Ask the Author: Jennifer Perrine
Answered Questions (5)
Jennifer Perrine
There are too many sources of inspiration to name them all, so I'll just address the "Invocation" poems, which felt like signposts or touchstones as I was writing the rest of the book.
The idea for those came from reading Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints. I was struck by the way violence--especially what we'd now think of as gendered violence--kept showing up in the lives of female saints. I wanted to explore that, and I wanted to explore, too, the difference between the official record of their lives and what they might have said about their own experiences. I hope I imagined them with empathy, in a way that helps illuminate something about the lives of contemporary women and genderqueer people.
The idea for those came from reading Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints. I was struck by the way violence--especially what we'd now think of as gendered violence--kept showing up in the lives of female saints. I wanted to explore that, and I wanted to explore, too, the difference between the official record of their lives and what they might have said about their own experiences. I hope I imagined them with empathy, in a way that helps illuminate something about the lives of contemporary women and genderqueer people.
Jennifer Perrine
Read. Geek out on the books you love best. Memorize parts of them. Save some room to fall in love with other books, other genres, the ones you haven't met yet.
Learn how to do something crafty: knitting, gardening, carpentry. When writing feels like a mysterious, unending process, turn to your craftiness. "Aha," you will say as you look at that scarf, those pea vines, that deck. "That's what satisfaction feels like." Remember that feeling when you return to the writing that waits for you.
Treat writing like a scientific experiment. Accept that failure is part of the process, that failure gives you valuable information for the next experiment. Keep testing your hypotheses. Leave a trail of failure in your wake.
Be kind to yourself. Be kind to other writers. Just be kind, dang it.
Learn how to do something crafty: knitting, gardening, carpentry. When writing feels like a mysterious, unending process, turn to your craftiness. "Aha," you will say as you look at that scarf, those pea vines, that deck. "That's what satisfaction feels like." Remember that feeling when you return to the writing that waits for you.
Treat writing like a scientific experiment. Accept that failure is part of the process, that failure gives you valuable information for the next experiment. Keep testing your hypotheses. Leave a trail of failure in your wake.
Be kind to yourself. Be kind to other writers. Just be kind, dang it.
Jennifer Perrine
Imagine it as a cube, a bar, a brick that you can twist and shift like a Tetrimino. Fiddle with the block as you fall down the well with it. Maybe you'll find a place where the block fits, becomes useful. Maybe it will pile up with other blocks until, game over, you realize it's time to start something new.
Or: Imagine it as a clog, a clot, a knotty bit of traffic on the road of writing. Use it as an excuse to stop driving yourself so hard, to get out of the car and take a walk. Remember the video for "Everybody Hurts"? Do that.
Or: Imagine it as a clog, a clot, a knotty bit of traffic on the road of writing. Use it as an excuse to stop driving yourself so hard, to get out of the car and take a walk. Remember the video for "Everybody Hurts"? Do that.
Jennifer Perrine
Being a writer means I've got one more resource for enduring the challenges and suffering that life might throw at any of us. I won't say "poetry saved my life," which feels like an overstatement--my poems have never dragged me from burning buildings or performed emergency surgery or grabbed my wrist at the last minute, just before I fell over a cliff.
Except, of course, they have done all of those things, metaphorically. In the midst of systemic violence and injustice and hateful rhetoric, the process of writing gets the inferno of swirling anger out of my mind and onto the page. It helps to heal whatever fear I've let fester. It pulls me back from the brink of despair.
That's not the best thing, though. The best thing is when someone tells me that something I've written has helped them endure, helped them feel less alone. As Nikki Giovanni says, that's the true revolution.
Except, of course, they have done all of those things, metaphorically. In the midst of systemic violence and injustice and hateful rhetoric, the process of writing gets the inferno of swirling anger out of my mind and onto the page. It helps to heal whatever fear I've let fester. It pulls me back from the brink of despair.
That's not the best thing, though. The best thing is when someone tells me that something I've written has helped them endure, helped them feel less alone. As Nikki Giovanni says, that's the true revolution.
Jennifer Perrine
I'm not one to wait for inspiration to strike to write. I like to sit down with paper and pen and discover what happens.
However, I do feel inspiration pretty frequently, and when I do, I document it: jot it down in my notebook. Maybe I'll never use it in other writing, maybe I will, but I enjoy having a record of all the things that have sent a sizzle through me.
Life offers its fair amount of unsought inspiration. Listening to the news, reading, gardening, cooking, casual conversation--the sparks could fly at any moment.
On those rare occasions when inspiration seems in short supply, I turn to form. If I'm not sure what to write about, I experiment with the "how," trying out a poetic form or composition technique to find out what language and ideas it will bring up. Works like a charm every time.
However, I do feel inspiration pretty frequently, and when I do, I document it: jot it down in my notebook. Maybe I'll never use it in other writing, maybe I will, but I enjoy having a record of all the things that have sent a sizzle through me.
Life offers its fair amount of unsought inspiration. Listening to the news, reading, gardening, cooking, casual conversation--the sparks could fly at any moment.
On those rare occasions when inspiration seems in short supply, I turn to form. If I'm not sure what to write about, I experiment with the "how," trying out a poetic form or composition technique to find out what language and ideas it will bring up. Works like a charm every time.
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