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Author Statement
Blue Rose was born out of a love and fascination for the world of Twin Peaks. I first watched the series in a creative writing class in high school, and it was my first introduction to surrealism in art. I was in awe and completely drawn to the characters of Laura Palmer and Audrey Horne. I revisited the series when I took a few Twin Peaks-themed writing workshops with poet Chrissy Williams, both of which inspired me to keep exploring the Twin Peaks-verse in poetic form. The book channels David Lynch’s “wonderful and strange” creation with a blend of narrative, experimental, and blackout poetry. Like the show, dichotomy and relationships are frequent themes laced throughout the collection, with emphasis on Laura Palmer’s relationship with the men in her life as well as Agent Dale Cooper’s mysterious relationship with Diane. One of my favorite aspects of the book are the blackout poems, the “Diane Tapes, Redacted,” in which I’ve blacked out all of Cooper’s tape recordings to Diane so that they appear as secret love notes disguised as updates on the case.
3 Questions
Kait Quinn
INK: What most inspires you to write?
K.Q.: The complexity of human emotion, other forms of artwork (particularly music), pop culture, nostalgia, the pure joy of playing with sound and words, and using only the letters of the alphabet to create an image readers can clearly visualize.
INK: What does your writing routine look like?
K.Q.: Light a candle, grab a beverage (latte or sparkling water), play music, gather some prompts to work from, set a timer for 8-15 minutes, and free write. I then usually let the freewrite sit for at least a day before I revise it.
INK: Name a favorite poem you feel everyone should read and why.
K.Q.: “Letter to a Young Poet” by Megan Fernandes. I’m absolutely enamored by this poem. Fernandes manages to seamlessly combine urgency, good pacing, classical elements, pop culture, and more. She speaks to the reader from her own experience in a way that makes it feel like your own. My favorite line: “Every poet has a love affair with a bridge.”
Q&A with C.W. Bryan
C.W. Bryan: This collection is essentially a love letter to Twin Peaks. I’m a big David Lynch fan as well, so I was very excited to see this collection come across my screen. This is less of a question and I was hoping you could just speak a bit about your relationship to Twin Peaks!
K.Q.: This makes me so happy!
I was introduced to Twin Peaks in a high school creative writing class. I can’t remember why the teacher had us watch it, other than the fact that he just loved the show. I thought it was so dark yet funny and quirky. I’d never seen anything like it. I fell in love with the series in an entirely new way when I re-watched it and the film, Fire Walk With Me, as an adult. I love the dynamic between different characters, especially Cooper and Sheriff Truman, and the heavy dichotomy of the show – the quaint, quiet town with a seedy underbelly; the homecoming queen with a secret drug/sex life and history of sexual abuse; Leland Palmer with Bob. The series as a whole is even like that – dark, violent, and mysterious yet humorous, campy, and nostalgic. Nostalgic is such a common word I hear people use to describe Twin Peaks, and it sounds so weird to say, but it’s true.
As I’m writing this, I’m making a new connection. One of my favorite shows growing up was One Tree Hill. Yes, the teen soap that centers around basketball. One of the characters, Peyton Sawyer, reminds me so much of Laura. She’s the sad artist surrounded by death, yet she’s on the cheerleading team with her best friend because her dead, adopted mom was a cheerleader, and initially, she dates the basketball team’s star player. Again, dichotomy. What’s even better? Several Twin Peaks and Fire Walk With Me actors played either consistent or tiny roles in One Tree Hill – Moira Kelly, Sherilynn Fenn, and, you guessed it, Sheryl Lee, who actually played Petyon’s biological mother (twist!)
I think another thing that really drew me in, especially as an adult, was the complexity and mystery surrounding Laura Palmer. She’s not a straightforward character. Not to overuse this word, but again, she’s a dichotomy. And despite everything that is revealed about her life, she’s still treasured. One last thing – the music! It plays such a big role in the series, and as someone who is constantly inspired by music, I really appreciate the ways Lynch incorporated music into the show. There’s actually a roadhouse scene that combines music and visuals in a way that’s so beautiful and heartbreaking. The scene where Julee Cruise is singing “The World Spins” and Donna is there and starts crying, and you can tell that there are others in the room who are thinking about Laura. This is actually the scene that inspired my poem “Laura Palmer.”
C.W. Bryan: There are other points of inspiration throughout the book, too, like your poem after Sylvia Plath’s “Morning Song” (“Love sets you going like a fat gold watch”; I love this line, also). What was the process like combining inspiration from TV and Poetry?
K.Q.: That process was really fun! With that poem and “I’m Learning So Many Different Ways to Be Quiet” (after Ada Limon), I had actually already written “after poems” of Plath’s and Limon’s poems but from my perspective. While working on Twin Peaks, I was encouraged by a friend to explore writing from the perspective of someone or something else, which is something I struggle to do in my poems. Doing that via the “after poem” format was a nice way to dip my toe into that idea. I had a kind of template to follow, and then I just had to channel another character, which was easier to do the more I spent time with Twin Peaks. I also just find inspiration from so many other artists and forms of artwork that it just feels natural that more than one might influence a single poem.
C.W. Bryan: I am absolutely in love with blackout poetry, so you could imagine I was absolutely in love with the Diane Tapes, Redacted refrain throughout the collection. What was your intent with these poems? How did you decide what to cut and what to keep?
K.Q.: Thank you! I’m so happy you enjoyed these poems! They’re probably my favorite part of the book. Diane Tapes, Redacted was a way to put my own spin on the Twin Peaks theme that nothing is what it seems. I was always curious about who Diane was and who she was to Cooper. They feel so intimate, though not in a romantic or sexual way. After watching Twin Peaks: The Return, that relationship became a little more blurred. So when I went back to rewatch the first two seasons, the tape recordings stood out even more to me. The idea just hit me: what if the recordings are actually secret love notes to Diane but disguised as updates on the Palmer case? The idea fit so perfectly with major themes in the show and the book, I had to roll with it.
Luckily, there were a lot of obvious lines and phrases that immediately popped out at me. “Diane, I’m holding you,” and “Audrey Horne touches me in ways I could not predict,” and “We are diametrically incorrect” all come to mind. I really just started blacking them out in order of appearance in the series and let a cohesive story unfold (though I did shift some pieces around later). I definitely focused on key words that fit the vibe of both the collection and the secret relationship—cherry pie, shadows, stars, weakness, secret—and worked around those. And I think I kept almost every “Diane” because that’s where I got to think about what else Cooper could be saying to Diane.
From there, I just filled in the blanks, making use of what I had. I’m the kind of blackout poet who will spell out a whole word with just individual letters if the word I want to use isn’t in the original text. I don’t know if there’s a “rule” about this in blackout poetry, but it allowed me to feel less restricted and cultivate a full story.
C.W. Bryan: Normally, I ask only three questions, but I thought this was a very novel idea for a collection and would love to know: is there anything else you’re working on presently?
K.Q.: I started playing Stardew Valley right before National Poetry Writing Month in April 2024, so naturally, every poem I wrote that month was about Stardew Valley. I am currently working on a Stardew chapbook and am in the process of ordering and editing the manuscript now. I published a collection inspired by Taylor Swift’s album folklore back in 2021. I’m sitting on a sister collection inspired by her album evermore, which I meant to release later that same year, but I’d had a big shift in my approach to editing, so I shelved it. I’m honestly glad I did because I’ve written even more poems to include in that collection. Those are the only two manuscripts I’m actively working on at the moment. I have another idea for a coming-of-age type manuscript, also heavily inspired by female musical artists and pop culture, but I haven’t started officially working on it yet.
