How do you see your own path toward writing?

I have always written. I mean, since I knew how to write, I have loved writing. I loved writing poems as a child. They were mostly about John Travolta, rainbows, and unicorns — sometimes all three of these subjects at once. I made mailboxes for every family member’s bedroom door, and would write poems and leave them in their mailboxes. An early childhood belief in a gift economy — before I became aware of how few people (perhaps) want a poem as a gift. My grandmother kept the poems I gave her and will occasionally give them back to me as part of the gift-wrapping on my Christmas present. They are terrifying and often illustrated.

For me it’s always the book — the book not only as an object, but also as a matter and a manner of working.

I think my work is evolving in two main ways: to accommodate the many unexpected interruptions and selvages of mothering three small children and to welcome a wider range of research matter while focusing more tightly on whichever subject is at hand.

The large canvas — the sequence, thinking in terms of collections versus single poems — intrigues you. What inspires you to immerse yourself in projects of this nature?

It’s true — I do prefer to think in terms of the long poem or long sequence. I do not work on several things at a time. When I’ve tried, one subsumed the other. Maybe it is because I have such a hard time with titles — this way, I only need one title for thirty or forty or more pages. That’s only a half-joke! The long poem has so many possibilities for hybrid-genre and hybrid-form play, allows room for research to expand and evolve — and allows for more of the process of research (the tangents of research as much as its goals) to become part of the poem itself.

Given the choice, I will usually pick a long poem to read as well. While I admire and love reading long poems that are multi-book poems (Rachel Blau DuPlessis’ Drafts, for example, or Kevin Varrone’s g-point almanac, for an example closer to home), I tend to think in terms of the book — the booklength poem as a unit of composition. For a smaller unit (for editing or organizing), I think in terms of the page (not the stanza or section). For me it’s always the book — the book not only as an object, but also as a matter and a manner of working.