Interviewed by Christopher Barton nonFiction editor at Chaotic Merge
Christopher Barton: How did the creation of “no Expiration Date” help you to work through the emotions involved with these tough topics?
Harris PlesKovitch: It’s difficult to say what came first, the “okayness” or the essay. I first started this piece in September of 2020 and I think we can all relate to the blur that year was. But one thing I can say for sure is that emotions are hard. We have, across all languages, so many words to describe emotions and yet so often we fall short. Language is one of those things where we’re just trying to put a descriptor that mostly fits onto something that we can rarely fully describe. But sitting with those emotions long enough to try to put the words to it is a very healing process.
Christopher Barton: Was there any part of the essay that got left on the cutting room floor? Looking back, is there anything else you wished you’d included in “no Expiration Date”?
Harris PlesKovitch: Some days I’m still conflicted as to whether or not I should have included another thread: a blue balloon. It was something I held on to from a memorial service that some friends had put together after Brannon’s viewing. We filled some cobalt blue balloons with helium and wrote messages for him on them in permanent marker. Other balloons we just blew up ourselves and scattered them across my friend’s living room floor. It was an event full of smiles, remembering good times. We wanted the feel of having one last party. Then we went outside and let them go while listening to his favorite song (an environmental catastrophe, but we were just kids).
I remember coming home with one of the floor balloons and putting it on the dining room table. My little brother tried to play with it and my mom, without saying what had happened, gently told him that was a special balloon that wasn’t for playing. The balloon held a spot next to the coupon for the longest time, eventually deflating and blue latex is permanently stuck to a few of those mentioned knickknacks. But in the end I decided that those things would distract from and minimize the coupon, and in extension the title.
Christopher Barton: What lesson or advice would you pass on to your fellow writers about writing through possibly traumatic past experiences?
Harris PlesKovitch: You don’t have to push yourself to write the perfect piece that tells all of it at once. There’s more to the story. There’s always more to your story. You don’t have to broadcast the whole thing to the world. Even if you wanted to, you really can’t fit it all into one piece. Just give enough to convey what you’re trying to say, without betraying your truth.
It’s okay to take breaks from writing the piece. It’s okay to have conflicting feelings, and it’s okay to have changing feelings. Originally the last line of this essay ended with “and I am okay.” But this isn’t always the truth of the matter. I still have days where I’m not okay. Especially around this time of year. Don’t limit your piece to how you feel in your first draft.
And most importantly: there isn’t a “right” way to grieve or process traumatic experiences.
Christopher Barton: Was the Chili’s coupon always the central image for this essay, or did you come up with the connection through the process of writing the piece?
Harris PlesKovitch: It was always the central image. I originally wrote this essay for an intro to nonfiction class. My professor challenged us to use an item as a central piece in a memoir. I think right away I said to myself “I’m writing about Brannon and his coupon.” Obviously, I failed in the memoir aspect, but luckily I had a professor who didn’t believe in forcing a piece to be what we originally set out to write.
Who is Harris PlesKovitch?
Harris is a Creative Writing BFA graduate. Their work explores the darker aspects of the human experience, venturing into the shadows and largely unacknowledged depths of humanity. It’s been described as grimly realistic and “discomfort on a silver platter.”
Interviewed by Lassiter Jamison Fiction editor at Chaotic Merge
Lassiter Jamison: Do you have any upcoming projects or pieces you’re working on?
Alec Evan March: My main project for the past couple of years has been a novel, which I worked on diligently throughout the summer of its conception but, due to university responsibilities and life getting in the way, haven’t managed to complete. My schedule’s a lot less busy now, however, so my main goal for 2024 is to finally push myself to finish it. It’s about two former boyfriends reconnecting almost three years after one of them had mysteriously run away and it explores how long a secret can be kept and how, for all our efforts, it is impossible to make it out of adolescence and young adulthood without hurting the ones closest to us. The characters are both very dear to me and I’m excited to work on their story again. In the meantime, I might also work on a Southern gothic horror novel I’m a third of the way through writing, a look at late-2000s supernatural teen shows and books through a queer, deconstructionist lens. I may even write a short story or two, kind of like a palette cleanser, since I’ve always been unable to do just one thing at a time. Still, I have to prioritize the project I’m most enthusiastic about.
Lassiter Jamison: If you could have any story of yours adapted, which one would you pick and why?
Alec Evan March: Any and all of them. I have a lot of respect for all forms of art so an adaptation of any kind would be a great honor. I would of course first want to ensure the person adapting the story had sufficient understanding of its nuances and I would want them to be someone I can trust, but I would love to see any of the projects I’m working on or the ones I’ve planned for the future adapted. If I absolutely had to pick one, I guess it’d have to be the aforementioned horror novel. I think its imagery, as well as its larger cast and interconnected storylines, would translate well into a TV show if the right people were handling it. But that book is far from done so any thoughts of adaptation are just a daydream for the moment.
