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Sandra Simonds is a prolific poet, critic, mother, and professor. She is the author of five poetry collections:\u00a0Orlando<\/em> (Wave Books, forthcoming), Further Problems with Pleasure<\/em> (University of Akron, 2016, and winner of the 2015 Akron Poetry Prize), Steal It Back<\/em> (Saturnalia Books, 2015), The Sonnets<\/em> (Bloof Books, 2014), Mother Was a Tragic Girl<\/em> (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2012), and Warsaw Bikini<\/em> (Bloof Books, 2009). She is also author of a free electronic PDF collection,\u00a0 Untitled Collage Poems<\/em><\/a> (Bloof Books, 2016). A sixth print volume, Orlando<\/em> (Wave Books), is forthcoming in 2018, and Simonds is working on another collection, Atopia<\/em>. Please see five poems from Atopia<\/em><\/a> and a review of Further Problems with Pleasure<\/em><\/a> elsewhere in Aquifer<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Reading Simonds\u2019 work is not unlike plugging into high-voltage poetica, fused with the hard metal of keen intellect, unmistakable humor, the reality of ourselves as sexual beings, and charged with political and social thematic waves. Nothing is at rest in these poems; they shout and taunt, but mostly they invite an engagement to language throbbing with 21st-century life.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Judith Roney for The Florida Review<\/em>:<\/strong> <\/p>\n Contemporary epic, or \u201clong\u201d poems, are my latest poetry-drug, so when I read an excerpt from Orlando<\/em> in The Brooklyn Rail<\/em>\u2019s e-journal, I was smitten with its forty-eight flowing tercets, where the speaker seems to address the city of Orlando, but soon we\u2019re accompanying the speaker in a kind of kinetic stream-of-consciousness journey, passing through the land of the body as if were a fantasy theme park like Disney World, which is referred to several times in the poem.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The form works fabulously against the energy, creating marvelous tension. Thoughts echo in my reader\u2019s mind of Virginia Woolf\u2019s Orlando<\/em>, yet I sense you, the poet, clearly enter at multiple points. For example, we see the speaker at their desk, trying to compose on a laptop, but they are interrupted, first by the action of another, then technology fails, and the work is lost. A hard-copy diary is remembered: \u201c. . . and that is precisely the moment you fell out of love with me, \/ abandoning me to the very diaries and bookshelves of my consciousness, both as a teenage\/girl and now as a middle aged woman, so I tried to figure out what I could have done back then, \/ what confession, what moment of weakness, what apology had driven you out of my life, \/ so abruptly . . .\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You have a collection soon to be published (2018) from Wave Books called Orlando<\/em>. I\u2019m excited about this as both a poet, and as a university instructor in Orlando; is the entire collection an epic poem, or is Orlando<\/em> a long poem contained therein? Where did this spring forth from?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sandra Simonds:<\/strong> <\/p>\n I chose the long poem form because I wanted to work in the tradition of the epic which is historically so heavily inflected with masculine energy. The \u201cepic\u201d has been coded \u201cmale\u201d and I was interested in the challenges of writing an epic poem given the gender history. Who is allowed to write our history? Of course, I\u2019m not the first woman to do this. Several feminist long poems that influenced me in this project come to mind including Alice Notely\u2019s The Descent of Alette<\/em>, Annie Allen<\/em> by Gwendolyn Brooks, Lyn Hejinian\u2019s My Life<\/em>, Rachel Blau DuPlessis\u2019s Drafts<\/em>, and Loba<\/em> by Diane di Prima.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You are right to note that \u201cOrlando\u201d in the poem is an unstable character\u2014sometimes Orlando is a city, other times, Orlando is a lover, and other times Orlando is an idea or set of ideas. When I wrote the book, this instability wasn\u2019t intentional but it turned out to be an effective way that I could talk about both love and relationships using this figure as well as broader cultural concerns, like materialism, entertainment, the surface and what lies beneath the surface and so on. So the instability of the figure creates a kind of creative and philosophical opening that worked for me and relates to the traditional concerns of epic poetry\u2014telling a historical, social and political story about our times but through a distinctly feminist voice.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n TFR<\/em>:<\/strong> <\/p>\n Simonds:<\/strong> <\/p>\n TFR<\/em>:<\/strong> <\/p>\n Simonds:<\/strong> <\/p>\n TFR<\/em>:<\/strong> <\/p>\n Simonds:<\/strong> <\/p>\n TFR<\/em>:<\/strong> <\/p>\n Simonds:<\/strong> <\/p>\n TFR<\/em>:<\/strong> <\/p>\n Simonds:<\/strong> <\/p>\n TFR<\/em>:<\/strong> <\/p>\n Simonds:<\/strong> <\/p>\n TFR<\/em>:<\/strong> <\/p>\n Simonds:<\/strong> <\/p>\n TFR<\/em>:<\/strong> <\/p>\n Simonds:<\/strong> <\/p>\n TFR<\/em>:<\/strong> <\/p>\n Simonds:<\/strong> Plugging into a high-voltage poetica…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2294,"template":"","categories":[9,140],"tags":[349,350,351,352,344,353,354],"class_list":["post-2282","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-interview","tag-further-problems-with-pleasure","tag-interview","tag-judith-roney","tag-orlando","tag-sandra-simonds","tag-virginia-woolf","tag-wave-books"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nI\u2019m thinking I was first introduced to your poetry when I received my May\/June [2017] issue of The American Poetry Review<\/em>, and was intrigued by your poem, \u201cDear Chris,\u201d which is the first of three poems featured in the issue. It\u2019s a hardworking poem, \u201clong,\u201d and of an eclectic construction that gives it restless energy.<\/p>\n
