Amy Nicole McDougal is Sabne Raznik, and she has crafted a book to benefit Children's Cancer Awareness, appropriately titled Marrow. Please pass this link on throughout the internet wilds.
Name:
Amy Nicole McDougal
Pen Name:
Sabne Raznik
Most recent title published:
"Marrow", a limited edition art book to benefit Childhood Cancer Awareness and St. Jude's Research Hospital.
Where do you write?
I'm on the road a lot, so I can't really say I have a specific place. I do have a desk at home in a corner of my living room, and often I write in a journal book at the coffee table. Other than that, I write in that journal wherever I can. I often write during long car rides, and in the middle of the night.
What kind of poetic tradition do you see yourself coming from? (lyric, surrealism, realism, etc)
I suppose it would have to be lyric in terms of what I write.
The contemporary American "form" is elegy. How do you see your work fitting into that "tradition"?
I have written an elegy or two. The strict literary definition of the word, well, that has to be done carefully or it can come off as too sentimental or naïve. I think, for the most part, I tend to stretch the elegy into something written not just for the dead, but also for people who have merely left, or the end of significant relationships. I've also written elegies, if you like, for places or times, even for versions of myself that no longer exist. It's an important aspect of being a poet to always be looking for ways to stretch a received form or tradition while respecting it, and especially to stretch yourself. A poet never stops learning and never stops experimenting, even the most conservative poet. Although I am not at all a conservative poet, if you consider the regional tradition I inherited.
What are your rituals with regards to writing (ex: Must have tea, a cat on the lap, etc)
There usually has to be music playing somehow and not a lot going on - or at least not a lot that requires my direct participation. I need an atmosphere conducive to reflection. Poetry, for me, is largely a result of reflection and meditation. And when I say meditation, I don't mean the kind of mind-clearing meditation of Buddhism or anything of that sort. I mean deep thinking about life, occurrences, and things and making connections. When a person has thought something through enough to put it in words, and beyond - to put it in pictures which are then put back into words - a poem results.
What themes did you explore in this new collection?
These are poems that were all written during the time that my nephew was battling Acute Myeloid Leukemia with FLT3 gene mutation. He was diagnosed when he was 10 years old, but the advantage of hindsight and learning more about the cancer convinces me that he was sick for at least a year before being diagnosed. It was a truly horrific time. He eventually died just three weeks shy of his 12th birthday in 2010. I had two cousins, also firstborn sons, who died from the same cancer - one in the very early 80s and the other in the 90s. The book is meant to raise awareness for Childhood Cancers, that there is a desperate need for equal funding and safer treatments. The current situation is medieval. The poems, therefore, are, for the most part, frill-less, so to speak. There is one that follows my usual image-loaded style. The rest are straight-forward, raw, unapologetic. I suppose they come closer to the schools of realism and confessional poetry. They're meant to be hard to read, to hit like a kidney punch. They're a wake-up call. Generally, if people ask me to define poetry, I'll say it is fictionalised truth. But these poems are non-fiction. This is not a time to, as Seamus Heaney said in his poem "Station Island", "confuse evasion and artistic tact".
What was challenging about culling poems together?
The poems in "Marrow" came rather quickly, when they finally came at all. There was the challenge of organisation, as always. The greatest challenge was how to write about an experience that defies description. Poetry about illness is universally acknowledged to be difficult and full of pitfalls. Writing about Childhood Cancer takes that to a whole level unique to itself. I had to find a language that could look unflinchingly at an unimaginable reality and not degrade it or minimalise it or turn it into euphemism or sentimentalise it or, well, neuter it. But it also had to be a language that would not overwhelm or repulse.
What's your personal favorite? Why?
Dare a poet have a favorite within one's own work? Are there ethical principles against that sort of thing? From "Marrow", "Mrs. Albininah" is based squarely on a true experience. I changed the title character's name, of course. That story floated around inside of me for a couple years before it matured into something that could be written down. I hope this woman's story will mean something to people, as it does to me. I carry her inside me everywhere I go.
Describe your writing process:
What do you when you begin to revise? What's the first thing you do during that process?
I revise even as I'm writing. The first thing I consider is the images. Are they clear? Do the chosen words convey them accurately and strongly? I usually want my poems to be very visual. Some critics have compared them to paintings. Also, I tend to write my poems in pieces and then fit them together later like a puzzle, so that most of the process involves organising. I respect the fact that poetry is both written and oral/aural, so I let the ear decide when a poem is finished. Sometimes it comes in a flurry and sometimes it's a long, painstaking process. The last thing I do is go through and see how many of the articles (definite and indefinite) can be eliminated.
When revising, how many drafts do you go through before you feel comfortable with the final product?
I let the poem tell me when it's ready. As I said before, sometimes it comes in a flurry and only one or two drafts are needed. I once wrote a poem that had so many drafts it filled up over half of a journal book. The evolution of manuscripts can be much the same.
What poets are you "borrowing" from, or riffing from these days? Do you hear these "voices" as you revise or write?
Seamus Heaney is always a voice in my head, and U2. Music is as important to me as literature. To me songs and poetry are often the same, especially if the lyrics are very well written. I think I have quoted Radiohead, Eliot, various Moroccan poets. I have very much a Biblical imagination, so the Bible is ever present. There are many, many more.
Where does your inspiration come from (music, film, other books)?
Everything in the parentheses there. *laughs* Everything that a writer sees, speaks of, experiences, and dreams becomes part of his/her toolbox. Which makes people uncomfortable, I've noticed, because they seem to be always quick to ask "Was this poem about me?" To which I can only reply "Bless your heart." I love cultural studies and languages. I have dabbled in about 20 languages other than my native tongue, though I am far from fluent in any of them. Want to shift your perspective on the world? Study a different language. There is no end to the inspiration that can be drawn from that kind of thing.
