Brandon Shimoda [Host: Jeff Alessandrelli]

On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Jeff Alessandrelli interviews Brandon Shimoda.

Brandon Shimoda is a yonsei poet/writer, and the author of eight books of poetry and prose, including Portuguese, The Desert, The Grave on the Wall, and most recently Hydra Medusa, which is out now from Nightboat Books. He is also the curator of the Hiroshima Library, an itinerant reading room/collection of books on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He teaches at Colorado College.

Jeff Alessandrelli is the author of several books, including the poetry collection Fur Not Light. He is also the director and co-editor of the small presses Fonograf Editions and Bunny Presse.

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PART ONE, topics include:

-- parenting small children

-- sibling relationships

-- growing up with a frustrated artist

-- living on the moon

-- writing while in motion

-- the bus as residency

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PART TWO, topics include:

-- working five jobs in pandemic lockdown

-- negative optimism

-- more leading to more

-- Brandon's new book Hydra Medusa

-- travel-mania  and/or material-seeking

-- the MFA -> publish three books -> visiting professor -> tenure track pipeline

-- messiness and non-messiness

-- Brandon's previous book The Desert

-- corresponding with other writers

-- Brandon's blurb stance

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PART THREE, topics include:

-- more about Hydra Medusa

-- writing about dreams

-- orderly language

-- feeling like a piece of hardware

-- waking up in the morning

-- the writing coming before the book

-- the book coming before the writing

-- writing poetry and/or prose

-- the forthcoming A Book on the Afterlife of Japanese-American Incarceration

-- putting a rectangle around a river

-- editing an anthology as creative act

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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.