Blog / Interviews

10 Questions for L.S. McKee

September 24, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

You hold my fists of loneliness
that clench the clumsy weight
of last ditch caresses. Beat into
your vinyl sheen is the pain I lug
to your altar to put the pain in
my hands:busted knuckle,
bound wrist, sprained heart,
—from "Alva and the Ode to a Punching Bag," Volume 61, Issue 2 (Summer 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I was a bookworm growing up, so I took a stab at writing a few “novels” in elementary school. One was called “Enemy Lovers,” which is hilarious to me on many levels. I probably got the idea from a vague understanding of Romeo and Juliet and—even more likely—my sneaky watching of soap operas after school. I also found several...

10 Questions for Kathleen Winter

September 21, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

The famished ermine trimming the patron’s coat

                        was meant as an emblem of wealth.

                                                           ...

10 Questions for Matt Rinaldi

September 15, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

The days had been dry, rainless.

And even without rain, there was green there, sprouting in the backyard.

That's what he was thinking about that day and what he was going to ask Dad when he got home. Why the green was sprouting there, right in front of the step where he was sitting in the backyard.
—from "Keeping Time" by Maria José Silveira, Translated by Matthew Rinaldi, Volume 61 Issue 2, (Summer 2019)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
Years back I translated excerpts of Roberto Piva’s poetry...

10 Questions for Jennifer Sperry Steinorth

September 9, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

When one braids together
a horse
and a fence

it isn't pretty:
mangle of mane and wire, twisted legs
cedar splints. Once

on a hill
in a far country
I watched some horses across a dust road
—from "Range," Volume 61, Issue 2 (Summer 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Hmmm. One piece, back in undergrad, I remember clearly. I was studying with Diane Wakoski; her workshop method was unusual. Each week we passed around copies of our new poems and read them aloud without comment, while she took notes. After, we watched as she arranged the poems from “best” to “worst”; then we workshopped in that order—“best” to “worst...

10 Questions for Tess Lewis

September 8, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

You must go to Brno to see the rain. There are writers who have written almost exclusively about Brno and almost exclusively about what it's like when it rains there. Brno in the rain is a sadder place than anywhere else in the world, but in a less personally inflected way: the Brno rain washes sadness clean of all private elements, of all despondency and dejection, until it is nothing but immaculate, essential sadness.
—from "The Rain of Brno: Ivan Blatný and the Moravian Portuguese Poet," by Karl-Markus Gauss, Translated by Tess Lewis, Volume 61, Issue 2 (Summer 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
The first book I translated was Peter Handke’s...