Poetry/Prose Exchange - # 2

what she was wearing  - by Denver Butson

what she was wearing

this is my suicide dress

she told him

I only wear it on days

when I'm afraid

I might kill myself

if I don't wear it

you've been wearing it

every day since we met

he said

and these are my arson gloves

so you don't set fire to something?

he asked

exactly

and this is my terrorism lipstick

my assault and battery eyeliner

my armed robbery boots

I'd like to undress you

he said

but would that make me an accomplice?

and today

she said

I'm wearing

my infidelity underwear

so don't get any ideas

and she put on her

nervous breakdown hat

and walked out the door

"what she was wearing," by Denver Butson, from illegible address. © Luquer Street Press.

Poetry/Prose Exchange - # 1

A friend of mine invited me to join in on a poetry/literature exchange, in which we send an uplifting, inspirational line of poetry or prose to an email address included in the original message.  Then I choose twenty friends to share this idea further, who then do the same, and so on.

This is the line I chose to send.  At first, it may not seem uplifting, but to me, it makes sense.  I am, after all, a child of dark humor, of finding the brightest light from the darkest places.  

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." 

- Gabriel García Márquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude

Surrealist A.W. Sprague II

Island Head - by A.W. Sprague II

“Ego Ergo Imbroglio” – by A.W. Sprague II

 First Place – Surreal Circus

“Ego Ergo Imbroglio”

Here I am

and there I go

Ego Ergo Imbroglio

Where ever I am

is where I know

there’s Ego Ergo Imbroglio

A confident man

fumbling a plan

that’s Ego Ergo Imbroglio

when wringing the hands

or making a stand

it’s Ego Ergo Imbroglio

intricate

confusing

sometimes deluding

Ego Ergo Imbroglio

my own best friend

my own worst enemy

I’m Ego Ergo Imbroglio

When self is self-centered

expect bad weather

because Ego means Ergo Imbroglio

The best laid plans

whether mouse or man

are Ego Ergo Imbroglio

- by A.W. Sprague II

“The Dramatic Dharma of Dueling Dualism” – by A.W. Sprague II

A.W. Sprague II is an artist and writer who explores Surrealism and investigates big questions – Zen, Dharma, Dali, Kerouac, even Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus.” Within his philosophical ponderings, Sprague – known to his friends as Bill – creates a world, one brilliant with color and vision, complex and perplexed, evocative and elaborate. He labors over the absurd and the meaning of life, finding a place to express himself in art and words.

“Decreased Working Class Dining Fashion Courtesy of Migratory Manufacturing Madness” – by A.W. Sprague II

Bill, you’ve told me about your early childhood in a small town along the Susquehanna River in central New York, near an industrial plant that built parts for the Saturn V space program. I’m struck by the same elements in your art: the pastoral setting of fields and waterways, marked by the grand workings of man in his determination to explore. Do you think your beginnings, in terms of place and experience, have influenced your art? Would you tell us about this?

Absolutely. The Foothills of the Catskills is a region filled with spectacular scenery marked by the progress of mankind. From the trees and grassy meadows, low mountains and babbling brooks, blue skies and midnight moons to the railroad tracks, iron bridges and concrete dam that were all part of my childhood surroundings, those influences appear in many ways, both subtle and gross, in my assembled scenarios. I can also attribute the joy and desire I have for creating art and writing pieces to growing up in that region. There was, and still is, a very strong cultural arts presence in the area; and it imbued me with the perspective that art is both valuable and important.

The proximity of the Saturn V project to my childhood home made the notion of space travel perfectly tangible to me. It gave me an expectation for a science-fiction level future. Another impact of the Saturn V program was learning how manufacturing jobs could bring pride and economic stability to a previously depressed region; and then how those things would fade when the manufacturing jobs disappeared.

“Jimmy Snork Ponders the Moon” – by A.W. Sprague II

Obelisk, icon, or satellite?

Tough question. I love obelisks for what they are, icons for what they do, and satellites because I act like one. I’d like to vote for all three.

“The Memory Pool” – by A.W. Sprague II

Literary influences? And art influences?

The first author to have a profound impact on my life was Steinbeck; and the effect did not come from reading his books, but rather from seeing about one hour’s worth of the black-and-white movie version of The Grapes of Wrath. At the age of nine, I felt that television news was just the plight of strangers who lived in places far away. I had little context for what they were experiencing. The dramatic portrayal of Steinbeck’s Dust Bowl farmers hit me at an emotional level like the proverbial ton of bricks. It vexed me for days and led to several meaningful conversations with my parent about what “real” life was like. I was much less a child after that.

