Author Archives: Laura Newbern
Ampersand Interview Series: L.I. Henley interviewed by Kelsie Doran
Checkout our latest interview in our Ampersand Interview Series with L.I. Henley
In the latest Ampersand Interview, Assistant Managing Editor, Kelsie Doran, spoke with L.I. Henley about Jim Morrison, pain, her dream car, upcoming projects, and her piece, “Drive! (You’re Lost Little Girl, You’re Lost)” which will be published in the forthcoming Arts & Letters Issue.
Kelsie Doran: First of all, us here at Arts & Letters are big Jim Morrison fans. Having Jim as a figure running throughout the piece was a fun fantasy treat; at what point in the writing process did you decide to bring Jim in?
L.I. Henley: I’m glad to hear that! The decision to include Jim as a kind of imaginary friend in the essay came early on. At seventeen I was completely enamored with Morrison’s sultry voice, transgressive lyrics (and those black leather pants!), and I really did imagine him as my co-pilot. When I sat down and began writing notes about the experience of driving as a young female on the desolate roads of the Mojave Desert at a time without cell phones, iPods, or helicopter parents, my mind immediately went to the music that kept me company. I thought about albums by the Talking Heads, Frank Zappa, The Dave Brubeck Quartet, David Bowie, Annie Lennox…all of which I raided from my mom and stepdad’s CD collection. But The Door’s self-titled debut and their second album, Strange Days, really captured the tone of my long drives to school and my failed searches for house parties across the impossibly dark mesa. The existential and mythological implications mixed with blues and psychedelic rock that made up The Doors’ early sound (“no safety or surprise/ the end”) captured the volatile desert (and the west at large) and foreshadowed the even stranger days of early adulthood that were coming my way.
KD: This piece is very vulnerable, was it harder to write the more personal scenes or was it therapeutic in some way?
LH: Well, anything truly therapeutic is probably going to feel like hard or even painful work at times. Pain is pleasure’s wrestling mate, I think. Physical therapy hurts, lifting weights hurts, accepting and telling the truth hurts—but hopefully we get some sense of relief as well. I believe that by being open in regards to having chronic illness I can make others feel less alone, that I can do my small part to challenge the stigma associated with invisible disabilities. I do think that there is strength in being vulnerable, and that the essay shows how the rugged environment of my childhood made me more resilient and self-reliant.
KD: Besides Jim Morrison, who else do you like to rock out to? Do you listen to any artists or albums specifically to get you into the writing mood?
LH: I’m still a big fan of all the performers I listed above, but my heavy rotation now includes Run the Jewels, Scissor Sisters, Puscifer, Die Antwoord, and other contemporary artists. I like to listen to Massive Attack and The Knife when I’m working on my visual art. I listened to Tool and Marilyn Manson when I was writing my desert noir novella, Whole Night Through. I’m currently working on a novel set in my hometown of Landers during the early 80’s, and I listen to what I think my UFO obsessed, up all night, down-and-out characters would listen to: Patti Smith, Shuggie Otis, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed.
KD: Where do you write most often? Do you like to have a specific writing space?
LH: When I’m working on an eco-poetic piece that is rooted in the experiential, I sit outside where I can observe and have experiences in real time and write about them in real time. I’ve written a few chapbooks sitting in the backyard of whatever desert house or cabin I was renting at the time, just going, “Oh, that jackrabbit is looking at me,” “Oh, that cricket lost a leg,” “Oh, the ants are devouring my toes.” But writing outside is not always practical (wind, sun, heat, fire ants on my feet) and I do find myself at my standing desk quite a lot, surrounded by corkboards covered in ephemera I’ve cut from Life Magazines and bookshelves full of field guides (which is where I am writing this right now).
KD: What/who inspires you to write the most?
LH: As an only child living in “the sticks,” I started writing stories and poems when I was old enough to read. I think it was partially because I wanted to feel less alone but also because I was critical of the world I saw and had a lot of opinions about the adult behavior that I couldn’t voice otherwise. I was born a critic, which makes me a true optimist, because I believe we can do better. My partner, JM, doesn’t necessarily inspire me to write but he does something better—he doesn’t get in my way. He is a dedicated percussionist and composer who is always cooking up something new; we both like to be in our work. He’s also a damn fine editor and has no problem giving me unbiased, no B.S. criticism.
KD: What would you tell someone who has just started their writing career?
LH: Well, I guess I’d have to ask the person what they mean by “career.” I once visited a graduate poetry class at USC and a student asked me what it was like for me financially now that I had “made it as a writer,” and my response was that I hadn’t gotten the memo that this was or could be true for me. If by “career” we are talking about a calling, a life’s work, an obsession, I’m more suited to give advice, but it’s not very fancy. Read as much contemporary writing in all genres as you can. Read work that is different from yours. Write as much as you can. If you can’t be content in life without writing, then you are a writer.
