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3 Questions
Nick Hilbourn
INK: What most inspires you to write?
N.H.: I am inspired by other authors’ works and the personalities of the strangers and friends who surround me.
INK: What does your writing routine look like?
N.H.: My routine wishes it were a routine. I always carry a notebook around, scribble notes for stories and poems all day. Eventually, it all coalesces, and I sit down and write feverishly for 30 minutes to an hour. Thereafter, it’s meticulous, seemingly endless editing.
INK: Name a favorite poem you feel everyone should read and why.
N.H.: “Streets” by Naomi Shihab Nye. Naomi Shihab Nye’s works are pericopes. They’re poems that turn into stories that always remain poems. A mystery. They pass through you and tattoo your stomach. This poem puts you on your own street, but it’s also your life. Whatever street has always been your street it turns into a cosmic entity. You’re alone but not lonely. She does this with all her works, but this one’s the most potent.
Q&A with C.W. Bryan
C.W. Bryan: At any given moment, a poet can tell whatever story they like, real or fictional. I really enjoyed the fact that your pieces tended toward the real, or at least real people. What was your process like for discerning which stories you would tell? And how did you come about said stories?
N.H.: I was drawn to people that were destroyed by the largeness of the time they lived in. In some cases, these people were swallowed by the time or by their celebrity. I wanted to pull them out of that time and humanize them again. Meditate on the vulnerability of that moment they were a single person captured in the amber they couldn’t escape.
C.W. Bryan: Most referential or allusory poems get acknowledged at the front or back of a book. Rarely, however, and honestly maybe never, have I seen footnotes alongside poems. I think it’s an interesting choice, and I liked it a lot—reminded me of David Foster Wallace’s essay “On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise.” What was the inspiration for the footnotes?
N.H.: The footnotes are to clarify to the reader the person or the moment referenced in the poem. I wanted the reader to read through the poem with just the images first; then, encounter the footnote and return to the poem with this history, this floating cloud of information following them. A second reading would be, in essence, accompanied by this newfound knowledge.
C.W. Bryan: “Orchard” is one of my favorite poems in the collection, and I think it’s a great pick for starting off the collection. I wanted to ask about the formatting of the poem. At times, the enjambment seems very intentional, ending on powerful words, like in stanza four where you end one line on “skin” and the next on “bruises.” At the same time, it feels almost prosaic, as if you just kept typing until the line broke on its own. How did you decide on its final form? And why did you want to start the collection with this poem?
N.H.: Enjambment transforms the way the word should be understood. In the case of a relative pronouns like “where”, enjambment gives the word a more ambiguous notation. Should the word be understood as a connector between ideas or a question. This ambiguity carries over into the next line. The individual lines of the poem both rely on each other and become independent of the poem. Each line is a poem and each line is part of a single narrative image.