Lassiter Jamison: Some stories change a lot from first draft to completion. What was the process of writing “Casualties” like for you?
Alec Evan March: I follow the controversial practice of editing as I go so most of the changes implemented were part of the drafting process itself. I wrote “Casualties” in the span of either a week or a month a year and a half ago. I had just broken up and, for whatever reason, the line about finding someone with the exact same nose as your ex stuck with me. I thought it was an interesting predicament, though a completely fictional one. The rest of the story was born out of my mental state at the time, namely my fears of never getting over my first love, and that first line. In hindsight, a story about grief as a response to a peaceful breakup is a tad dramatic, and I can admit it now that I’ve moved on, but at the time it really did feel like the end of the world! In any case, “Casualties” was created line by line, with no real plan in mind. I would go back and fix stuff as I came up with new ideas along the way. The experience provided a welcome and refreshing break from the relatively arduous process of novel writing, which for me includes painstakingly detailed planning. I wrote another draft after it was accepted for publication, but even that didn’t include any radical changes, being focused instead on some necessary clarity edits.
Lassiter Jamison: What sort of feeling would you like readers to come away with after reading “Casualties“?
Alec Evan March: I gave up on writing with an audience in mind a long time ago. My perfectionism is debilitating so writing to please myself is hard enough. Writing with the pleasure of other, unknown-to-me people in mind would be impossible. My main hope is that readers have found the story engaging. If it also succeeded in making them feel something, anything, then I’m overjoyed. Transmission of feelings you can’t quite put your finger on or name is the main goal of everything I write.
Who is Alec Evan March?
Alec Evan March is a writer and literature student from Athens, Greece, as well as a cautionary tale about what happens when one internalizes a few too many Mitski lyrics at a tender age. He is currently at work on his first novel, which is to be released (at this pace) sometime in the next three decades. Hopefully. Fingers crossed.
Interviewed by Lassiter Jamison Fiction editor at Chaotic Merge
Lassiter Jamison: If you could have any story of yours adapted, which one would you pick and why?
Lori D’Angelo: I think I’d choose “I Met Death at the Patteson Drive Kroger,” which is a story that I wrote years ago and which was recently reprinted in Bulb Culture Collective because I feel like it would lend itself well to adaptation. It’s a story about a woman who meets the Grim Reaper at a local grocery store. Here’s a link to that story: https://www.bulbculturecollective.com/read/i-met-death-at-the-patteson-drive-kroger-lori-dangelo
Lassiter Jamison: Do you have any upcoming projects or pieces you’re working on?
Lori D’Angelo: I’m working on a novel about two people who fall in love. But she doesn’t know that he’s an important and powerful businessman, and he doesn’t know about her family’s dark past. At one point, I thought it was going to involve time travel, but I think that it may just be a more traditional love story. I’m also working on a murder mystery short story that involves a psychic pairing with a police detective to try to find a killer. I’m also working on a short story about a girl with sword hands. Generally, I tend to be working on a whole bunch of things at once.
Lassiter Jamison: “When Your Sister Went Poltergeist” has a supernatural premise but also holds a more human day-to-day element in its center which is the main focus of the piece. Is this typical of your work and if not, what inspired this departure?
I’ve written another flash piece about a group of people finding a body in the water, but to their surprise the body isn’t dead and how they respond to that: Unearthed – Lori D’Angelo (twinbirdreview.com)
I’ve written a story about a woman who is visited by a Christmas Gnome:
One of the cool things about writing fiction is that you can ask the question of what if and go wherever the story takes you.
For this particular story, I just started thinking about how the girl in the movie Poltergeist was sucked into the TV and what would happen if that occurred in real life, especially if the person who got sucked into the TV never returned.
Lassiter Jamison: Within the story there’s a sort of ambivalence to the main character regarding their sister’s spiriting away. Was this a deliberate choice on your end and if so, why?
Lori D’Angelo: I guess I just started thinking about sibling tensions and family rivalries and also in the situation described in the story it would be so weird that you would kind of have to find a way to make the best of it. I feel like the expected emotion would be sadness, but really it would likely be more complicated than that especially since siblings don’t always get along.
Who is Lori D’Angelo?
Lori D’Angelo (she/her) is a grant recipient from the Elizabeth George Foundation and an alumna of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. Recent work has recently appeared in Beaver Magazine, Blood Moon Rising, Bullshit Lit, Idle Ink, JAKE, Litmora, One Art Poetry Journal, and Wrong Turn Lit. Find her on Twitter @sclly21 or Instagram and Threads at lori.dangelo1.
Interviewed by Kirry Kaufer POETRY editor at Chaotic Merge
Kirry Kaufer: “Myofascial Trigger Point” is very in tune with time. “I wake up past four p.m.,” and ”a gesture to my ___ beats per minute” stand out in particular. How would you say time relates to your writing?