KD: We read about your first car – the used, white, Nissan Altima. But we are dying to know, what is your dream car if money wasn’t a factor?
LH: Great question! I’d love a fully electric car that still has some cargo space in it. A fully electric camper van—does that exist yet? I’d buy one of those. I have to say I’m pretty stoked on our used Dodge van we bought off Craigslist—my partner built a bed and drawers inside of it. There are even two small laptop desks that fold down off the double doors in the back so we can work and write on the road. When I have trouble falling asleep at night (i.e. the world currently being on fire) I just remember that we can live in our van with our dogs if we have to—and we may have to because we are both adjunct English professors who lost our classes for the spring semester due to low enrollment.
KD: What is next for your writing? Is there anything you can share about forthcoming projects or pieces?
LH: I am nothing if not prolific. I have a brand new eco-poetic chapbook out with symbolist painter Zara Kand called From the moon, as I fell, which was written during quarantine. Through our book sales, we are trying to raise money for the California Fire Foundation, which gives aid to families displaced by California wildfires. I am also sending around a collaborative chapbook manuscript I wrote with my best gal Jennifer K. Sweeney called The Book of Questions. I am still hoping to do some readings and interviews for Whole Night Through, which JM has made a soon-to-be released soundtrack for that includes the voices of Marsha de la O, Kristin Bock, James Cushing and other writers. I’m continuing to write personal essays centered on my experiences with autoimmune diseases and have another one forthcoming in the fall issue of Ninth Letter. I’m also working nearly every day on collage, erasure, mixed-media artwork.
L.I. Henley’s work has most recently appeared in Diagram, Waxwing, Tupelo, Diode, Zone 3, Tinderbox, The American Literary Review, Thrush, The Superstition Review, Ninth Letter, and The Indianapolis Review. “Drive! You’re Lost Little Girl, You’re Lost,” is part of a collection-in-progress documenting her struggles (and epiphanies) living with a triad of autoimmune diseases. She lives and teaches in the Mojave with her partner, musician and poet JM. Visit her at www.lihenley.com.
Arts & Letters Announces Judges for 2021 Prize Competition
23rd Annual Arts & Letters Prize Competition Judges Announced
2021 Prize Judges
Poetry: Romeo Oriogun
Romeo Oriogun is the author of Sacrament of Bodies (University of Nebraska Press) and The Origin of Butterflies, selected by Kwame Dawes for the APBF New-Generation African Poets Chapbook Series and Burnt Men, an electronic chapbook published by Praxis. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and others. He was the 2017 winner of the Brunel International African Poetry Prize. He has received fellowships from the Ebedi International Residency, Harvard University Department of English, The Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. He is currently an MFA candidate for poetry at Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Creative Non-Fiction: Kristi Coulter
Kristi Coulter is the author of the memoir-in-essays Nothing Good Can Come From This, a 2019 finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, New York Magazine, Elle, the Believer, Vox, Alaska Quarterly Review, Columbia Journal, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the University of Michigan and is a former Ragdale Foundation resident and a 2020 Mineral School Fellow. She has taught creative writing at the University of Washington and Hugo House. Kristi’s next memoir, Exit Interview, is forthcoming from MCD x FSG in 2022. She lives in Seattle with her husband and dogs.
Fiction: Novuyo Rosa Tshuma
Novuyo Rosa Tshuma is the author of the novel House of Stone, winner of the 2019 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award and the 2019 Bulawayo Arts Award for Outstanding Fiction, and listed for the 2019 Orwell Prize, the 2019 Dylan Thomas Prize, the 2019 Rathbones Folio Prize and the 2020 Balcones Fiction Prize. She has been invited to give public lectures about House of Stone at Oxford University, the Nordic Africa Institute and Vassar College. In 2017, she received the Rockefeller Foundation’s prestigious Bellagio Center Literary Arts Residency Award for her work. Her collection, Shadows, was published by Kwela in South Africa to critical acclaim and won the 2014 Herman Charles Bosman Prize. A native of Zimbabwe who has lived in South Africa and the USA, Tshuma’s writing has been featured in numerous anthologies, including McSweeney’s, Ploughshares and Swallowed by a Whale: How to Survive the Writing Life. She serves on the Editorial Advisory Board and is an editor at The Bare Life Review, a journal of refugee and immigrant literature based in San Fransisco. Tshuma teaches fiction at Emerson College, and has previously taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Ampersand Interview Series: Wes Civilz interviewed by Kelsie Doran
In the latest Ampersand Interview, Assistant Managing Editor, Kelsie Doran, spoke with Wes Civilz about his writing life behind the scenes, his upcoming projects, and his three poems: “First Thing,” “The Walk,” and “Interrupter” which were published in Arts & Letters Issue 40.
