Category: Interview

And Then You Find That the Poetry Teaches You: A Conversation with Don Share

Don Share became the editor of Poetry in 2013. His books of poetry are Wishbone (2012), Squandermania (2007), and Union (2013, 2002). He is the co-editor of The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of Poetry Magazine(2012), and editor of Bunting's Persia (2012) and a critical edition of Basil Bunting's poems (2016). He is the translator of Field Guide: Poems by Dario Jaramillo Agudelo (2012), Miguel Hernández (2013), and I Have Lots of Heart: Selected Poems by … Continue reading And Then You Find That the Poetry Teaches You: A Conversation with Don Share

Taking a Guitar and Trying to Make an Omelet with It: A Conversation with Adrian Matejka

This conversation took place on January 30, 2017 at Purdue University’s Brown Hall. Adrian Matejka was born in Nuremberg, Germany and grew up in California and Indiana. His first collection of poems, The Devil’s Garden (2003), won the 2002 New York / New England Award. His second collection, Mixology (2009), was a winner of the … Continue reading Taking a Guitar and Trying to Make an Omelet with It: A Conversation with Adrian Matejka

Writing YA: An Interview with Patricia Henley & Elizabeth Stuckey-French

Written by Natalie Lund Earlier this fall, I found out that Patricia Henley and Elizabeth Stuckey-French co-authored a young adult novel, Where Wicked Starts. I’ve always loved reading YA, but I was especially excited to hear about this publication because Henley and Stuckey-French have both been a part of my education as a writer. My first year in Purdue’s MFA … Continue reading Writing YA: An Interview with Patricia Henley & Elizabeth Stuckey-French

Witness & Scrutiny: An Interview with John W. Evans

John W. Evans’s memoir Young Widower (University of Nebraska Press, $19.95) begins with the author imagining his place in a bookshop’s self-help aisle. Here he finds the cloying jargon, the “wistful elders look[ing] out plaintively from dust jackets,” but nothing that resonates with his experience: his wife, Katie, was mauled by a bear while the couple … Continue reading Witness & Scrutiny: An Interview with John W. Evans

The Motor City & The Vehicle City: Talking to Mark Binelli in Flint, Michigan

In 1989, Michael Moore’s Roger & Me announced the death of the auto industry in my hometown, the birthplace of General Motors, Flint, Michigan. In the film, Moore travels back and forth from Flint to General Motor’s Detroit headquarters, demanding Chairman Roger Smith come confront Flint’s 30,000 unemployed auto workers. Unable to talk to Smith, … Continue reading The Motor City & The Vehicle City: Talking to Mark Binelli in Flint, Michigan

A Conversation with Poet A. E. Watkins: The Metamorphosis of a Manuscript

By David Blomenberg, Reviews Editor Moving from a collection of various poems to a book manuscript is a strange, intuitive, almost spooky process.  What brings a collection together?  Recently I sat down with poet A. E. Watkins to talk with him about the genesis and metamorphosis of the manuscript of his first book, Dear, Companion, … Continue reading A Conversation with Poet A. E. Watkins: The Metamorphosis of a Manuscript