Hello fiendish ones!
Today in the MADHOUSE we're going on a witch hunt with author, Juliet Escoria. Juliet is the author of the short story collection Black Cloud, which was originally published in 2014 by Civil Coping Mechanisms, and in 2015, Emily Books published the ebook, Maro Verlag published a German translation, and Los Libros de la Mujer Rota published a Spanish translation. Witch Hunt, a collection of poems, was published by Lazy Fascist Press in May 2016. She was born in Australia, raised in San Diego, and currently lives in West Virginia.
Last month, I read Juliet's collection, Witch Hunt, and I really enjoyed the raw honesty that is her voice. Her poems are straight-forward, without any sugar coating, and I loved how raw the collection as a whole came off. Great read-- definitely recommend it. But while you're purchasing her book, let's learn a little bit more about our poet.
While burning at the stake,
Stephanie M. Wytovich
WYTOVICH: Tell us about your poetry
collection. What inspired you to write it and how did you go about doing so,
i.e. what was your thought process/research like?
ESCORIA: I was trying to write a novel and
it wasn’t going well—I felt confused and lost and insecure about my writing.
Lucy K. Shaw asked me for a contribution for The
Re-Up issue of
Shabby Doll House, so I decided to write a few poems. They came to me quickly,
and the process of writing them was really fun, which reminded me of a lesson I
learned while writing my story collection Black
Cloud – I write because it’s enjoyable. If the act of writing is more
struggle than not, the work suffers and it means I’m doing something wrong. So
I decided to do something impractical, which is put the novel on hold and write
a poetry collection in the meantime. My husband, Scott McClanahan, and I had
been joking that poetry isn’t real writing and that a poetry collection could
be written in a month, so I decided to try and write it as fast as I could. Every
day, I’d go into my office space for an hour or four, and write as many poems
as I could in that time. It ended up taking longer than a month – I worked on
it solid for around three, and then fiddled with it for a few months more after
that. It was a really enjoyable experience. There’s something freeing about
poetry, I guess because you are only juggling so many pieces.
WYTOVICH: How did you come up with the name
for the collection?
ESCORIA: I started writing the book in
November of 2014, which was in the middle of Alt Lit-gate. I was disappointed in what
happened with that—it seemed like what started as a very important conversation
quickly dissolved into sensationalism, a conservative take on female sexuality,
and a minimization of the important work female writers had done under the
guise of Alt Lit—so the term ‘witch hunt’ was fresh in my mind while I was
writing the poems. I have a picture drawn by Carabella
Sands above my
desk of a witch burning at the stake, and one of the poems in the
collections references witch hunts. It seemed like a fitting title for a number
of reasons.
WYTOVICH: In regards to your writing
process, what do you find is the hardest part? The most enjoyable?
ESCORIA: Waiting is the hardest part. I’m
an impatient person. I get frustrated that writing takes so goddamn long. The
most enjoyable is maybe the third or fifth go-around on a draft, when I’m doing
the ‘embroidery’ – making sure the language sounds how I want it to sound,
cutting out unnecessary words, and the like.
WYTOVICH: Who are some of your influences in
the genre? Do you have any writing rituals that you tend to follow either
before/during/or after you write?
ESCORIA: As far as poetry goes, I was
influenced by Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit.
While I was writing Witch Hunt, I was
exchanging poetry with Elizabeth Ellen (whose collection Elizabeth Ellen will be published shortly – it’s amazing) and her
work influenced me as well. Noah Cicero sent me a draft of his collection Bipolar Cowboy in the writing process,
and that also affirmed what I wanted to do with my book.
As far as writing in
general: Scott McClanahan, Mary Gaitskill, Denis Johnson, Dennis Cooper, Grace
Paley, Amy Hempel, Lucia Berlin, Joan Didion.
Rituals: When I’m
having a hard time, I light a candle and some incense before I start for the
day. I like to listen to music. The last thing I do before I ‘finish’ a piece
of work is change the font and spacing, then print it out and read it aloud.
I’m very partial to writing on my desk—it’s hard for me to write anywhere else,
although sometimes I do fine edits on the couch.
WYTOVICH:
What books are sitting in your TBR pile?
ESCORIA: The
Outsiders is a
re-read—I’ve loved SE Hinton since I was a child. The Michael Connelly is a
not-so-guilty pleasure—my dad gave me this book for Christmas, and he’s one of
the few writers we both like. Proof of
the Spirit World I got for free from the local antique mall. It’s from the
‘20s and I am hoping it is haunted.
WYTOVICH: What is next in store for your
readers?
ESCORIA: I finished the draft of the novel that was giving me trouble and sent it to my agent a couple weeks ago. I’m hoping it’s not too awfully
long before publication. It’s a fictional account of my teenage years, when I
was having a lot of problems, and contains pictures and scans of old documents.
Some of the documents are forged.
WYTOVICH: If you could give one piece of
advice to new writers, what would it be?
ESCORIA: Nobody will miss your writing, so
only pursue it if you can’t NOT write. Otherwise, do something more useful with
your time, like studying engineering or cleaning your bathtub.
Book
Summary: The
much-anticipated full-length poetry collection by the critically acclaimed
author of Black Cloud, Witch Hunt delves into the terror and
beauty that occurs when love, madness, and addiction collide.
Promotional links:
Review
of Witch Hunt at Electric Literature
Notes on Witch Hunt at HTMLGIANT
Excerpt
of Witch Hunt at the Fanzine
No comments:
Post a Comment