Court Ludwick: I am constantly frustrated with time. And I suppose that frustration comes out in my writing. Time, or at least the arrow of time, and the way we use time, feels so steady, so irreversible—which you might think brings comfort—but I find that it brings me the opposite. How can anything be so steady? Is the universe not scared, moving forward like that? I love your question. It pulls me in so many directions.
I suppose my problem is that I don’t know what to do with time. When we’re talking about hyperobjects, time is technically one part of the equation, but it also feels like the biggest hyperobject to me. It’s on a scale I don’t have access to. It is the scale I don’t have access to. “Myofascial Trigger Point” is very much in conversation with questions surrounding time, as well as the anxiety accompanying questions not so easily resolved.
Okay. So stars burn out. The nuclear fuel they have is limited. And I’m scared I’m more like a star than not. But I also think about how moments that seem to have passed haven’t, not really. Is memory our attempt to reverse the directional quality of time? I don’t know. Linearity swallows me up when I would rather fall into a black hole’s liquid belly. (Moving on!)
Kirry Kaufer: The anatomical references you use are very intriguing—“there’s a crick in my neck,” “skin and bone, skin and sinew, skin and self,” and “a stiffness unwound by knuckles” are a few in particular that stand out. Is there a particular writing exercise you use to produce such sensory language?
Court Ludwick: Yeah, there’s a kind of friction here that I was going for. My work is concerned with the body so often, too. I wish I had a better answer, but I think I’m just hyperaware of my own body. How it exists in the world. How my imagining of myself is inevitably different from others’ perceptions of me. And there’s such a strangeness in those gaps. Also in realizing difference like that is a thing that not only exists but is a given, and will always be. These are questions my forthcoming book asks, maybe answers, probably just complicates.
I’m not sure I have any exercises, exactly, but art is something I turn to when language isn’t coming as easy. I’m loving H.G. Schiavon’s abstract bodies, that work, right now. And Amanda Wall is a forever favorite. Her work distorts in the best ways. Other writers, too, as often as I can. I’m rereading Atul Gawande’s Complications for a class I’m teaching—a book very much in dialogue with the body, the handling of bodies.
There are a few prompts I give my students, ones I’ve also used, that I like. Bhanu Kapil’s “Twelve Questions” is a great one. Imposing certain constraints on yourself is another. It can be interesting to see how different people navigate the same limitations. Say you can’t use a word, or an image, that you typically gravitate toward. Say you can’t use tactile imagery and, instead, have to rely on the other senses. Things like that. All a prompt is, is a limit. I find that the best prompts are aware of this.
Lately, I’ve been leaning into visual stuff. So yeah, the art. Pulling up a painting, a sculpture, an exhibit, and letting students create from that visual place is a fun time. Last semester, my students absolutely fell in love with Yayoi Kusama’s “You Who Are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies.” Being hands on, too, helps me. Crop rotating, I saw that somewhere recently. Like when you paint one night instead of writing another poem. Collage is something I’m starting to do more. I destroyed an old anatomy textbook the other day.
Kirry Kaufer: What type of feeling would you like readers to leave with after reading this poem? Are there questions you would like this poem to raise? How does the intended effect of “Myofascial Trigger Point” differ from your other works?
Court Ludwick: I don’t think there’s any one feeling I’d like readers to have after reading this poem, my work. I’m happy if readers feel anything at all. We don’t feel enough these days. And we really should. But I think people ignore things. Too often.
I suppose I want readers uncomfortable. I want everyone more unsettled. There’s a genocide happening right now in Palestine, but who is confronting their complicity in that? In the violence we all are part of? Why shouldn’t we sit with that? If we have a moment of pain, or even the slightest discomfort in the body, why are we so quick to rid ourselves of the pain without figuring out the underlying cause? Foot asleep? Shake it away. Child death? Agree to round up your drive thru total for that one charity and then you’re good. Free to go buy another Stanley cup or whatever because you deserve it, you’re a Good Person. I want this poem, and all my work really, to make readers feel something besides that numb. What happens if we sit with those feelings that are widely considered “negative”? What happens if we lean into that, rather than run away?
I really like the last part of this question, how “Myofascial Trigger Point” differs from my other works. I’m not sure that my intent is any different, but I’d say this poem differs in other ways. It’s concerned with similar things, for sure—the body, states of anxiety, that feeling of discomfort and existing in-between the moment when you notice your discomfort and the moment when you try to make that feeling go away, feeling a certain apart-ness from oneself, from others, from certain constructs that seem illogical—but I think this work is more reflective? More aware? Honestly, for me, some of my other work feels less controlled. Not in a bad way either. But more chaotic, as opposed to “Myofascial.” There’s a restraint here that I quite like. And I think that restraint make this piece sit at some kind of halfway point, a point after the pain but before the fix, the sigh of relief. Is it something closer to a held breath?
