman & David Meischen. 3. Since you have published 200 poems, why havent you done a collection of poetry (or fiction for that matter, since youve published quite a bit of that too)? I’ve put together various collections and circulated them over the years, coming close to publication (finalist, runner up) several times. As anyone who has submitted manuscripts knows, it’s hard to get a book of poetry published and even harder to promote it. For now, I’m concentrating on writing and reading and becoming a better poet. I study and take classes regularly, such as those at Writer House in Charlottesville, because I have so much more to learn. Being around other poets encourages me. 4. What current projects are you engaged in? I work on poetry (read, write, revise, submit) several hours a day. I usually have about 200 poems submitted any one time. Most days, I’m up by 4 AM, reading the news online, revising the poem I wrote the day before, and sending it to my list. Right now, I’m working on a group of poems about items no longer in use, such as sewing baskets, music boxes, and samplers. I’m working my way through forms, too, and have written many sonnets and sonnet crowns, sestinas, triolets, villanelles, pantoums, and haiku. I love the challenges of traditional forms and find the constraints surprisingly liberating. I don’t have television, so I listen to NPR and to audiobooks when I’m doing paper or fabric art, or cooking. But anything I see or hear or smell could trigger a poem, and I’m constantly on the lookout for something odd or fresh. I carry a notebook everywhere. joanmazza ##
Posted on: Sun, 03 Aug 2014 15:31:17 +0000
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