Emma Catherine Perry [Host: Michael Wheaton]

On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Michael Wheaton interviews Emma Catherine Perry.

Emma Catherine Perry is the author of Blocks World, which is out today from Great Place Books. Her poetry is published in Fence, Nashville Review, Quarterly West, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Moscow, Idaho where she supports other writers in her capacity as Associate Director of the Writing Center and English faculty at the University of Idaho.

A poem from Blocks World, “The Sign of the Self,” appears in Autofocus's Fall 2023 issue.

Michael Wheaton is the publisher of Autofocus Books and producer of this podcast.

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PART ONE, topics include:

-- moving on to a new job at a new school

-- moving around a lot

-- linguistic diversity and justice

-- growing up in rural New Hampshire

-- an art history major before MFA and PHD

-- external validation and publishing later 

-- the challenging of publishing at all

-- deciding to go into a PHD

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PART TWO, topics include:

-- Emma's debut poetry collection BLOCKS WORLD

-- finding the form and forms of the book

-- making poetry within the confines of the medium

-- collaborating with non-human actors

-- process and seriality

-- longer poems and poems as reckonings

-- writing directly to family members and others

-- the illusion of non-mediation and intimacy

-- blending the specific real and poetic distance

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PART THREE, topics include:

-- pattern and mutation

-- seriality and repetition and iteration

--  aphorism and the declarative statement

-- long lines and syntactical play

-- finding publication as the first book by Great Place Books

-- the humbling amount of amazing unpublished manuscripts out in the world

-- trying and participating as the process

-- the importance of sharing work with friends

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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.

The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.