Welcome to TRB Lounge. Today, I’d like to welcome the author of Civil Twilight – Anique Sara Taylor, for an author interview with The Reading Bud.

About The Author

Anique Sara Taylor’s chapbook Civil Twilight is Winner of the 2022 Blue Light Poetry Prize. Her full-length poetry book Where Space Bends was published in May 2020 by Finishing Line Press. Despite issues with long term chronic illness, Taylor is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her work has appeared in Rattle, Common Ground Review, Adanna, St. Mark’s Poetry Project’s The World, Stillwater Review, Earth’s Daughters, Cover Magazine. The National Poetry Magazine of the Lower East Side among others. Her chapbook Poems is published by Unimproved Editions Press.
Finalists 2023!

When Black Opalescent Birds Still Circled the Globe was chosen Finalist by Harbor Review’s Inaugural 2023 Jewish Women’s Prize. Feathered Strips of Prayer Before Morning was chosen Finalist by Minerva Rising Chapbook Competition 2023. Cobblestone Mist was Longlisted Finalist for the 2023 Harbor Editions’ Marginalia Series. The Strangeness of April is in July 2023 Red Noise Collective Anthology: Tide 

Her work has appeared in several anthologies: The Lake Rises, poems to & for our bodies of water (Stockport Flats Press), Pain and Memory, Reflections on the Strength of the Human Spirit in Suffering (Editions Bibliotekos, Inc.), Veils, Halos and Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women (Kasva Press) among others.
Taylor has co-authored works for HBO, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster and a three-act play performed by Playwrights Horizons and Williamstown Theatre Festival. Her Holocaust poem “The Train” was a 2019 finalist in the Charter Oak Award for Best Historical Poem. Where Space Bends in earlier chapbook forms was chosen Finalist in 2014 by both Minerva Rising and Blue Light Press’ Chapbook Competitions. Under the Ice Moon was chosen Finalist in Blue Light Press’ 2015 Chapbook Competition.

She teaches/taught Creative Writing for Benedictine Hospital’s Oncology Support Program, Bard LLI, Writers in the Mountains. She holds a Poetry MFA (Drew University), Diplôme (The Sorbonne, Paris), a Drawing MFA and Painting BFA (With Highest Honors / Pratt Institute) and a Master of Divinity Degree. She studied literature at Antioch College, Poetry at St. Mark’s Poetry Project with Alice Notley, then Bernadette Mayer, and has been a regular at Wallson Glass Poem-Making Sessions with Geoffrey Nutter.

An award-winning artist, Taylor’s art has been featured in numerous galleries including The Bruce Museum, CT, The Monmouth Museum, NJ, The Noyes Museum, NJ, The Puffin Foundation, NJ, The Cork Gallery at Avery Fisher Hall, NYC, The Bronfman Center Gallery, NYC.

An avid supporter of community events, Taylor organized the Phoenicia Spoken Word series, which produced several ongoing poetry&writing events in&around Phoenicia. She and Sparrow taught a weekly Phoenicia Poetry Workshop.
While living in NYCs Lower East Side (East Village), she and Etan Ben-Ami edited an excellent (though short-lived) magazine: Cheap Review. They published (among others) Bernadette Mayer, Jim Brodey, Simon Pettet, Tom Savage, Ellen Mudd, Sparrow, Bob Holman, Steve Carey, Peter Bushyeager, Anique Taylor, Sheila Alson, Alice Notley, Elinor Nauen, Norman MacAfee, Bill Kushner.

Taylor was a Featured Reader at St. Mark’s Poetry Project, Dixon Place (and numerous Ulster County venues). She was a regular in group readings in NYC at The Knitting Factory, ABC No Rio, The Cedar Tavern, Charas, Tompkins Square Arts Festival. And in Group Readings: Eve Packer’s What Happens Next Series, and Jeffrey Cyphers Wright’s The New Romantics.

You can find author Taylor here:
Author’s Website

Interview

Welcome to TRB! In addition to your formal bio, could you share a deeper, more personal insight into your life that influences your poetry?

I’ve had a lifelong journey with chronic illness which has necessitated work on many levels. Natural wellness, psychology, spiritual practice. It has been both a trial and a gift. Creative work has been at the core of maneuvering these issues. I’ve been an artist most of my life. I’ve won awards. I did the artwork on the covers of my books. Also, a therapist, life coach, children’s entertainer, creative writing teacher. I studied classical piano and voice growing up. Love of the arts is woven through my life. It’s saved me in difficult times.

My understanding of sculpture came in handy when I restored my Victorian home. I love preparing and inventing food. Illness became a fount of thrilling scientific information and imagery, when I came down with a new case of Lyme disease. I traced the history of experimentation that may have caused new virulent strains of ticks. The spirochetes weave in and out of my first book Where Space Bends. I wrote about the spirochetes inside my cells, I researched the properties of herbs. I wrote about the dream state of passing out from allergic reactions. I’ve written about living in New York City. And about living in an enchanted hamlet surrounded by mountains and rivers, seasons of nature. All wonderful material.

