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DOROTHEA
LASKY by N I C O L E TA L L M A N
What does your writing life look like? Do you have a particular schedule, habits, or process? My writing life for poetry has always been haphazard. Usually poems happen to me at the most inconvenient of times and I have to rush around trying to write them down before they escape me. I’ve been writing prose lately too and I’ve found that the ideas for prose happen to me in the same way that poems do — in the middle of something else. I’ll have to answer the urgent call and write down whatever language I hear.
I think my happiest moments writing now are a form of generating/editing with these notes or starts of poems. My favorite days are those when I can wake up very early and work on writing where I am in the flow because these initial thoughts are something to work from, rather than something to chase after. I love these writing moments where I know where I am going and yet the language can still surprise me.
How do poems come to you? Do you have any specific muses? I believe that possibly creativity in general, and definitely poetry writing specifically, is a demonic force. This is not to say it is “evil.” Instead it has trickster energy. But like any trickster, I am careful to not pressure poetry or ask for anything too specific from it. I worship poetry and it gives me language when it wants to. I’m really into the dynamic between us, although it isn’t always an easy one.
Your latest book, The Shining, which is absolutely fantastic by the way, is described as an “ekphrastic horror lyric.” Tell us what led you to choose the Overlook Hotel from Stephen King’s The Shining as a subject and ekphrastic horror as your genre of poetic exploration. Thank you so much for reading it and liking it! When I wrote The Shining, I was in a space of self-enforced poetic blockage. I wanted to write prose (and I still do) and was obsessed with learning how to write it well. Poetry is almost like
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