This weeks interview with a contributor from The Liberal Media Made Me Do It! is with poet and editor M.E. Silverman. 1. You are an editor as well as a poet, including an anthology of Jewish poetry. Such a collection of course begs the question of what Jewish poetry is, and the criteria (besides the obvious aesthetic quality) you used to decide what works would be included. Having been on the wrong end myself of this debate (is the poem Jewish enough--perhaps in theme?), this is something Im curious about and probably others will be as well. This is a great question because when Deborah and I started thinking about the whole project, we only had three requirements: 1) you have to be Jewish but not practicing or a believer or even writing about Judaism, 2) you have to be born after 1945 as we wanted to make it contemporary and post-Holocaust, and 3) you have to be American (although we broke that rule a few times). What we wanted is a wide representation of what it means to be Jewish and American and living today. We have a some Jewish themed poems but we also wanted poems that arent Jewish. We wanted poets from all sections of the U.S., urban and rural, north and south, east and west, and we wanted experienced poets balanced with newer poets. We looked for diversity too from all walks of life. Most importantly, we wanted poems we enjoyed and would read again and again. So to answer your question, the poems did not have to be Jewish enough, since many of the poems and many of the poets included dont write Jewish poems and some dont even practice Judaism. Why set it up this way? While writers tend to be categorized and any anthology is already doing so by grouping poems together under a common link anyway, we wanted readers to understand what the experience was like to be Jewish and to be a poet and to be American and to realize the experiences being written are universal and not limited to any label despite the irony of being in a Jewish American poetry Anthology. However, we did include a small section in the back where 10 writers address this very issue and we have also expanded upon that during the first week of December 2013 on the Best American Poetry Blog. 2.You contributed two poems to The Liberal Media Made Me Do It, which could certainly be considered poems in response to prompts. Do you often write to prompts, and if so, where do you find them and what kinds appeal to you most and why?Prompts. No one has ever asked me that. I follow Erika Dreifus and her blog called Practicing Writing found at ErikaDreifus | Practicing Writing ErikaDreifus | Practicing Writing Wednesday’s Work-in-Progress by Erika Dreifus on Wednesday, July 16, 2014 (0) Comments Well, I finally finished and submitted that review-essay assignment I’v... View on erikadreifus I have seen a few books too that I have flipped through and occasionally used and sometimes drawn inspiration from but they are more manuals/workbooks like Ted Koosers incredibly helpful book, Hugos Triggering Town, Steve Kowits wonderful book, and Kim Addonizios book she wrote with Laux. A few prompt sites I recommend include Kelli Russell Agodons blog (agodon/uploads/2/9/4/3/2943768/writing_prompts_by_kelli_russell_agodon.pdf) for this and for other interesting things, as well as Poetry Prompts (poetryprompts.tumblr/). But where I usually go to for inspiration is elsewhere. I get many thoughts from listening to music whether Nina Simone or Miles Davis to the Stones or something more contemporary. I get ideas from reading other poets and writers but also from reading interesting articles like the ones in Mental Floss or something one might hear on NPR. I think you are aware of this with the anthology you put together. But as far as appeal goes, that is hard to say. I like to write about longing and finality through narrative poetry and magical realism, so I look & listen for that. 3. What writing (and other) projects are you currently engaged in? Tell us something about them. Wow, that is a big one. I am editing a few anthologies. Parts of the Whole: Poetry of the Body is poems about the body that I am co-editing with Jillian Phillips (send to the editors at potwanthology@gmail). Warning, Poems may be longer than they appear: an anthology of Longish Poems is underway too, which I am co-editing with Andrew MacFadyen-Ketchum. We are looking for poems between 3 to 6 pages or 100 to 200 lines on any theme or subject (send to the editors at longishpoems@gmail). In the Fall, I am co-editing with Christopher Lowe, Modular Narrative Fiction and Poetry Anthology, which is looking for stories and poems that utilize modular forms (send 1 story or 3 poems or 3 flash fiction or 3 prose poems that are modular to the editors at modularantho@gmail). Another project which I hope to have going soon, once we get a press on board, is New Voices from Salvaged Words: An Anthology of Contemporary Holocaust Poetry and Essays. Howard Debs and I will be looking for poems and essays based on photographs and art from the archives of the Jewish Museum in Prague. We will be looking to pair a poet or an essayist with an image, but due to the nature of the permissions for this, we cannot do anything until we get a press first, whereas the other anthologies are all looking for work first then a press. Of course, I am writing on my three favorite topics: the last Jew in Afghanistan, a fictional modern-day Noah, and personal narratives that explore Jewish themes & experiences with a touch of magical realism.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 13:40:43 +0000
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