With great self-care and in a good place most days, it’s necessary for me to stay on a careful diet, do Yoga and QiGong, meditation, guided visualization. All this requires self-discipline in order to avoid negative physical issues. It’s helped teach me how to be disciplined with a writing practice.
With Yoga/QiGong/Visualization–going in and out of meditative states is familiar. This has helped me write from strange viewpoints. Poetry is a beautiful vehicle to express altered states using imagery and metaphor.

Beyond the general overview, could you delve into the themes, emotions, or experiences that inspired your latest collection of poems?

I wanted to touch on many issues. From psychological to ephemeral. Resilience within grief. How we grow from first primary family expectations and issues to find our place in the world. The price of searching for our own path, what we may have to give up, what we go towards. Turning what is given to us into something we can use to grow.
I wanted to see beyond what is apparent on the surface, to the spaces inside atoms, distances in the universe. Spaces between and before. Yet, how with perception, there is wonder and magic in our ordinary daily lives. How nature details are a metaphor for our existence. What’s given to us, what we choose, how we move forward. How we try to learn our way through. I was intrigued with the notion of boundaries juxtaposed to the vastness of no boundaries. If others speak to us from other realms, or if it’s only us that speaks to them.

I was exploring long forms and short forms, how to bring alive a long phrase within a short form. To push diction with sound, rhythm, image, without condensing language unnaturally. How themes come from who we are and everything around us. To cause an opening that triggers inspiration.

Poetry often reflects deep personal feelings or insights. What specific emotions or experiences drove you to write the poems in your book?

There’s the usual flow that comes to me regularly in a need to create. The love of words, a dream-space of thought. During an involvement with several lawyers/accountants/business people, I was at the center and had to keep track mentally of all the details of a complicated situation. This pulled my mind into a thick swirling business mix. I felt like I was losing myself. I needed a personal poetry goal, something I could create, build, finish. Perhaps a book in the world with a required timeline, a finishing goal that also honored my personal creative requirements.

I’d been exploring what could be lyric and meaningful within the short form for a while. I began to gather all of this work together and sort out what could form an arc into a chapbook. It includes the death of my father, his ghost that appears and fades again.

I’m forever thankful to Diane Frank and Blue light Press for choosing it Blue Light Press First Prize––and publishing it. Making this book something real in the world was life changing for me.

Many poets have a defining moment or influence that shapes their work. Can you describe what sparked your journey into poetry?

Oh, so many. When I was four-years old, we had a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses. My mother read it to me. I was enchanted with how he could have words to talk about the elation of soaring above the countryside on a swing. So, I memorized that poem and recited it to myself as I soared over the hill on my neighbor’s rope and board swing. In 7^th grade our teacher Mr. Pettie taught us college-level poetry with Coleridge, Whitman, Robinson, Whittier, Wordsworth, Longfellow, Thoreau, Lowell, Emerson… A huge mix. We read all of Evangeline and even Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. My high school teacher Angela Kelly encouraged my angry teen-age diatribes.

When I lived in the City, I was a half-block away from St. Mark’s Poetry Project. There was a wonderful community of poets. I studied with Alice Notley and Bernadette Mayer. That’s when the words began to come in a constant flow. Years later at Drew University, MFA in Poetry (which was too beautiful a program to last in this world), I learned how to look into what was inside poetry. How to become totally embroiled and in love with it. Each of these “sparks” awakened something in me which built on the next. Each one saved my life a little. I am forever thankful to all of these teachers.

From initial inspiration to the published collection, how long was your creative process for this book of poetry?

Notes, ideas, studies for this collection simmered in the background for a long time. While I was working on other projects, other books, I experimented with the short form, maybe for years. I loved the process. Like picking small, sweet fruit. Later I began a pinpoint focus toward finished pieces. I was trying to bring together enough of my short poems to create an arc. I didn’t know if or how many would fit with others, so that they could come together into a chapbook with its own purpose and meaning. I experimented with subject matter, direction, and point of view. It simmered through many techniques and countless revisions. It was like a garden I kept tending over time. I’d say maybe five years. But it’s hard to know. It was a very sweet process.

Looking forward, what are your aspirations as a poet? Where do you see yourself in the literary world in the next five years?

These are some of the projects I’m working on, that are at different stages:

• Feathered Strips of Prayer Before Morning. I’ve just completed this next chapbook. While I hope to have it published in chapbook form (30 poems), my intention is that parts of it will be a major section of the full-length book I’m working on––which will include other sections.
• Goodness Within the Storm is a finished full-length book that takes place in WWII during the Holocaust. It’s a collection of first-person narrative and lyric poems based on stories of non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. I’m now researching publishers.
• The Alphabet Book has 27 full-color plates of my artwork. Each letter is a chapter which includes a color plate. A poem relating to the letter. And perhaps journal work prompts related to each letter.