Kirry Kaufer: How would you describe your feeling upon receiving a Pushcart Prize nomination? Did you expect this poem to be nominated?
Court Ludwick: Ecstatic. Truly. But, as far as expectations go, I try to limit those. Still, it’s impossible to never expect anything, right? Even so, no, I did not expect this piece to be nominated. When I write, and later submit my work, things like this aren’t in my mind. I write for the same reason why any writer does, we have a compulsion to, we can’t not write. And I submit my work because, well, why do we ever open our mouths to speak? Because we want to be heard? Because we want someone else to listen? And then, why do we listen?
It is such a lovely thing, though, to realize people are reading my poetry. Writing can be such an isolating act, so it’s great when people connect with your words. I think that’s something everyone wants, yeah? Even if you aren’t a “writer,” whatever that means, we all want someone to listen when we have something to say. Writing is how I attempt to understand my own thoughts. Having someone connect with my writing, listen and engage, that’s someone attempting to understand part of me too. Usually, it’s someone attempting to understand a part of me that I don’t even understand. That’s so fucking lovely. That’s one of the reasons why I fell for poetry in the first place.
I’ll say it like this: writing a poem is like taking a blade and slicing off a tiny part of yourself and then chucking it over your shoulder and hoping someone reaches out and catches it and holds it for a while, takes care of this tiny fragment of you that is confused and scared and screaming for someone to get it. As a reader, you hold fragments of other people for a little while, too.
Who is Court Ludwick?
Court Ludwick is a writer, artist, and educator currently pursuing her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing. She is the author of These Strange Bodies (ELJ Editions, 2024) and the founding editor-in-chief of Broken Antler Magazine. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Poetry South, West Trade Review, Oxford Magazine, Full House Literary, Archetype, and elsewhere. Find her on socials @courtludwick. Find more of her work at www.courtlud.com.
Interviewed by BRITT TRACHTENBERG POETRY Managing editor at Chaotic Merge
BrittTrachtenberg: What was your writing experience while creating your poem To The Mother of My Abuser? And how does your writing and revision journey differ from your other works?
Taylor Franson-Thiel: This poem was a unique one in the sense that it went through very few revisions. I actually had the dream where my abusive ex partner was driving while my head was out the sunroof of my old jeep in the middle of a hurricane and woke up to write the poem. I had the line “when I think of your son’s hands” in my mind for a while before I actually wrote this poem, so when I woke up it flowed out of me in one draft and other than a few words here or there I didn’t change much.
Usually I workshop my poems with either someone from my old or current cohort, or I write them then set them aside for a while and come back to them to “mine” them for images or fully revise them. It’s very rare that I have a poem that stays in its original version like this. My first drafts are typically just generating images that I like that I can come back to and use when I have a better poem for them to live in.
BrittTrachtenberg: Your poem starts with a quote by Warsan Shire. How did you choose this quote? Did it come first or after the creation of the poem?
Taylor Franson-Thiel: This epigraph came after the poem had been written but very shortly after. I read the collection “Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth” soon after writing the poem and felt like it was a little bit of fate and immediately added the quote. I am a huge fan of epigraphs and the way they put poems in conversation with each other. I think over half of my poems come with some kind of epigraph because I am always so inspired by other authors.
I appreciated the way Shire wrote about their mother and being a woman dealing with abusive men. I think adding this quote to a poem that addresses the mother of my abuser was very important to helping the poem feel finished. Choosing it felt very easy and I love the tension between setting yourself on fire before “the men” can get to you, rather than drowning in their actions like I do in the poem. Shire is a wonderful author and truly on a subconscious level I think including this quote was my way of hoping that one day I could write like her. I hope the epigraph encourages readers to go read Shire as well.
BrittTrachtenberg: The poem ends with such an impactful line: “He used to say I reminded him of you?” Why did you decide to end this poem with this line?
Taylor Franson-Thiel: In a very real and very petty way I think I imagined him reading this and I wanted him to hurt just a little. Which is sad now that I think about it, but very real to my feelings as I wrote the poem.
When I think about how men become abusers I think about their relationship with their mother and how or what may have caused them to become like that. I actually love my abuser’s mother, and I know he loves her too. It feels very heavy that he was willing to hurt me, but that I reminded him of her. There was a sense that I needed to write that line out of me so I could set down that grief.
I also wonder a lot about if she knows. I imagine that she doesn’t and that also makes me feel sad inside. So I think all of that, and all of my above answers came together in a poem that feels very honest and heavy. But I needed it to exist outside of my body so that I didn’t have to hold it anymore. I’m married now (to a wonderful and different man) and I appreciate that this poem allowed me to heal so I could be a better partner now.
