Matthew Porubsky asked me to participate in this blog hop, which encourages writers to self-interview themselves on the next big thing in their work. Here’s Matt’s fabulous twin next big thing (two books of poetry). My response to this self-interview follows, and later, I’ll post links to the writers I ask to interview themselves.
What is your working title of your book?
How Time Moves
Where did the idea come from for the book?
I looked over poems I’ve written in recent years and realized how much I write about time. I’ve been somewhere between very curious or too obsessed about what time is and how it passes or doesn’t pass fast or slow. What does it mean to lose time, inhabit time well, occupy time, find time? What exactly is time or could it be? How does it actually move – changing speed and its very contours – through us and our lives?
What genre does your book fall under?
Poetry.
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
I would see this as more of an experimental documentary, mixing images with music and slips of poetry. I’m not sure what actors would play my characters, but I imagine dogs, deer and turkeys would be involved. Trees might be central characters too, and as always, fields and skies. I know that thunderheads have a leading role at times.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Time is place spilled vertical (or place is time spilled horizontal) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
Hey, dude, this is poetry. I don’t know of anyone with a poetry agent. Once I have a strong draft done, I will look around at presses, most likely Midwest ones, that might be interested in publishing the book, and contact them.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
This is about time, so who knows. I imagine it’ll be a solid year before I have a draft ready to show anyone, but poetry takes its own time.
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
I don’t think that way when it comes to writing. I read widely across genres, and I’m influenced by so much in the arts, such as the film The Intouchables, which I recently watched again, the novels of Ann Patchett (just read a bunch), hard snow falling past the newly-Rainbow-painted house in Topeka (the Equality House built across the street from the Phelps church of hate), the music of Kelley Hunt and Mary Chapin Carpenter, and the changing canvas of the weather.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The life force, and more specifically, getting older, losing loved ones, trying to grapple with the way everything is turning into something else all the time.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
Time is the central riving running down the center of all our times (or we are the river running down time).
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