And… I’m working on a creative nonfiction book involving a bucolic hamlet, the lottery, a river, and a daily walk into town.

The project of getting out my newsletter and blog is central to my upcoming goals. The world is changing so quickly, it’s hard to know what form connection will take in five years. But at the core, as I continue deepening my writing practice in solitary morning darkness, I’m also looking for ways to interact in a meaningful way with a larger number of people. Those who love and want to interact around writing. Both reading and writing.

My books have won prizes and been chosen as a finalist several times. I would love to publish more, as I deeply love participating in the poetry community. I’m forever thankful for the wonderful opportunity to create books and words that go out into the world.

Are there new themes or styles of poetry you are currently exploring or plan to explore in your future works?

Currently the American sonnet – basically a fourteen-line poem. There are many new forms poets are making. I’m thinking of having several sections in the book I’m currently working on, to augment the chapbook section already completed. Each section would have a different form. That will entail exploring forms other poets have used or are inventing, exploring which I think might enhance the work. Or I may continue with prose poems and regular line-breaks.

While your primary focus is poetry, have you ever considered or dabbled in other literary forms, like fiction or non-fiction?

I love short forms. They keep coming up in essays, blogs, monologues, flash. Or longer books that are written in small segments. I wish there were a novel in me, but short forms call to me. Even when I was eleven or twelve-years-old, a story or sketch would come to me in a flurry of energy. I could do nothing else until I’d written it down, then typed it up. I didn’t know what to call them. One of my teachers called them slice of life or vignettes. Decades later, I learned––or the concept name was formed. Creative Nonfiction. The line between creative nonfiction / flash fiction / prose poem / poetry becomes so thin these days, I don’t labor over deciding what classification a piece belongs in, until that’s necessary for sending out for publication. I try for the best writing I can––and see what it becomes.

Poetry can actually be non-fiction. In Civil Twilight, fiction and non-fiction weave through parts of the book. It’s not as important what happened when, where or to whom, but that the heart/craft arc of the book follows through.

Can you recall a defining moment when you realized you were meant to be a poet? Was this path a natural calling or one filled with obstacles?

My life seems to have been blessed with a large number of obstacles. I felt these obstacles were keeping me from my writing. When I began to get up before the day to connect with my work, and get things done despite anything that was going on, the nature of my writing changed quickly. Soon the morning practice became something private and deep.

My relationship with poetry shifted from ambition to inner devotion. I came to welcome many phases of writing. My interest grew. Wisps, pieces, story, what came easily, what I needed to work harder on. This morning plan gave me permission to just write. I didn’t have to sit down and write out a whole finished poem. I could just be with the work, letting it grow. This opened into an unexpected gift of feeling like my most real self. I think that’s when I began to feel I was a poet.

Describe your poetic process. Do you follow specific routines or practices that help you capture your thoughts and emotions effectively?

I gather lines, research, journals, thoughts. I shift and combine lines and phrases to find the poem inside the material. How it comes into what I was wanting, even if I didn’t know how to get there.

Morning practice, yes. I work for three hours and stop, usually in the middle. In my journal I leave a map of where I left off. The following day, I find that place with a fresh heart and mind. I work in scattered ways, collecting information, thoughts, research, phrases, notes. Lines that have come to me throughout the day. I collage, re-arrange, rewrite. It’s like a mini-orchestration of diction, sound, purpose.

Rewriting is a form of craft for me. I add, subtract, and research. I rearrange, until it feels like it can’t budge, but also that it isn’t hemmed in too tight. That even after endless rewrites, it still feels fresh and has surprise. Something that’s inexplicable but feels right.

Aside from poetry, do you engage in other professions or hobbies that influence or enrich your writing?

Other chapters of my life have involved: house restoration, teaching pre-school. Being a children’s performer, therapist, and life coach. Playing classical piano. Singing in the Renaissance Street Singers. I’ve been an award-winning artist. I do Yoga and QiGong. Garden. Cooking concoctions: When I became ill from neighbors’ burning fires in ground level fire-pits, I became a whole food vegan for health. I had to retrofit everything I knew about preparing food, so I have fun inventing weird wild and wonderful concoctions. Little pieces of all of this appear in my writing.

Poets often speak of facing creative blocks. Do you encounter these, and if so, how do you overcome them?