\nFirst, thank you for this question because I\u2019m really excited to talk about Orlando<\/em>, which I think of as an epic feminist poem that reads like fiction or memoir. In terms of structure, Orlando<\/em> is composed of two sections. The first section is forty pages and each page is four very long-lined tercets; the second part of the epic is written in a kind of spiraling open form. The second part of the book, in fact, was initially forty or so discreet poems with titles that I, upon revision, transformed into one long second section called \u201cDemon Spring.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nAs a poet, and poetry reader for The Florida Review<\/em>, I find it increasingly rare that a poem both challenges and dazzles me. I find the poems of Further Problems with Pleasure<\/em> just brilliant. How did you become involved with the subject or theme of your book?<\/p>\n
\nI wanted to explore a number of themes at the same time: sexuality, sexual violence, sexual liberation, gender shame, the body, perversity, fantasy and how these things are constructed and defined in late-capitalist society. What are the norms? What is taboo? Lacan says, \u201cDo not give up on your desire,\u201d and I think that\u2019s a sort of jumping off point of this book. Okay, well what does that mean for a single working mother living in the Deep South at this particular point in history? What part of our desire is \u201cours\u201d and what part of it is manufactured?<\/p>\n
\nIn this collection, is there one poem that worked as the spark for the rest of the pieces? If not, which poem do you feel best anchors the collection for you?<\/p>\n
\nI think the \u201cFurther Problems with Pleasure\u201d poems that are positioned throughout the book anchor it because these poems bring the book back to the central questions surrounding the nature of desire and, when the book veers away a little bit from these questions, they are brought back to the forefront of the reader\u2019s mind. I also have a lot of affection for the last poem in the book, \u201cDear Chris,\u201d which I wrote in response to a poem sent to me by the poet Chris Nealon. I was thinking about all of the leftists who stand up in society against hatred and violence against the oppressed. I wanted to both acknowledge the struggles that we have encountered both personally and more broadly as leftists, what we are up against, what we will be up against, but also to say that what we do every day, our actions matter. That what we did here, right now, matters, to each other and to our children and that even though we all come from different backgrounds, my hope for the future, is that our children will not have to face what we have faced and if they do, that they will be comrades, that they will be on the right side of history fighting for the same things.<\/p>\n
\nI\u2019m always curious what literary fields a poet mines; what are you reading now?<\/p>\n
\nI just finished Matthew Rohrer\u2019s The Others<\/em>, which I thought was great. His storytelling and the way he works with narrative is fascinating. I also just finished Rapture<\/em> by Sjohnna McCray. I had the pleasure of reading with Sjohnna a few months ago and he gave me the reading copy of his book with all of his notes and directions to himself (Thank you, Sjohnna!). I love the way Rapture<\/em> tells the complicated story of his relationship to his mother.<\/p>\n
\nI think I\u2019d go as far as calling your poetry \u201ccombustible\u201d and timely for what\u2019s occurring in the both the political and social arena right now. It\u2019s like the lines are \u201cplugged in\u201d and feel energized, so I must ask, any writing rituals you\u2019d like to share? That is, where do you write best, what time of day, tea, coffee, wine or a bag of chips?<\/p>\n
\nMy only trick is to write when you are so desperate that you can\u2019t not write what you need to write\u2014when you read things in the news, write, when you feel a sense of justice, write. That usually puts a bit of urgency into the writing and makes the poems more resonant, so that when you\u2019re drinking a cup of tea, revising those passionate poems, you don\u2019t take out the passion, but you have some passion to work with and frame. I guess that Wordsworth covered this area long before I did, though.<\/p>\n
\nAs a parent and an academic, a working professor, how do you find or make time to write? Is it easy for you or always a struggle, as in some sort of \u201ccompromise\u201d?<\/p>\n
\nIt\u2019s always a struggle to find time for me because I\u2019m just a very busy person with two young children, but I think because I\u2019ve been writing since I was a child, it\u2019s like second nature to me. I think I\u2019m probably a person who would write in any circumstances\u2014in a jail or in a castle, in a factory or in an office. I can\u2019t imagine not being a writer and writers write.<\/p>\n
\nWho (or what) acts as your muse? Or, perhaps there\u2019s a particular subject you find you keep coming back to again and again?<\/p>\n
\nThe dead, the people who have struggled before us for social justice, the unborn, the people who will need our writing when we are dead. My themes usually center around the political\u2014I want to make poems that are both political and creative, that are political but not obvious rants or propaganda, that touch people, that make people think.<\/p>\n
\nIn your writing process, would you say you write more by logic (doing research, creating notes, etc.) or intuition, or some combination of the two?<\/p>\n
\nI go on intuition and sound always. I have an idea or an impulse and I just follow my gut. Sometimes it\u2019s wrong but more often than not it isn\u2019t. I think that this kind of leap of faith is what you have to really develop and nurture.<\/p>\n
\nAnything that people THINK they know about your poetry, that isn’t so?<\/p>\n
\nI don\u2019t spend a lot of time thinking about what people think about my poetry so, honestly, I have no idea.<\/p>\n
\nWhat projects are you working on at the present, and what subjects do you feel are calling you for future projects?<\/p>\n
\nI\u2019m working on an epic political poem called \u201cAtopia.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"