Conscious influences on my art would be the color palette of Maxfield Parrish, the attitude of Robert Rauschenberg, the approach of Dadaism and the presentations of Dali. The inspirations I juggle in my mind when writing include Carlos Castenada, Gene Rodenberry, Roald Dahl, Rod Serling, and Richard Bach, the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

“Prometheus’ Pals” – by A.W. Sprague II

the nothing to be alarmed about alarm bell is ringing

remain calm

the nothing to be alarmed about alarm bell rings

because there is nothing to be alarmed about

so remain calm

- from The Nothing to Be Alarmed About Alarm Bell Rings

– an illustrated book by A.W. Sprague

“An Evolution of Toys” – by A.W. Sprague II

Do you think your experiences while in the Air Force during the 1970′s have shaped your writing in terms of structure and subject? I’m thinking especially of your illustrated book, When the Nothing to Be Alarmed About Alarm Bell Rings.

The idea/subject for “Alarm Bell” originated with the government’s daily terror alerts in the years after September 11, 2001. In concert, both national and local media followed suit with speculations on most likely targets, precautions to take, and things to do if caught in an event or aftermath. This constant barrage of fear-instilling thoughts pushed me to a point where I had to reassure myself that a terrorist act was not likely to happen in my town, or at any of the places I frequented. Remembering the words of a recovering alcoholic I once knew, in how he had conditioned his mind to react to advertisements for alcohol as reminders that he should not drink, I turned my situation on its head by perceiving the alerts as alarms that told me everything was going to be okay.

The inspiration for the structure came from a common element in Dystopian stories, in which a repetitive regimented announcement, usually broadcast by a totalitarian government, drones on for the purpose of conditioning the populace. Influences from my military experience can be found in several of the pictures in this piece.

“Celebratory Minions of The Absurd Embrace The Directions of Sacred Leaders and Venerate an Indicated Untitled” – by A.W. Sprague II

Tell us about your interest in Surrealism and your work with The Surreal Circus.

Surrealism has been a fascination of mine since I was young. The odd objects, strange arrangements, and eerie backdrops usually present a sense of mystery or mysticism, and the puzzle solver within me rises eagerly to the challenge of ferreting out meaning. From an artistic standpoint, I embrace Surrealism because I believe we all need to have our psyches challenged. The history of humanity is filled with incidences where we, as a group, had to alter mental perceptions on the fly in order to accommodate newly discovered, life-changing dimensions of reality, previously hidden or unnoticed. In this light, Surrealism is an evolutionary helper that exercises the part of our mind which digests, interprets, and adapts to unusual and unexpected things from the safety of home, gallery, or museum.

The Surreal Circus was a very active Internet group. I have to say “was” because the Gather.com web site has been stalled under renovations for the past five months; very sad. At the time I stumbled into The Circus, it was being actively managed by an arts and nature blogger, Ann Marcaida (annmarcaida.tumblr.com). Ann’s open and friendly communications set an interactive and encouraging spirit which permeated the overall group. After sharing many works, both artistic and written, and having them well received, I entered a short story in their flash fiction contest and an image in their digital art contest. Honorable mention was awarded to the story, while the image won First Place. Soon after this, I was invited to become one of the moderators.

Moderating for a group is a challenge. Work submitted to the group had to be reviewed and approved; and there were as many as fifty submissions per day.  Blatantly off-topic submissions could be rejected easily, while on-topic and near-topic submissions required extra thought and consideration. Moderating to that level of flow and criteria often took hours. My favorite reward was the inspiration that so often came after being saturated in the works of others.

“Jealoedipusib” – by A.W. Sprague II

“I’m a plastic coated dharma bum,

dashboard companion to a station wagon,

bubblin’ down some roads of life.”

“The clerk walked me over and handed me a copy of “On The Road” suggesting it as a good place to start and then left me to it. I read the jacket and hesitantly put it back. “The Dharma Bums” was next to it and that was the book I’d come looking for. I wanted to read the book that supposedly chronicled the start of the Zen lunatics and the rucksack wanderers.

You’ll probably think it pretentious that I think of myself as spiritual kin to Kerouac types. Rest assured, I’m fully aware that compared to their solar brilliance I am but a twinkle in the eye of someone who was looking the other way.”