With a lifelong dance with chronic illness and depression, much is required of me to stay in the Good Zone. For creative blocks, morning practice is wonderful. Plus, I love to explore books and websites for material and metaphors. Science. Religion. Travel. Torah. Tarot. Psychology. Illness. Also, I take notes on projects and goals.
But self-care for me seems at the core of creative flow. Healthy diet. Exercise. Psychological work. Journals. Reading. Meditation. I think of this as a process, in a similar way to someone in training to run a marathon. This self-care is how I am “in training” for creativity and poetry.

Poetry can be a delicate balance of personal expression and universal appeal. How do you navigate this in your writing?

I believe a poem should always hit a nerve, spin you out, make you fall in love a little, break your heart a little, leave you asking questions. It should do something. The world is so vibrantly happening at every moment.
I use my personal story, but I also use nature, religion, history––anything in the world for material, trusting that juxtaposed to the personal it will create unexpected metaphors.

You can get lost currying “universal appeal.” It can lead you away from what’s true and immediate and important. I try to look for what’s hot/open/beautiful/scary. What I’m called to write, what I cannot write, what I’m afraid to write. I hope it will speak to someone out there.  Poetry has saved my life. I’m hoping it will save others too.

Although outer validation feels good and may make our work a little sweeter, it’s the inner poet relationship that is real and what matters. That will bring us closer to our stronger self.

Poetry sometimes touches on sensitive or controversial subjects. How do you address potential criticism or differing interpretations from your readers?

Maybe everything is open for criticism and interpretation. It’s important to go with what’s true for me. I don’t know what’s controversial, I do know when I want to speak up. When I came down with a new case of Lyme disease, I realized I’d had undiagnosed Lyme as a child. I saw how it had mysteriously woven through my life and chronic illnesses. In my book, Where Space Bends (Finishing Line Press), I wrote a poem about government research labs near Lyme that triggered more virulent strains of ticks (based on research). That poem got nominated for a Pushcart Award. You’d think they would have backed away from it, but it seems heart-felt research and fierceness can be rewarded.

I’ve written a book of poems based on Yad Vashem interviews. Stories of Jews who were in the Holocaust. How non-Jews risked their lives to save Jews during WWII. Persona Poems. Poems written from a first-person point of view, where the “I” in the poem is either the rescuer or the rescued. I’m still trying to get up the courage to send it out to publishers. Maybe this year?

For aspiring poets, what essential advice would you offer for their journey into the world of poetry writing?

Follow your interests, what fascinates you. Let things open up like a pomegranate. Notice the hundreds of seeds inside. Think of the infinity of things going on in a human body. Let go of your story. The world is teeming with living things, with machines, history. Anything you write about will connect with your story.

Take care of your health in every way you can. You know what to do, the information is everywhere. Health breeds well-being, lets inspiration flow. Think of being a writer like being a micro-athlete of the mind. Take care of your body/mind/spirit and learn your craft. The work will grow.

Learn from everything you do. Books. Classes. Reading. Support groups. School. Community. Come to know and love the different phases of writing. Which ones come easily to you? Which do you need to hone?
BTW: Short list: Diction (strong nouns, verbs, adjectives). Phrasing, rhythm, repetition, sound. Imagery. Subjective/objective/personal/distant/surreal. Past/present/future. Pronouns. Description. Research subject matter. Forms.

Understand what feeds the inner poet, what feeds the outer poet. What a gorgeous, thrilling world to live in, here among all these words! How wonderful.

Thank you, author Taylor, for taking the time to answer our questions and for all your insightful and interesting answers!

About the Book

Civil Twilight

Anique Sara Taylor’s chapbook Civil Twilight is Winner of the 2022 Blue Light Poetry Prize.
As the sun sinks 6˚ below the horizon at dawn or dusk, it’s 5:30am/pm someplace in the world. In thirty shimmering poems (30 words/5 lines each), Civil Twilight probes borders of risk across a landscape of thunderstorms, quill-shaped mist, falcons that soar, the hope of regeneration, a compass to the center. Tightly hewn poems ring with rhythm and sound, follow ghosts who relentlessly weave through a journey of grief toward ecstasy. Spinning words seek to unhinge inner wounds among seashells and hostile mirrors, eagles and cardinals-to enter “the infinity between atoms,” hear the invisible waltz. Even the regrets. The search for an inner silhouette becomes a quest for shards of truth, as she asks the simple question, “What will you take with you?”

You can find Civil Twilight here:
Amazon | Goodreads 

If you are an author and wish to be featured as our guest or if you are a publicist and want to get your author featured on TRB, then please get in touch directly by e-mail at thereadingbud@gmail.com

Welcome to TRB Lounge. Today, I’d like to welcome the author of Native Knowings: Wisdom Keys for One and All—Steven McFadden, for an author interview with The Reading Bud.

About The Author

Steven McFadden is an independent journalist based in the Southwest of the USA. In the early 1980s he initiated Chiron Communications as an umbrella concept for his varied interests and pursuits. Chiron is a bridging figure, and bridging is what he has mainly been interested in over the years.

