Name? Tim
Staley
Age? 39
Location? Las Cruces , New
Mexico
How long
have you been writing poems? Since the 3rd Grade
Do you have a specific writing
style? John Hartford said “style is based on limitations.” I try to leave more
and more out. I try to place mystery carefully.
Do you
write as a career? Who does, Maya Angelou?
What is
your greatest challenge as a writer? Each new poem.
What
projects of yours have been recently published? I’ve had some poems published recently in
burntdistrict, brickplight and Canary.
What are
you currently working on and what inspired this work? My first full length
poetry collection, Lost On My Own Street, was inspired by parenthood,
wilderness and illness. It’s been “finished” a dozen times.
Where can
we find your work?
The great
fiction writer Albert Martinez featured me on his Lively Words site:
Here I am
in a few journals:
Oh, I’m also a rapper, MC
FLASHCARD:
How often do you
write? Not nearly enough.
How do you
react to rejections? One of my mentors Kathleene West wrote a poem about
rejection. I react to rejection how this poem of her’s does:
The Poet Considers Destroying His Mailbox
Thursday,
and the mailbox gapes,
olive-drab,
unexpectedly empty.
The
afternoon’s awry.
The
toothbrush molts, coffee freezes
in the cup
and the veins on your wrist
push
sullenly at the surface.
Your
friends fling the telephone
out the
window and slide out of your house
on the
cord. Your lover walks up the stairs
and
vanishes when she touches her hand
to the
knob. Stamps won’t stick. The avocado rolls
on the
ledge, stays hard and green.
Did you
really think the woman in the bar
What did
you expect? To hold love and work
like a
blueprint in your hand?
By: Kathleene West, Water Witching,
1984, Copper Canyon
What is
your favorite book? I’m on a Hermann Hesse kick. I’m reading Narcissus and
Goldmund at the moment. I love his balance. He talks about how a woman’s
face giving birth and her face in orgasm are essentially the same face. I’m
down with that kind of thing.
Who are some of your favorite poets? At the moment I’m
digging Robert Bly. I like he reinvents himself every few years. Joshua
Beckman, Bob Dylan, James Tate and Mary Ruefle also impress me in this
way.
What is your favorite word? mittelschmerz
What makes you cry? Several songs in Frozen.
Beach or Mountains? Mountains, preferably with snow.
Cats or Dogs? Dogs with a smear of Pit Bull
The Beatles or The Rolling Stones? George Harrison
Jimi Hendrix or Frank Sinatra? Jerry Garcia
Shakespeare or Bukowski?
That’s not fair.
Please
provide as much or as little of the following information as you’d like.
Personal Tumblr blog: http://grandmamosespress.tumblr.com/
Twitter profile: https://twitter.com/mcflashcard
My poetry press: http://grandmamosespress.com/
Books for sale: my most recent
chapbook The Sickness Suite is available here: http://grandmamosespress.com/
Thank you so much for interviewing
me!
Let me share my newest poem,
replete with an actual catfish:
Last Day in Alabama
Grass snake in the shower,
a turtle behind the fire house
and two friends inOregon
stuck in jail. Imagine if
the last thing you ever felt
was the grip of a spider web.
With sausage on the line
Grass snake in the shower,
a turtle behind the fire house
and two friends in
stuck in jail. Imagine if
the last thing you ever felt
was the grip of a spider web.
With sausage on the line
Sylvia reels a
catfish
up from the lake bottom.
We can't get the hook
out of his mouth. He grins
and takes matters into his own
We can't get the hook
out of his mouth. He grins
and takes matters into his own
razor fins, Papa
passes out,
toddler blood
pools on the dock
and that
snake—that pulsing rivulet
that slid over my
feet in the shower—
we locked him in
the tackle box
for Sylvia to see
in the morning
but somehow in the
night
he jimmied the
latch and broke free.
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