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?):
I used to live on a mountaintop, so there were a lot of trees in my poems. I've since moved to the county seat (a small town) and my recent poems have a slightly more urban feel. The regional tradition I inherited is the unique Appalachian literature. It is generally very pastoral, ancestor-obsessed, religious, sentimental, and largely written in a limited number of rigid, conservative rhymed forms. I used to refer to it as Greeting Card verse, because that's what it reminds me of. In school, we were taught some Shakespeare and a number of the Romantic poets and the Confessional poets (Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton), but 20th century literature was ignored for the most part and even the teachers didn't seem to be aware of World poetry or poetry in translation. Exposure to these things comes only as a result of the growing availability of the internet (although there are still some places where the internet is just something mentioned on television). Therefore, being autodidact is vital, but not generally encouraged. But in the last 40 years in particular, Appalachian culture has been bombarded by an artillery of influences wholly new to it due to the growing proliferation of various media. As more and more reach out, this has resulted in a destabilization of the culture where it remained mostly unchanged for 500 years prior to this. The area is becoming less and less isolated as new roads are built. The local newspaper announced a few weeks ago that the private airport at the county seat will begin its first commercial flights in a year or so. This creates an exciting and dangerous moment where the Appalachian culture and people can either hold its own and become more respected on the world scene or collapse and completely assimilate into the dominate culture of the country. It's also more than abundantly clear that the literature needs to be updated to reflect this moment. I have in the past referred to this moment in Appalachian history as a Regional Modernism. Myself, and a handful of poets that I know about (there are likely more that I'm not aware of yet), are attempting to modernise Appalachian literature. But since this is such a potentially disastrous moment for the culture we have inherited, it is important that we move forward with a profound respect for what came before us. We may not agree with that Greeting Card verse-like practice and we do not write that way ourselves, but we must respect it and proceed with caution. We do not wish to lose the unique culture that bred us. Indeed, we wish to preserve it and promote it even as we update it. It is vital that we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.
What's your literary guilty pleasure (sci-fi, 50 Shades, westerns, etc)?
Tolkien and the various mythologies of the world. Books about horses.
You have to invite three authors to dinner, who are they? Why?
You didn't indicate whether these should be living or dead, so I assume they can have fallen asleep in death. Seamus Heaney, obviously, because he is a poet who defined me, and I would very much love to have the chance to get to know the man better, to learn from him and his qualities. And I think contrasts are always interesting to have in the same room as long as there is mutual respect, so Kit Fryatt. She is doing things that, while not necessarily innovative in terms of American poetry, are extremely much so for Irish poetry. She has an interesting background that spans several countries, and I should like to learn from that. She doesn't care for Heaney's work at all, but I believe she could tolerate his company for a night and that fact might make for lively conversation around the table. Also, she has championed my work in Ireland and Scotland and been for all intents and purposes a generous mentor, but we have never met in person. So I couldn't have a literary dinner party without including her. And I would invite a fellow poet from my hometown, Artemis Blithe. We have more or less the same goals for Appalachian literature, although we write differently (we're both experimental for the tradition we inherited) and read differently, and it might be a good opportunity for him to learn as well. I'm positive he would also have a great deal to contribute.
Favorite title (you wish you had come up with):
"Whethering". I thought I had come up with it, actually. I had intended to call my second full length collection "Whethering: shiir". Shiir means "poem or song" in Arabic. And the word "whethering" (which I mistakenly thought I had made up) was a perfect description of the mood of the manuscript, being a kind of pun on weathering a storm and an uncertain, unstable wavering between choices. But circumstances caused a delay of publication. In the meantime, another poetry collection, I forget which poet, came out with that name and I discovered it had been used several years before by another. It's a clever word and feels nice in one's mouth, so I'd hate for it to be overused. I tried out several other titles after that, though none seemed to suit it as well, and I finally settled on "Linger To Look", which is a kind of variation on the translation of an Andrea Bocelli lyric. Circumstances continue to delay publication, although, of course, I hope it won't take much longer.
Line you wish you wrote:
Goodness, there are so many I could not possibly pick one to answer this! Anna Akmatova's "Requiem", Stanley Kunitz' "The Layers", Caroline Forché's "The Island", the list goes on and on. And if you include songs in that, we could literally sit here all day. *laughs*
Book you did not read in high school but now have read and have an appreciation for: And why:
There are also so many. "Moby Dick", all of James Joyce's work, "Uncle Tom's Cabin", so many classics and a whole world poetry. "Hamlet", I have learned to love "Hamlet" as much as or more than "Romeo and Juliet".
Favorite words:
Love. Hope. Faith. Future. Fabulous. I'm told I use Awesome almost constantly. And there's just something special about the word Chicago if divorced completely from its meaning and the city. Standing alone, it's like aural chocolate.
Least favorite words:
Labels. You know, those loaded words with negative connotations that people use to cause pain.
Advice you would like to pass on to other writers:
Don't look for short cuts. Learn your craft from the ground up. Proofread obsessively and put in the work. Earn your credentials. Always respect those who came before, even if you are extremely Avant Garde. But don't study so much that you become a mere copy-cat. Be generous and humble, and believe in your work. Eventually, then, others will, too.
Beatles or the Stones? Elvis or Cash?
All of the above. I have great respect for all of them. But if I absolutely have to choose: The Beatles and Cash.
What you would discuss with your pet if your pet could talk:
They would probably have a lot to say about how annoying I am. *laughs*
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