After authoring Profiles in Wisdom and then Legend of the Rainbow Warriors in the early 1990s, he rested the chiron concept to serve as National Coordinator for the annual Earth Day USA celebration, in partnership with the Seventh Generation Fund (1993). Then he returned to the work of chiron.

As a journalist, he is the author of a range of  non-fiction books, including Farms of Tomorrow, Farms of Tomorrow Revisited, The Call of the Land, Teach Us To Number Our Days, A Primer for Pilgrims, and Classical Considerations.

He is also the author of an epic, nonfiction saga of North America:Odyssey of the 8th Fire. This saga (8thFire.net) relates a true story arising from the deepest roots of the Americas, but taking place in the present and the future. In it, circles within circles, honorable elders make a great and generous giveaway of the teachings they carry.

McFadden’s newest agrarian book, Deep Agroecology: Farms, Food, and Our Future won the national Indie Excellence Award in the environmental category (2020). He is a member of the New Mexico Book Association (NMBA), and also the SouthWest Writers association (SWW).

You can find author Steven here:
Author’s Website | Facebook | Twitter/X | Goodreads

Interview

Welcome to TRB! Please give our readers a brief introduction about yourself before we begin. 

In the early 1960s, upon my older brother Mark’s urging, I took typing class. I was in the 9^th grade, and my brother said it was a foolproof way to meet girls. Ha. I did make a few friends, but no teen romances. Just as well for that moment in time, I suppose.

We learned on clanky old manual machines, and back then I felt it was a complete waste of time, although my hands and fingers did become knowing of the keys. By the end of the year I could type perhaps 25-30 WPM. Not impressive, but enough to get by. As school ended and summer began, I thought it likely that I’d never see a keyboard again.

Wrong.

Here it is now, some 60+ years later and I’m still typing on a keyboard, albeit on a far superior machine, the digital age having dawned for me in 1990 with my first computer. Through the decades typing has been my core skill, a reliable tool for the fulfillment of my dharma – the soul impulses that have guided me along the path of my destiny.

What more to say beyond my bio? I’m happily married to Elizabeth Wolf. We’ve been together 16-plus years, and our relationship deepens. Our dog is Amigo, and our cat Lily. We are grateful to be together, to have shelter and food, and to be purposefully engaged in life.

Please tell us something about your book other than what we have read in the blurb.

Beyond the blurb, the main thing that occurs to me is to let readers know the profound depth of feeling I experienced in Spring 2023. That’s when I was moved to update this little book, Native Knowings, and make it available to readers in a print version as well as an ebook.

I’m glad I followed through. As the environmental, social, and political climates intensified, I understood with calm certainty that the voices of learned elders and tradition keepers could be steadying for many people. So those were my main motivations for compiling this version of Native Knowings: steadying the people, and giving readers an opportunity to engage some of the deeper roots of Turtle Island (North America) as we pass through a turbulent era of transition.

Why did you choose this particular theme for your book? What is that one message that you’re trying to get across to the readers in this book?

Since graduating from Boston University in 1975 with a degree in journalism, my personal and professional interest has been to explore intelligent and spirited ways of living on the earth, and then to explain in writing what I’ve been able to understand.

The contemporary tradition keepers of the North American continent are part of an unbroken chain of practical and contemplative understandings (knowings) that go back many thousands of years, long before immigrants came to the land and began calling it America. It is altogether worthwhile to listen to what the learned elders have to say.

From my point of view, considering the condition of our world, listening is critical, deepening, and enriching. The elders offer keys to survival and well-being for all who now call America home, and in many respects for people all around the world.

What inspired you to write this book?  An idea, some anecdote, a dream or something else?

My response to question 3 also addresses this question in general. But to add context: I first became interested in learning about our indigenous relatives and neighbors in the late 1970s. I was awakened by a bumper sticker on the back of a beat-up VW in a parking lot of my small village. It said something like “Broken Treaty Score: Red Man 0, White Man 370.” 

When I looked into what that might possibly mean I learned that in fact the USA had broken or violated virtually every single one of the solemnly sworn treaties it made with various Native nations. Recognizing that track record of faithlessness by my own government raised an persistent series of questions for me. What? How? Why? And so forth. As a citizen, I felt a share of responsibility for the agreements my government had made and broken. As a journalist, I felt compelled to pursue answers to the questions. What’s going on here? What’s the story. Where does honor lie, and how can honor be advanced? That’s been my career, and Native Knowings is but one concise expression of what I’ve experienced and heard along the trail.

As the years of my life unfurled I began to write about clean, sustainable farms and food (so important), and also to engage the native knowings that were at the heart my personal mission as a messenger: take care of the earth and each other.

How long did it take you to write this particular book?

