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Field Recordings welcomes poet Maja Dezulovic to the internet wilds. Links lie throughout. The fall approaches.
Name:
Maja Dezulovic
Pen Name:
I use my real name.
Most recent title published:
The 360 Degree Heart
Where do you write?
I write at home mostly.
What are your rituals with regards to writing?
I like listening to music or reading first for inspiration. Sometimes writing spurts come after a long journey or trip.
Describe your writing process:
I start by jotting down ideas. Those ideas or keywords then become whole phrases, which turn into poems. The poems then become the basis for short stories or novels.
What do you when you begin to revise? What's the first thing you do during that process?
I look to see if my writing flows naturally and logically. That is, how does it sound like when read aloud? I believe that good writing has musical aspects to it. I change the flow by rearranging paragraphs and sentences. Then I look for any spelling or grammatical errors.
When revising, how many drafts do you go through before you feel comfortable with the final product?
I usually go through two or three drafts.
When arranging lines for your poems, what do you consider at the micro level-- about the line? (For example...I never end a line on the word “and” etc.)
I consider flow to be the most important element of my poetry. Poetic licence dictates that there are no rules so I don’t worry too much about sticking to your general rules of prose.
As a poet, whose music, or voice, sometimes do you hear as you write or revise?
Marvin Gaye
Curtis Mayfield
Nina Simone
Edith Piaf
Ella Fitzgerald
How would you classify your poetry? Are you a lyric poet? A Romantic? A Surrealist?
I prefer not to classify it. It depends on the poem. I write limericks, rhyming poetry, free verse. The 360 Degree Heart is romantic.
What poets are you currently reading?
I’m reading Jane McKie and V. Pain.
What poets/poems do you strongly recommend a reader to discover?
Langston Hughes, Charles Bukowski, Charles Baudelaire, Matsuo Basho, Mary Ann Evans and Maya Angelou.
The contemporary American poetic tradition is elegy, do you discover elegiac qualities among your own writing as a whole? Are you a poet of loss?
Yes, I do. Some of my poetry is sad because of the nature of the subject but I try to put a positive swing on things as much as possible. I find that cheerful poetry is more upbeat and inspiring so I appreciate that in other poets and try to create it.
Where does your inspiration come from (music, film, other books)?
My inspiration comes from life! The more you experience, the more you have to share and therefore the more you can write about. I’m inspired by people, places and other activities. My biggest muse, I think, is music. I tend to swing towards the Jazz genre when it comes to writing but I am not at all limited to it. Movies also inspire ideas in me. Literature in general is an inspiration too, of course.
What is your literary guilty pleasure? (trashy sci-fi adventures, bad romance novels, 50 Shades, fanfic, etc.)
I never thought I’d be a chick lit fan but I read Bridget Jones and the sequel last year and loved them. I enjoyed the movies so I thought: “Why not?” As usual, the books were better. I’m now completing my collection of all Helen Fielding’s books.
Explain how your local and regional environment influences your writing, your process, and your product (in other words, how does your reality intersect with the worlds that you create?):
The worlds I create are almost always based on some reality. Ideas spark from real life events. If times are happy, then so is my writing. If our local municipality neglects to fix a pothole on a road and one of the tyres on my car gets a puncture as a result of it, I can write about it (and I have).
You have to invite three authors to dinner, who are they? Why?
Lauren Beukes, J.M. Coetzee and Douglas Adams. The first two because they are South African so I can relate to them and their writing. J.M. Coetzee’s writing is poetic as well and I appreciate that in prose. Douglas Adams, because I enjoyed The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and his humour. Although he has been declared dead on Earth, I’m sure it’s just a cover up for his galactic travels. I’ll have to summon him from somewhere in the tenth milky way from us, where he was last spotted.
I’d probably want to invite more than three authors so I can try get to know many of the minds whose work I’ve enjoyed.
Favorite title (you wish you had come up with):
Screw It, Let’s Do Lunch
Line(s) you wish you wrote:
“Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly”
~ Langston Hughes
“How admirable!
To see lightning and not think
Life is fleeting.”
~Matsuo Basho
“Poetry is the art of compression, of saying in a few well-chosen words, enhanced with rhythm and musicality of language, what might take many more words to express – far less memorably – in prose.”
~Paul Negri
Book you did not read in high school but now have read and have an appreciation for: And why:
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I love dystopian fiction and I plan to write a dystopian novel. I enjoyed the way the book was written and the societal problems/elements it foretells of. It is eerie but almost plausible.
Favorite words:
Anachronism, potent, misshapen, heart, opulent, grotesque
Least favorite words:
Miscellaneous, sad, quite, nice
Advice you would like to pass on to other writers:
Like Dori said in Finding Nemo; “Just keep swimming.” In our case; “Just keep writing, writing, writing...”
What you would discuss with your pet if your pet could talk:
If he could talk? He does talk! Yes, it sounds a little different to how we do it but my pup and I already have great conversations and I can usually make out what he’s saying. For example, I’ll read him a poem and ask what he thinks of it. He’ll look up to me and say (in his Cocker Spaniel doggie howling dialect); “I’ll trade you two treats for a positive response.”
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