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Gamete<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n When you talk about the children you\u2019d rather have<\/p>\n with the future instead of my body –<\/p>\n the mirror, the basin, the walls<\/p>\n go. I feel the black-pink dark<\/p>\n of a shutting rose.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Blank knocking of spines in the night, back to back. I told you<\/p>\n I shake in the fridge-pods of alien beds, featureless<\/p>\n sides fusing in thickscum, spawnmist:<\/p>\n what my face asked of you<\/p>\n was lost in it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Seven Questions<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n In this occasional series Ink Sweat & Tears talks to practicing writers about their process.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1. \u00a0<\/strong>Where do you write? <\/strong>(do you have an office, room, bus journey that you find yourself and your writing?)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I like to be outside and I like to be moving. But when I\u2019m making notes it\u2019s often without a notebook.<\/strong> It\u2019s important for me not to carry pen and paper around with me constantly like a hopeful little talisman, self-consciously thinking \u2018poetry, poetry\u2019 whenever I see something beautiful or overhear a peculiar conversation. For me, that\u2019s how things get forced and familiar. I want occurrences to settle with me in life before they cement into a literary idea, and I think I become way too conscious of experience in the context of poetry if I\u2019m making notes as I go about my day. There\u2019s a stagnancy to that. It deadens experience too fast and therefore limits what you can actually write about it because you\u2019ve already established an event as an idea.<\/em> Kind of like thinking \u2018ha, that was great. I can\u2019t wait to tweet about that when I get home\u2019: the presence of the moment is over as soon as your mind tries to freeze it. I think I\u2019m always thinking of poetry dormantly though – perhaps I\u2019m lucky to possess the capacity for storing details that I can then take back to a quiet room and write down after I\u2019ve lived another day, letting things reappear to me naturally as I write rather than seizing on a desperate detail that I have <\/em>to wedge in.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 2. How do you write? <\/strong>(into a notebook or straight onto a computer?)<\/p>\n I was advised by Lavinia Greenlaw last year to write your poems by hand in a notebook: \u2018it should be difficult, the process should be long\u2019, she told me. And I agree. I think typing straight onto a computer can often make you feel, because the text is perfect (the straight lines, the flawless eligibility) that what you\u2019ve written is also that distinct. In my scrawl every word matters. Nothing is automatic. I think\u2026 I did that. I made that shape. Nothing did that for me. Why did I do it? I question less on a screen. I think I trust it more than I trust myself, so I think less deeply.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 2.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>Roughly how much time do you spend each week on creative writing related activities? <\/strong>(writing, editing, correspondence & submissions)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At the moment I\u2019m studying for an MA in Poetry at UEA, so a great deal of my time is spent reading and annotating the work of fellow students as well as developing my own writing. It\u2019s a wonderful experience. Each week we receive a batch from a mixture of classmates – always so rich and eclectic – and I never anticipated how invested I\u2019d become in the growth of this writing. I love the workshop process. It\u2019s such a positive environment, and the feedback I\u2019ve received since September has been consistently helpful. Time management is a severe issue for me: I need to see the skeletal finger of a Deadline beckoning before I can wrench myself away from Gilmore Girls, so if there\u2019s ever a lull in workload I\u2019d like to think more about submissions. Certainly.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 3.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>What time of day do you usually write?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong>I like the night. I like the night a lot. There have been some rare occasions where I\u2019ve made ragged attempts to fall out of bed onto my yoga mat (developing this new one-move sequence I call \u2018unconscious child\u2019s pose\u2019) before pretending to enjoy some acrid green tea as an accompaniment to the cleansing morning flow writing process. It never works. I feel too purposeful.<\/p>\n Writing when I can\u2019t sleep is the best. That\u2019s when things are stopping me from shutting down and I want to know why. I want to explore and resolve these issues with the background of a whole day behind me. Plus I always feel strange, alone, dark, sexy. Burn some candles. Put on some \u2018weed track\u2019 I found on \u2018the other side of YouTube\u2019.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n 4.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>What does it feel<\/em> like to write? <\/strong>At times it has been vital, cathartic. That was when I was very unhappy, and although I feel like poetry \u2018saved\u2019 me, I can\u2019t honestly say that it saved my poetry. It often seemed like there was a black line drawn underneath every piece I wrote, seeming to say \u2018this can go no further\u2019. I\u2019d made up my mind that there was nothing that fascinated me more than nothing itself, so my work couldn\u2019t expand beyond that oblivion I wanted so much. I\u2019m not ashamed of the poetry I wrote around that time at all. It was honest and bare and not without subtlety, but I couldn\u2019t push it any deeper. There\u2019s definitely something to be taken from Anne Sexton\u2019s naked poetry, a woman I admire endlessly for her sexual and emotional courage. But now I feel more connected to Louise Gluck or Mary Oliver, softly coming out of it, being able to view a fiercely difficult time with the steadiness of the present. Things make much more sense now.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n 6. Are there any stimuli that will usually trigger you into writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n I like dreams. I like the furtive, unspoken, secret taboo world beyond expression. I like reaching for things we can\u2019t possibly know and then finding a place for language within what language can\u2019t express. It\u2019s not really possible, and I like seeing the limit, the yearning, the frustration in my work \u2013 I think it keeps it active and open. I\u2019m scared of stagnancy and clich\u00e9. Shit scared.<\/p>\n Also women. I like women talking unashamedly about being women. Blood and tears and holes (and why not ink and sweat while we\u2019re at it?)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n 7. What are you working on now?<\/strong><\/p>\n My next MA submission! Don\u2019t remind me!<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n And as you are a recipient of the Ink Sweat & Tears Poetry Writing Scholarship, we thought we\u2019d add an eighth\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n 8. How has the scholarship affected your writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n I feel a tremendous freedom. I really do. I think it\u2019s every writer and academic\u2019s vision of near-perfection to have the space and time to focus on their work without constantly having to panic about how they\u2019re \u2018supporting themselves in the meantime\u2019. The feedback I\u2019ve received over the course of this term has mainly been \u2018hey, Kate, your writing should not be tamed, don\u2019t let anyone tame it\u2019. I think this has a great deal to do with the fact that I feel so unencumbered, that I have so much time to read badass and highly imaginative female authors I never would have heard of before, like all the women in Arielle Greenberg and Lara Glenum\u2019s Gurlesque anthology, Eileen Myles, Ariana Reines, Anne Carson, Emily Berry, C.D Wright and so many more. I\u2019m so thankful to Kate Birch at Ink, Sweat and Tears for providing me with this opportunity and, without doubt, my favourite ever academic year. What could be better than poetry in the name of fluids?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gamete When you talk about the children you\u2019d rather have with the future instead of my body – the mirror, the basin, the walls go. I feel the black-pink dark of a shutting rose. Blank knocking of spines in the night, back to back. I told you I shake in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6568"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14893,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6568\/revisions\/14893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}