In terms of compiling the words and photographs, then dealing with layout, cover and other technicalities, it took me just over a month. But to get to the point in life where I had the experience, the tools, the material, and the artistic discernment to express them, about 75 years.

What are your writing ambitions?  Where do you see yourself 5 years from today?

Good question. I’ll be 80 in five years, and of course one never knows…At this mature stage one has seen so many souls come and go, and thereby inevitably one has passed through many enriching stages of emotion and understanding about life and death. I’m at peace with whatever comes, although I’m staying fit and actively writing, aiming to live into my 90s. We shall see.

Of note, I had a clear perception at age 40 that I had fulfilled my dharma and could sail off into spirit if I so desired. It was a profoundly peaceful and satisfying sensation. A knowing. For me that knowing was pronounced and enduring. But at the same time I recognized that I could contribute more to the world, that it had potential to be benevolent, and that I was not ready to release. All these years later, I still feel that way.

Are you working on any other books presently?

Yes. I’m nearly finished writing a full-length biography. The title is “Wind Walker

The Sacred Journey of Naa t’áanii Leon Secatero in concert with Niłchʼi Diyin (Holy Wind).” Leon (1943-2008) was a talented and dedicated leader, a servant to his own Navajo community in the Southwest of the United States, as well as for the world at large. His story presents a great and uplifting vision for the world, and also offers a model of exalted courage and leadership. The book should be in print some time in 2024.

Do you dabble in Fiction?

No.

When did you decide to become a writer?  Was it easy for you to follow your passion or did you have to make some sacrifices along the way?

My mother’s brother–good old Uncle Paul–was a writer. He once wrote an article for True Magazine. It came out when I was about 11 or 12. The title was “Why I poach deer” and the byline was not my uncle’s name. He instead used my father’s name (Edward Leo M.) as a pseudonym, so no game wardens could read the article and then come hunting for him.

The article made a notable impression in our household. Among other things, it started me thinking that writing could be a job; it could be what a person did in life, among all the possibilities – engineer, builder, doctor, teacher, etc. So many possibilities. And now, for me least, writer was also among that range of possibilities.

While it has not been financially easy to be an independent journalist, and it has required many sacrifices, it’s been worthwhile. I’ve been able to write not what others assigned to me, but rather what called me from both within and without.

What is your writing ritual?  How do you do it?

At this stage I’m not sure I’d call anything I do a ritual. Beyond my first cup of coffee, I’m very much in the moment.  If I feel it’s time to write, I write. Time to research, I research. Time to hike along the river or climb a mountain, then I’m off to do that.

Always in the back of my mind I’m aware of deadlines, and I am faithful to them, but I’ve no set times or procedures.  When the juice is flowing, I write. Otherwise I am called along the trails of One and also Ten Thousand Things.

Is writing your profession, or do you work in some other field too?

Writing is my profession, yet it has not provided sufficient income over the decades of work and marriage. I’ve been able to create hundreds of newspaper and magazine stories, and 15 or more nonfiction books, but I’ve also scrambled for income, working intermittently in a number of occupations: tree surgeon, groundskeeper, cook, yoga teacher, home care for elders, laborer, babysitter, pipe fitter, and more.

Can you recommend a book or two based on themes or ideas similar to your book? (You can share the name of the authors too.)

I recommend Basic Call to Consciousness, published by Akwesasne Press.

How do you deal with Writer’s Block?

Having started my career writing for newspapers for several years, I never experienced the luxury of being able to surrender to a writers block. There were always deadlines to meet, and the job was on the line. Meet the deadlines, or find a new career. That early conditioning has, thankfully, remained more or less consistent for me.

The mantra in my mind:  my job is to tell verifiably true stories that offer a compelling and practical vision of the future. “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” – Proverbs 29:18  “ If you don’t have a dream, how can your dream come true?” – South Pacific

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

Pay attention to your breath. Master your breath, and you will more readily remain centered and capable through all you meet in life and in your profession.

With mastery of the breath you will be inspired: both literally and figuratively. Your personal inspiration will add light to your soul, to your words, and to the truths you strive to reveal through writing.

Thank you, author McFadden, for taking out the time to answer our questions and for all your thought-provoking and interesting answers!

About the Book

Native Knowings: Wisdom Keys for One and All

This original compilation–a small treasure of 72 pages–offers a concise and contemporary compendium of some key North American (Turtle Island) wisdom teachings to help support people through this era of transition.
“I ask you to listen,
not just with your minds.
I ask you to listen with your hearts,
because that’s the only way
you can receive what it is,
what we are giving.
These are the teachings of our hearts.”
– Frank Decontie, Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg
What do some of the venerable, deeply rooted wisdom teachings of the Americas offer in our era of transition?
This Soul*Sparks small treasure offers an array of thoughtful messages, a compilation of keys that everyone has opportunities to turn. We’d be wise to understand and then to weave their enduring insights into the fabric of what we are creating for ourselves, our children, and our children’s children

The words of contemporary elders, in particular, sound a note of urgency.