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Who is Taylor Franson-Thiel?
Taylor Franson Thiel is a writer from Utah, now based in Fairfax, Virginia. She received her Master’s in creative writing from Utah State University and is pursuing an MFA at George Mason University. Her writing frequently centers on playing as a Division One basketball player, the body, and mental health. Along with writing, she enjoys lifting heavy weights and reading fantastic books. You can find her on twitter @TaylorFranson
Interviewed by Emily Townsend Nonfiction Managing editor at Chaotic Merge
Emily Townsend: What’s so great about this essay is that AIM can emulate any other universal messaging platform, but the timeframe here instantly sets up nostalgia and relatability. What inspired you to use AIM as the vehicle of this essay?
Erica Hoffmeister: Well, first, simply because that’s how it all actually happened, so it wouldn’t have existed without AIM. But this experience has always stuck out, as it was my first singular memory of actually using AIM. There wasn’t the concept of cyberbullying, or even catfishing, really, the dangers of the internet still just a vague warning that drew more curiosity than caution, so it still felt so… innocent and fun. AIM was literally allowing us to pass notes outside of school—wild! I think our relationship with technology defines our lives and culture so much now, both social media as well as just a means for communication and information, that it’s impossible to not trace that lineage back to the beginning, when something like AIM was so novel. So, I found it interesting to frame the internet (and really social media in its infancy) as still this cornerstone of the coming of age experience, even twenty-plus years ago. Like, it’s different now, but it’s also exactly the same. Chat rooms, AIM, Napster—we want to pretend like it was all VHS rentals, riding bikes and landlines, but tech still defines millennial teen nostalgia. We all have our embarrassing first AIM anecdotes.
Emily Townsend: The transformation from high school to college is swift and a total shift—the “neon string bikini [traded] for something black, something badass, something new to pretend to be.” Do you think without the experience of AIM, would you have such a drastic change?
Erica Hoffmeister: That’s a great question, actually. I wouldn’t say this was the only experience that evolved me to think of myself and my body in that way, but it was definitely the first concrete one, and so arguably the catalyst. Could even be considered the inciting incident in my coming of age narrative arc, honestly. It felt different than other moments because it was unerasable; even then, in the early 00s, there was a sort of existential understanding that the internet was forever because there was no tangible evidence to destroy. Which was terrifying at the time, even though it was just a dumb prank. There was no hiding the shame that I got tricked, that my reputation changed overnight. And I think it did harden me in a way when it comes to trusting people (especially online) that I’m not sure ever went away. It also stresses me out thinking that cyberbullying and things like revenge porn is par for the course during adolescence now. At least I’ll have slightly funny cautionary tale to share with my girls once they get to that age, I guess?
Emily Townsend: “Before emergencies were ever that urgent” is an amazing line that further intensifies the nostalgia. What do you miss most during this young age?
Erica Hoffmeister: The passage of time. It felt so slow at that age, which I know is also due to how we process time passing as our brains are still developing. But I also think it’s a cultural shift due to how we use technology—everything now instant, easy. Speaking to someone across the world, retrieving random facts from a quick Google search, receiving groundbreaking news. And to try and refrain from sounding like Old Man Yelling At Cloud, I will clarify I don’t think all of that as intrinsically negative; but I do miss those long stretches of time when literally nothing would happen. Time would move so, so slow. Can you imagine an entire weekend with no messages from friends, no emails from work, no international news? Not even a phone call from the librarian about a research question I’d left her with the previous week?! I loved it because in those periods of non-event, I’d have time all to myself. I mean, don’t you miss how bored you used to be? How quiet the world could get? As a teenager during those lulls of activity, I’d just… walk alone for hours. Find a big boulder to climb in the hills behind my house, lay there and stare at the sky. Maybe I’d have my Walkman, or a journal, or a book, but most of the time I’d just lay there, listen to time passing daydreaming (I never wore a watch, so did I even know what time it was?). Or I’d lay on the floor in my room at night, door locked, and stare at the ceiling while a bootleg CD played on repeat. Nothing was urgent because it couldn’t be. We had time all to ourselves. And I know that’s also just an adult thing to miss being bored, but I do feel sorry for kids and teens now who have no idea what escape or alone really feels like. The closest thing I have to that now is when I go on my weekly long runs –notifications on my phone turned off– so I have to physically earn that hour or two to myself and let time and the outside world disappear to be alone with my thoughts. Of course, even then, I’m most likely listening to my favorite Buffy the Vampire Slayer podcast, so even nostalgia-obsessed me can’t totally turn it all off.
Emily Townsend: What’s coming up for you? Any new writing projects in nonfiction, or changing it up with a different genre?