Kelsie Doran: We published three of your poems, “First Thing,” “The Walk,” and “Interrupter” in our 40th issue. Were all these poems written around the same time frame during your writing process?
Wes Civilz: “The Walk” and “Interrupter” were written in the same time frame, two or three years ago, when I was writing poems in six-line stanzas only. The idea was to give myself some limiting restraints for a bunch of short poems that were spilling out pretty spontaneously. For me these poems have a feeling of trying to be GIFs made of words. Like a short, quick video that is interesting to watch on a loop.
“First Thing” was written more recently, I think in the month before I submitted it to Arts & Letters. I like to write about the moon, because it has been written to death, and it is fun to see if you can wring anything out of it. In the past year or so I have been writing about the moon as a somewhat oppressive, animated thing that keeps tabs on me and judges me. This watchful, judgmental moon cropped up in “First Thing,” and also in a few other pieces of writing.
KD: The musicality within your poem, “The Walk,” is very soothing. Do you have any favorite songs or albums you turn to when needing inspiration to write?
WC: If you mean listening to music while writing, I’m one of those people who can’t have music playing while I write. It feels like trying to make a sand castle in a rainstorm. I do know a fair number of people who can’t write without music, however.
In terms of music being inspiring in a more general sense, I’ve been listening lately to John Coltrane’s amazing, insane album Ascension, and it has been inspiring my writing to become wilder, to jump the tracks, to unabashedly use commas wrong, to be abrasive and even “ugly.” I’m really inspired by how that album has a surface ugliness beneath which lies a great beauty.
KD: You mention Haruki Murakami in your poem, “Interrupter.” Do you read a lot of Japanese writers? Are there other cultures you draw inspiration from? If so, what are they?
WC: I wish I could say I’ve read a lot of Japanese writers! I’ve read a few of the usual suspects (and only in translation): Haruki Murakami, Bashō, Sei Shōnagon. There seems to be some sense of dignified orderliness, of spatial elegance, of what might be called the spiritual life of objects in Japanese writing. And in the visual art too. Whatever that vibe is, it fascinates me.
I am actively stressed by not being able to read a second language. I’ve always meant to learn to read Spanish and dive into all the Latin-American literature that is waiting out there. I haven’t done it yet. I feel sad about this.
KD: Where do you write most often? Do you like to have a specific writing space?
WC: Always my living room couch. Desks cause a creative paralysis in me, they seem to be looking at me and waiting for me to write. So I sit on my couch, with my laptop perched on a pillow in my lap. A mess of stuff accretes on the rest of the couch, books, pens, cell phone, charging cords, snail mail, hats, shirts. This mess can stay on the couch for quite a while, unless someone else wants to sit on it.
KD: A lot of your poems discuss everyday life, yet you make it exotic. Do you realize in the moment that it will become a poem or does the poem come to you later?
WC: I don’t have moments of “Aha, what’s happening right now will become a poem!” I like that idea, but it doesn’t seem to happen that way for me. That said, my poems do seem to be made mostly of concrete details from real life… but recollected later, sometimes years or decades later. Maybe the process is a little like how our dreams do their world-building from our memories. We can’t predict what will show up in a dream, but we can spot familiar places and props, if we pay attention.
KD: What/who inspires you most as a poet?
WC: The enigma of why the universe exists at all. The enigma cannot be solved, I am compelled to try to solve it with my tired brain and sleepy eyes, the enigma persists, it sustains me, it allows a life to be made around art. So for me writing is an obsession with wondering why the universe happened. And why we happen to be embedded in it.
KD: When did you first consider yourself a poet?
WC: Frank O’Hara’s writing made me into a poet in high school. I had a phase of reading some of his poems over and over, especially “The Day Lady Died,” and I felt uncomfortably and intoxicatingly emotional about them… then I found myself needing to write poems, and I wrote some, and that was that.
KD: What is next for your writing? Is there anything you can share about forthcoming projects or poems?
WC: The three poems that Arts & Letters kindly published are part of a manuscript I’m currently shopping around, titled Soap & Misunderstanding. I’m always fiddling with the current version, but hopefully a publisher will decide at some point that it has a “finishedness” to it, and hold me to that. Right now, most of my writing time is being spent on a book of nonfiction, a memoir about intoxication. Unlike a lot of writing about this subject, the book will explicitly not be about addiction; it is instead about the role that intoxication plays in the average functioning (or semi-functioning) person’s life.
Wes Civilz’s poetry has recently appeared in The Antioch Review, The Threepenny Review, New Ohio Review, and Quarterly West among others.