You can find Native Knowings here:
Amazon | Goodreads | Draft to Digital

If you are an author and wish to be featured as our guest or if you are a publicist and want to get your author featured on TRB, then please get in touch directly by e-mail at thereadingbud@gmail.com

Welcome to TRB Lounge. Today, I’d like to welcome the author of Exits: Selected Poems—Stephen C. Pllock for an author interview with The Reading Bud in collaboration with Poetic Book Tours.

About The Author

Stephen C. Pollock is a recipient of the Rolfe Humphries Poetry Prize and a former associate professor at Duke University. His poems have appeared in a wide variety of literary journals, including “Blue Unicorn,” “The Road Not Taken,” “Live Canon Anthology,” “Pinesong,” “Coffin Bell,” and “Buddhist Poetry Review.”
“Exits” is his first book.

Interview

Welcome to TRB! Please give our readers a brief introduction about yourself before we begin. 

Thanks for the warm welcome.  I’ll be delighted to provide an introduction that goes beyond the bare bones info in my Author Bio.

I am:  an author in multiple genres;  an academic physician and neuro-ophthalmologist and who served on the faculty at Duke University until 2004;  a former chief executive of a vision benefits company;  and an inventor.

My mother was an artist who introduced me to Impressionist and Modern art before I could read.  My father, by contrast, was an antitrust attorney.  These two divergent influences — aesthetic appreciation from mom, and logic and rationality from dad — both find expression in my various endeavors, including poetry.

On the health front, I’ve been struggling with the spinal cord variant of multiple sclerosis (MS) for twenty-four years.  The disease has caused partial paralysis of my right leg, but the good news is that I’m still able to stand up and ambulate independently with a walker.

Finally, I’m a lifelong dog lover.  So, you might ask, why don’t you currently have a dog?  The answer is that my beloved yorkipoo Dinky passed away in 2012, and I still think about her and grieve for her every day.

Please tell us something about your book other than what we have read in the blurb?

The poems in Exits were written between 2003 and the present.  Each poem was crafted in isolation; I had no intention of putting together a collection until 2022, at which point my concept was to incorporate what I considered to be my best work into a book entitled Line Drawings.  It was only during the curating process that I realized that many of the poems I’d selected were centered around issues of mortality — disease and decline, death and remembrance.  I then decided to curate a more concise collection that cohered by virtue of a unifying theme, and Exits was born.

Please tell us something about your book other than what we have read in the blurb?

The poems in Exits were written between 2003 and the present.  Each poem was crafted in isolation; I had no intention of putting together a collection until 2022, at which point my concept was to incorporate what I considered to be my best work into a book entitled Line Drawings.  It was only during the curating process that I realized that many of the poems I’d selected were centered around issues of mortality — disease and decline, death and remembrance.  I then decided to curate a more concise collection that cohered by virtue of a unifying theme, and Exits was born.

What is that one message that you’re trying to get across to the readers in this book?

The book doesn’t convey a single message.  The constituent poems explore the subject of mortality from a variety of perspectives.  One can think of the collection as a meditation on mortality, nature, and the cycle of life.

Which poems in the collection are your favourites?

“Seeds” is the best sonnet in the collection, and “Syringe” is probably the most original and creative long poem I’ve ever written.  “Arachnidæa:  Line Drawings” seems to connect with readers, given that it was a finalist in one statewide competition and was awarded 2^nd prize in another statewide competition.

What inspired you to write this book?  An idea, some anecdote, a dream or something else?

I think that my focus on the finite nature of our biological selves derived from three sources.  First, I was raised without any religious training, so from a very young age, I was left on my own to ponder the enormity of the universe, time and eternity, and the meaning of existence.  Second, as a physician and neuro-ophthalmologist, I’ve cared for numerous patients with serious and/or life-threatening diseases.  And third, since 1999, I’ve had to deal with multiple sclerosis and the ramifications of that disease for life expectancy.  It seems likely that these three factors have influenced the content of my writing, either consciously or unconsciously.

How long did it take you to write this particular book?

As noted above, the twenty poems in Exits were written sporadically over a two-decade span of time, beginning in 2003.

What are your writing ambitions?  Where do you see yourself 5 years from today?

I hope to be alive in five years!  At my age (67), and having no choice but to cope with a neurological condition that’s almost invariably progressive, planning for the future often feels like a fool’s errand.

Are you working on any other poems presently?

At present, all of my energy is focused on the publication process.  I also anticipate taking the steps necessary to introduce Exits to as many readers as possible.  Once these activities are behind me, I look forward to resuming the writing life.

