Write The Book: Conversations on Craft

Angela Palm and Malisa Garlieb - #326 (12/22/14)

Two interviews this week, with Vermont author and editor Angela Palm, whose new collection is Please Do Not Remove, and Vermont poet Malisa Garlieb, whose new book of poetry is Handing Out Apples in Eden. Both of these collections were published this fall by Wind Ridge Books of Vermont.

Today I have two Write The Book Prompts to offer, thanks to the generous suggestions of my guests, Angela Palm and Malisa Garlieb. 

Malisa’s is to write a personal poem using a mathematical concept or equation as the primary metaphor, as she did in her poem, "Long Division."

Angi’s is this: select an image of a used library check-out card. Use any combination of the card's features as the source of inspiration for generating a new work of prose or poetry. Perhaps you'll be inspired by a particular patron's signature, a date stamp, or the book's subject matter or author. Perhaps you'll be struck by the card's appearance or the accumulation or use or non-use. Let the image transport you to another time or place, and draft some ideas or a follow a single idea for 10-15 minutes. In revision and shaping of the draft, study the card again and allow yourself to do a little research that might further develop your initial impulses into a story or essay. You may quickly find yourself pages deep in a story you never knew you'd want to write. Angi shared these images of library cards for your prompt this week. (Open individually in new tabs for a better look at each):

Good luck with these exercises and please listen next week for another!

Stephen Cramer - Interview #325 (12/15/14)

Vermont poet and UVM Professor Stephen Cramer, whose new book is From the Hip: A Concise History of Hip Hop (in sonnets), published by Wind Ridge Books of Vermont. 

This week’s Write the Book Prompt was generously offered by my guest Stephen Cramer. He likes to assign this to his students, because it presents the challenge of describing something ethereal, like music, that doesn’t have a form that you can touch or see. You have to turn to metaphor a lot, and to a description from the senses. Words like “velvety,” “sharp,” and “bright.” So this week’s prompt is to write about music and see if you can use synesthesia - one sense expressed in terms of another - to launch your piece into some new, unexpected place. Lynda Hull’s poem Hollywood Jazz has at least two instances of synesthesia, if you’d like to read one that Stephen recommends. 

Good luck with this exercise and please listen next week for another.

Wendy Call - Interview #324 (12/8/14)

Author, editor, educator, and translator Wendy Call. 

This week’s Write The Book Prompt was suggested by my guest, Wendy Call, who says it was inspired by the portion of our interview about translation. It’s an exercise in homophonic translation -- that is to say, translation based on sound – actual, assumed, or imagined – of poetry written in other languages.

First: Find a stanza of poetry written in a language you do not know.

Second: Look at the words carefully and imagine how they sound when spoken aloud. Link those sounds to English words. Try sounding out each line verbally, until English words occur to you. Focus on SOUND, not known or imagined meaning. Feel free to take liberties and be nonsensical.

Here's an example, of a stanza of poetry written by Irma Pineda in Isthmus Zapotec, a language spoken in Oaxaca, Mexico.

The Original reads:

Nuu dxi rizaaca

ranaxhi tobi ca yáaga ca'

Wendy’s English version reads:

New dixie rise AKA

Ran an exit to bike yoga,  ‘kay?

Third: Take your "found" English stanza and revise it into a new poem.

Good luck with this exercise and please listen next week for another.

Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several former South Burlington High School students, now alums). 

J. Robert Lennon - Interview #323 (12/1/14)

J. Robert Lennon, whose second story collection, See You in Paradise, is just out from Graywolf Press.

This week’s Write the Book Prompt was generously offered by my guest J. Robert Lennon, who is a teacher as well as being a writer, and who is working on a collection of writing prompts and exercises. He created this exercise after reading the book A Void, translated from the original French La Disparition (literally, "The Disappearance"), a 300-page novel, written in 1969 by Georges Perec, entirely without using the letter e (except for the author's name). The 1994 translation by Gilbert Adair likewise does not contain the letter e. As J. Robert Lennon pointed out to me, “there goes the past tense and every pronoun.” His exercise is this: write a one-page story about a funeral without using the letter “e.” You can’t use cemetery or grave or funeral or death or tears or dead or die. He finds that students will come up against a word they can’t use, then another and another, and the sentence becomes so terrible, they have to back up and do an end runner on the problem. Which is a great thing to do in any case. He says it often ends up being the best prose they’ve written all semester because they have to work so hard to write every single sentence.  

Good luck with this exercise and please listen next week for another.

Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) "Virginia" - Starry Mountain Sweetheart Band (of which my guest, J. Robert Lennon, is a band member!) 

Nancy Marie Brown - Archive Interview #322 (11/24/14)

Interview from the archives with Nancy Marie Brown, Vermont author of the books Song of the Vikings, The Abacus and the Cross, The Far Traveler, Mendel in the Kitchen, and A Good Horse Has No Color.

Today's Write the Book Prompt, in honor of Thanksgiving, is to consider an early cooking experience (either one of your own, or a friend's or relative's) and write about that. My own might be the first time I cooked for the woman who would eventually be my mother-in-law. We were on a vacation in a remote but lovely place with terrible grocery store options, and when I opened the box of pasta (once I was all ready to boil it), it was full of bugs. But that's just me.

Good luck with this exercise and please listen next week for another.

Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several former South Burlington High School students, now alums).