Erica Hoffmeister: Always a million different things going! If there are writers that can dial into one project or genre at a time and barrel through it with laser focus until it’s finished, I’m certainly not one of them. So, I’m usually working on projects for years at a time, chipping away at one or the other week to week. I write across genres, so any time I get stuck in one, I just pivot to something else so I’m always still writing something. Next year is one of those years where a few things wrapped up all at once. I have my third collection of hybrid poetry/prose coming out in the summer titled All the Parts You Haven’t Lost, from ELJ Editions, which chronicles my experience of early motherhood with super light (ha) themes like mental illness and postpartum depression. I just finished up with the final stages of my novella-length memoir about religious trauma and abuse, If You Loved Me, You Would, that I’ll be pitching and sending out in the coming months (fingers crossed). I’m also working on some scholarly research on generational nostalgia and millennial cult cinema that I just submitted a research proposal for, which I’m simultaneously working into my ongoing creative nonfiction. “How To Be Catfished Over AIM” is actually one of a full collection of memoir-in-essays that I’ve been slowly writing since 2020, tentatively titled Nostalgia Disease, full of coming of age, nostalgia-tinged recollections. I’m about 2/3 through my planned essays, so I’m hoping to finally finish writing the last handful next year! Oh, and one day, I’m going to finish rewriting that YA horror novel manuscript. Eventually.
Who is Erica Hoffmeister?
Erica Hoffmeister was born and raised in the fragrant orange groves of Southern California and now lives in Denver where she teaches creative writing and rhetoric. A multi-genre writer, she is the author of three hybrid/poetry collections: Roots Grew Wild (Kingdoms in the Wild Press, 2019), Lived in Bars (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), and the forthcoming All the Parts You Haven’t Lost (ELJ Editions, 2024). She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, thrice for Best of the Net, and has earned several other finalist spots across genres, with a variety of short fiction, memoir, poetry, and critical essays published. As an independent scholar, her research focuses on horror cinema, pop culture studies, generational nostalgia, and Gothic literature, all of which she works into her creative writing. She’s obsessed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, cross-country road trips, and her two wildling daughters. Learn more at:
Interviewed by Britt Trachtenberg Managing Poetry Editor at Chaotic Merge
Britt Trachtenberg: Can you describe your writing process, starting with a draft?
Renee Keele: To write poems I must be inspired, and often I go through long droughts where my muse is missing. When looking for inspiration I will read poetry, mainly from contemporary artists, or look to nature. The Arizona landscape often provides me with a starting point whether it be the sunrise, or a dust storm. From there I have learned to just write, not worry about form or any “rules” but let my fingers fly. Next, I will go back and look at what shape I want the poem crafted in. If I want a line limit, a sound, or to follow any other poetry rule I will go back and create that flow. Lastly, I will look at every end line and make sure each line ends how I envision it.
BT: How do your writing and revision practices differ?
RK: Writing is a stream of consciousness practice, revisions are nitpicky, like surgery. Revisions are where the magic happens, every word is looked at, erased, added back, changed and flipped until the poem sings. Often it can be painful, but I honestly love revising. I enjoy the hunt of finding just the right word at the perfect line. It might take an hour to write out a poem, yet months or even years to revise it.
BT: How do prose-poetry and enjambment motifs contribute to themes within your poems?
RK: I took an online class about enjambment and fell in love with the technique. It creates this hanging in space air to the words and each line. Forces the reader to pause and linger on the line a bit more and question why the poet places those words there like that. I tend to like to tell stories with my poems and the proseish style tends to lend a helping hand with my style.
BT: In the third line of “Undone,” you use a hyphen. Some lines feature enjambment. How does the end-stop pause affect the poem?
RK: I feel grief is a stop and pause journey. It’s also a journey that really never fully ends. I wanted the reader to connect to the piece in an intimate way, to engage as if it was also their journey, all the while knowing full well this was my journey. Many times we put our grief on hold, both unconsciously and consciously, and as I wrote I wanted that to come through with my end lines, and using short lines with hyphens and enjambment lend to that feeling.
BT: What made you want to write “Undone” and how do you think it’s evolved to the version it is?”
RK: I belong to an online poetry group on the site Scribophile, and every April we challenge each other to write a poem a day. The first version of Undone was written in 2020. I did not intend to write about my dad’s death, he passed away from a brain tumor in 2005, however by the time I finished the last line I was crying. I had not yet written about my dad and the poem evolved into a therapy session. The original form remained, but with every revision I came closer and closer to honoring my dad, and honoring my grief. It can be difficult to write a personal piece yet still keep it universal, so I do remember struggling with the final two lines. My dad’s favorite word was fuck, it was an adjective for anything and everything, I really wanted that in the poem, but also knew it would alter the tone of the piece. I received feedback that both supported it and suggested an alternative, but ultimately I felt without it, the poem would be incomplete, so I stuck with it, and am pleased I did.
Who is Renee Keele?