Why have you chosen this genre?  Or do you write in multiple genres?

Over the course of my life, I’ve written in multiple genres:  poetry, short fiction, scientific articles published in peer-reviewed medical journals, book chapters in neuro-ophthalmology texts, and U.S. Patent 4,477,158 (written by me, not by intellectual property attorneys).

When did you decide to become a writer?  Was it easy for you to follow your passion or did you have to make some sacrifices along the way?

I began writing independently of schoolwork when I was nine.  On the one hand, I scribbled rhyming poems in pencil on the cardboard that came with my father’s laundered shirts.  On the other hand, I wrote essays on the structure and functions of the human body.  By the end of that year, I had drafted enough material for an illustrated manuscript on human anatomy and physiology.  This of course was never published, but it did anticipate my future career as a physician.

With respect to writing poetry, the major sacrifice turned out to be my choice of academic medicine as a career.  After I graduated from Amherst College, I trained for ten years to become a physician, ophthalmologist, and neuro-ophthalmologist.  In 1987, I was recruited to Duke University as Chief of Neuro-Ophthalmology, eventually achieving a rank of Associate Professor with tenure.  I ended up serving on the full-time faculty for seventeen years.

Some physicians are able to write poetry throughout their medical careers.  I didn’t belong to that group.  For me, maintaining a consultative practice in neuro-ophthalmology, training residents and fellows, publishing clinical research papers in medical journals, and carrying out a variety of administrative responsibilities was all-consuming.

While the instinct to write poetry was completely suppressed throughout this 26-year period, it was not extinguished.  As I cut back on academic responsibilities during my last year at Duke, that instinct began to slowly reassert itself.

What is your writing ritual?  How do you do it?

I have always been undisciplined with respect to writing poems, as evidenced by the fact that I have no set writing schedule.  In contrast to most other poets, I lack the ability to sit down daily at my desk and call forth ideas and/or personal experiences to serve as the basis for new poems.  Nor have I ever relied on writing prompts to prime my poetry pump.  Instead, I wait for lightning to strike (or, mixing metaphors, for the Muse to whisper in my ear).  The unpredictability of this approach means that I never know when the next poem will materialize.

Once I begin writing, however, I become intensely focused.  The key for me is to occupy a mental space where words, sounds, rhythms, concepts, and metaphorical possibilities freely and continuously enter the mind, while at the same time applying critical filters to eliminate the 99.9% of options that lack usefulness or merit.  Those filters are internal, personal and idiosyncratic.  They don’t relate to prevailing trends in poetry, to contemporary poets, or to the work of historical poets.

When fully engaged and maximally productive, my efforts typically result in four new lines of poetry per day (derived from perhaps a dozen pages of notes and drafts).

How do you prefer to write – computer/laptop, typewriter, dictation or longhand with a pen?

I often begin as I did in childhood, with pencil and paper.  After sketching out a preliminary concept or drafting a few auspicious words or phrases or stanzas, I transition to composing in Word on a laptop.

What are your 5 favourite books?

I would find it difficult to identify my favourite books because I’m unsure about what criteria to apply in the selection process — enjoyment?  literary merit?  historical importance?  subject matter?

I do think I can identify the books that have had the greatest influence on my philosophy and on my writing:

1. Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre
2. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
3. How Does a Poem Mean? by John Ciardi
4. Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
5. A Little Book on Form by Robert Hass

How do you deal with Writer’s Block?

Given that so-called “writer’s block” describes my natural state, I allow it to persist until it no longer does.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

As a debut author, I’m hardly qualified to be doling out advice to other writers.  I’m nevertheless happy to share some of the lessons I’ve learned while writing and compiling the poems for Exits:

Write poems that represent your unique aesthetic sensibilities.  Try not to be overly influenced by prevailing trends or contemporary poetic styles.

Edit mercilessly over an extended period.  Satisfying first drafts often begin to show their flaws only after sufficient time has elapsed to afford an objective assessment.

Be prepared for an abrupt shift into business mode when you transition from writing your book to publishing it.

Thank you, author Stephen, for taking out the time to answer our questions and for all your thought-provoking and interesting answers!

About the Book

Exits: Selected Poems

Stephen C. Pollock’s poetry collection Exits nods to the literary traditions of years past while simultaneously speaking to the present moment. Multilayered and musical, the poems in Exits have drawn comparisons to the work of Eavan Boland and Seamus Heaney. With bold imagery, attention to form, and a consistent through line rooted in the theme of mortality, Pollock’s collection responds to contemporary anxieties surrounding death and the universal search for meaning in life’s transience.

You can find Exits: Selected Poems here:
Amazon | Goodreads

If you are an author and wish to be featured as our guest or if you are a publicist and want to get your author featured on TRB, then please get in touch directly by e-mail at thereadingbud@gmail.com