Renee can’t remember a time she didn’t love to write. Back to 2rd grade she won a poetry competition for a poem about Care Bears. She currently has a poem published in Neuro Logical literary magazine. She is an Arizona native, a rare breed, who lives on a small farm raising chickens and ducks with her husband of 23 years, and three children
Interviewed by Jasmine Ferrufino Editor in Chief at Chaotic Merge
Jasmine Ferrufino: What would you love your audience to know about you that you might not express in your writing that often?
James B. Nicola: Oh, I host the writer’s circle at the local library branch on 51st and 10th avenue, on the second and fourth Saturdays of every month, from 1:00 to 3:00 pm, and it’s all genres. People can walk in off the street. It’s a safe, supportive and productive environment. So all the feedback is of a certain nature. And we sometimes have guest poets from New York and outside of New York, but that’s what I’d like people to know. Come to the writers’ circle, share your writing, and if you don’t want to present something, we do an in-house exercise, get your blood going or juices going, and you can just listen and or share a piece from someone else’s work that you love.
JF: There are many new/ arising creatives out there, but I wonder how your specific process works and if you have any advice for them.
JBN: Be an autodidact! Remember, Shakespeare only attended school until sixth to eighth grade, August Wilson till ninth grade, and Frederick Douglass had no schooling & was self-taught. So find out everything you can that they’re not teaching you. And remember, if you’re in a creative group, even ours, most of the feedback is from nonwriters. Therefore, what are you going to do with it? That’s up to you. That’s a hard thing to swallow, but you have to have higher standards for yourself than they have for you.
JF: Do you have a certain setup before writing? (Example: Do you wake up at 5 am? Do you have to make coffee before? Do you write random lines until you finally get going?)
JBN: All of that is in the past, and now I spend more time rewriting than writing, but when I get an idea or something, whether it’s a catchphrase or an idea that would be a good poem, short story, or an article, I’ll write those things down, and when they burn, I write. And then, because I’m in the zone, I can do nothing else. And now I also love taking little notebooks to strange places, like if I’m going on a subway or meeting someone for a show, I’ll just bring it.
JF: If you had one sentence/fact to describe you and your life, what would it be?
JBN: “Let’s go, people.”
JF: What made you want to write Wisteria and the Whale: Synchronicity, Serendipity, and Hope during the Plague, and how do you think it has evolved to the version it is?
JBN: I was actually saying to somebody that a friend of mine saw a whale here yesterday and to keep their eyes out, and as I was speaking, there it was! That was sort of synchronicity. And then, later, I witnessed the Wisteria tree in total bloom. I finally saw there were no vines climbing it. So for the first time, I told myself, “Okay, you are a wisteria tree.” Then that very day, for no reason, I went on a different route that took me to this other Wisteria tree in full bloom that was almost as big, that I’d never seen before ever in my 42 years of living in New York City. I couldn’t believe it; that was too much of a coincidence.
As for the form that it took, well, we talked about this on the phone, too, about the peripatetic structure, so it’s in a “taking a walk” structure that is not typical, and to try to keep it interesting, I had to reveal things that were not just the episodic facts of these various walks but numerous things I’d seen in my life as well as during the pandemic. It was challenging to keep someone turning the page when it wasn’t building to a climax. I’m telling you, all these things are going to happen one after the other in no particular order, but I have to keep you involved. That was the task. So the structure is almost like a poetry collection where, you know, a sequence of events.
JF:Wisteria and the Whale: Synchronicity, Serendipity, and Hope during the Plague has many references to NYC and nature. Can you speak on how you got interested in these topics/locations?
JBN: I was always a nature buff. In second grade, I published a poem about my home city, Worcester, Massachusetts. By fifth grade, I was published in the paper about saving the marshes. I would also take pictures in the woods of waterfalls and trees in New England, which is still stunning. As for New York, it’s because I’ve lived here for so long. It’s hard to believe, but I’ve lived in this apartment longer than half my life. Now I go, “How’d that happen?” One of my favorite things to do, if someone’s in from out of town, is to go for a walk with no place to go. So you turn a corner, never turn, and go, “wow, I didn’t know this was here.” I especially appreciate the parks so much, the sort of wild setup of them. You know, the winding and the bridges are all different– it’s great to get lost in.
Who is James B. Nicola?
James B. Nicola’s poems have appeared in the Antioch, Southwest and Atlanta Reviews; Rattle; and Barrow Street. His full-length collections (2014-21) are Manhattan Plaza, Stage to Page, Wind in the Cave, Out of Nothing, Quickening, and Fires of Heaven. His nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choice award. His poetry has received a Dana Literary Award, two Willow Review awards, Storyteller’s People’s Choice award, and eight Pushcart nominations—for which he feels both stunned and grateful.
Interviewed by Tabatha Miller a Fiction Editor at Chaotic Merge
Tabatha Miller: What is the most difficult part of your writing process?
Synovia Roberts: I think the most difficult part of my writing process is sitting down and writing. I have ideas all the time, and I try to keep them all in my notes app, but it’s hard to find time to just sit down and write. And even if I do have the time to write, sometimes the inspiration just isn’t there. If I’m completely honest with you, as soon as inspiration hits, I just try to preserve the vibe of the idea; it’s the only way I can get myself to write. I play music that helps maintain and even expand to the idea, and that usually helps keep me inspired.
TM: What comes first for you — the plot or the characters — and why?
SR: Usually, the characters come to me first. I play a lot of dungeons and dragons, so I’m constantly filling out character sheets for characters that I’m actively playing as well as characters for the stories I write. I get the idea for a character, and when I’m filling out that character sheet, it’s easier to flesh out their background and their goals because I already know what they’re capable of.
TM: What do you need in your writing space to help you stay focused?
SR: Now, I know I mentioned music before, but I don’t actually need it to write. I use music as a way to preserve ideas that I already have. The most important thing for me when I’m writing is silence. And I don’t even mean total silence. If I’m listening to music, that music can’t have lyrics; I can’t have people talking to me; things like that. For me to put words on paper, I need a lack of words in my space.
TM: What’s your favorite writing snack or drink?
SR: I don’t usually snack when I’m writing, but if I am, it has to be something crunchy and sweet. Not necessarily candy, but cookies, Kit Kats, wafers all work. And for drinks? As a rule my drinks either need to be water or carbonated, and it can’t be both. If I’m not drinking water, I’m drinking ginger ale or sparkling apple cider.
TM: What made you want to write “Fixations” and how do you think it’s evolved to the version it is?
SR: Ok so, What made me want to write “Fixations”? Fixations came from a place of insecurity. It was originally a short essay about how my fixation with Aotearoa might be perceived by the Māori people. For me, I was just learning, but what if it was seen as some weird obsession? The essay I wrote was basically me apologizing for how obsessed I have gotten with this culture and these people. It morphed into “Fixations” completely by accident. Amara and Reomata were originally set in a fantasy world, and were meant to explore Amara’s unfamiliarity with her own body. But the more I wrote, the more that essay weighed on me. Was Reomata just an extension of my weird fixation? So, I let my worries bleed into Amara‘s character. I let my worries become her worries, and thus “Fixations” was born.
Who is Synovia Roberts?
Synovia Roberts (she/her) is a queer, Jamaican American trying to infuse her culture into the literary world around her. Her favorite stories to tell are the ones that make you heartache, even if you’re smiling. She has previously been featured in Purchase College’s Gutter Mag and Brown Sugar’s debut issue.
Interviewed by Lassiter Jamison a Fiction Editor at Chaotic Merge
Lassiter Jamison: “Memory Foam” is a beautiful mix of the relatable and the absurd (as if life). Has anything close to the events of this story happened to you personally?
Luise Mörke: The best way I can answer this without getting close to the word count of the story itself: none of it is invented, but nothing has happened quite as it does in the story.
LJ: What sort of stories do you most like to tell?
LM: I write a lot of criticism and academic texts, so stories become vessels for the ideas and affects that do not fit those other genres: desire, ugly feelings, anything that’s messy and difficult to account for in a text that’s based on an argument. That said, my essayistic tendencies, language circling around a constellation of ideas and motifs, come through in fiction too – so does my love of film. I often think in scenes and spatialized set-ups.
LJ: I’m curious about the man at the intersection. His all-caps speech is the last thing we as readers ‘hear’ before the story ends. What made you decide to conclude “Memory Foam” this way?
LM: The narrator lives a pretty subdued life and spends her time contemplating or consuming things that encapsulate the feeling of absence from oneself: the disembodied erotics of ASMR, the heat of an empty summer day, Marguerite Duras’s eight bottles of Bordeaux a day. I was looking for ways to introduce a sudden mood shift that would break through the rotten air of privileged languor. The man at the intersection is based on a person I encountered on my way to the grocery store one day. His loud yelling sounded almost prophetic, but of course everyone around tried hard to ignore him. That day, I actually listened to his words and asked myself why speech has to be delivered in certain ways to actually be recognized as such.
LJ: Last but not least, do you have any chaotic writing habits?
LM: The day I heard about the Pushcart nomination, I slept until noon and then spent three more hours in bed, writing on my laptop – does that count as chaotic? In the past couple of weeks, this has been happening a lot, but I’ve also been on the other end, waking up at six to write. Seasons change, habits change. A chaotic constant is the assemblage of tea pots, mugs, glasses, plates, and chocolate wrappers that collects on my desk during a writing day.
Who is Luise Mörke?
Luise Mörke (She/her ) is a writer and graduate student of art history based in Berlin.