- from “Plastic Coated Dharma Bum” – by A.W. Sprague II

A.W. Sprague II – Artist & Writer

A.W. Sprague II is a creative artist and writer, currently living in Central Ohio. He uses photo manipulation software and digital illustration techniques to create artwork along the surreal, science fiction, and graphic genres. He also paints with acrylics, builds ceramics, creates mixed media sculptures and writes poetry, essays, non-fiction, and fiction. His award-winning work has been featured in several places on the Internet, as well as published in small, alternative, and amateur presses since 1986. Previous to that, it filled notebooks, decorated walls and gathered dust in piles and boxes.

His art and writing are featured on his website http://tastethebrain.blogspot.com and at http://columbusarts.com/artists/464-aw-sprague-ii/.

 *

The Poppy: An Interview Series

Four to six questions begin as pods, then burst open with answers, bright lapis, 

black-stamened, conspicuous—ornament, remembrance, opiate.

*

This interview first posted at Hothouse Magazine.

Amy Wright: In the Garden

“If the garden did not hum, it would cuss.”

— from The Garden Will Give You a Fat Lip 

by Amy Wright

“Tennessee Roses” – Photo credit: Amy Wright

“I wonder about the promise of love, how it makes none. Something else assures us, for awhile

–the push and pull of the old slipknot–wedding bands and daisy chains.”

- from “It Always Has Hit Me from Below”

 - by Amy Wright

Amy Wright – Photo credit: James Yates

Amy Wright rallies and rounds up words, treats long and short lines of poetry to ice cream and fireworks at the fair, and pulls up and down the shades of nonfiction, the stories always bright, never dim. She considers the earth, the spirit, the right or even the wrong way to look for an answer. And from search and discovery, she’s summed up several chapbooks of poetry, a realm of essays and interviews, and the words and the will to till more words keep coming.

Amy once hosted me in Clarksville, Tennessee on a flashflood kind of day, and as we talked, asking and telling, her lithe, well-dreamed, and swimming mind called me to ask more.

“Moving Through It” – Photo credit: James Yates

“It is not the story that makes a moment tender, but the life moving through it.”

- from “Moving Through It” - by Amy Wright

Amy, you’ve found a way to cross under the fence of genre lines, skirting the rough boards, never caught on barbwire, and making sure the essays and poems are tended, but not too tended. You were raised on a farm in southwest Virginia, and your grandparents were dairy farmers, your parents Angus beef farmers. When you were a child, your mother allowed you to read up a storm and told you once, “Sometimes you have to talk to yourself.”

Would you say that your background—the farm, your family—has provided the direction and the eventual path you needed to journey through poetry and prose, verse and memoir?

Absolutely, Karin. That winding dirt road I grew up on and the neighborhood named for it—Mudlick—informs my subject matter, my writing process, and even my genre choices, which demonstrate a refusal of hard and fast lines. Growing up in the country gave me a sense of inhabiting several centuries—the way my grandparents lived in a house that was built by our ancestors in the 1870s with horsehair mortar and locust boards. They added onto it, enclosed the front porch, plumbed a bathroom—but the core of the house, the Heart pine hardwood floors are the same. The fact that this house and my front yard were surrounded by the second oldest mountain range on Earth—the Appalachians—also placed me on a long geologic timeline. The mountains were more than backdrop; they were visiting neighbors. Deer and meadowlarks and box turtles were always popping by.

I’m glad you notice the importance of family in my work. It is probably the most fundamental aspect of my writing—loyalty to the land I grew up on and the people who have given it and me such good care.

“Then there’s this” – Photo Credit: Amy Wright

“so thereʼs that, so thereʼs that, so thereʼs this and this and that”

- from “Then There’s This” – by Amy Wright

Farms, gardens, the earth, sustainability, sustenance. What we collect, what we can’t keep. Spirituality, devotion, Zen, impermanence, letting go.

You are deeply concerned with where we’ve been and where we are headed in terms of the environment, farming, and making sure, as the world population grows, that we are all fed. These concerns inform much of your writing. Would you talk about this?

I am fortunate to have developed a relationship with nature early on. My brother and I played in the southwest Virginia hills and forests around our house. At least once, we had to walk back to the house barefoot on gravel because we mired our tennis shoes in the mud of a shoestring branch. We climbed shale banks, fished for bluegill, planted gardens, pulled weeds, snapped green beans, etc. Many summer nights we sat down to meals where we had grown every food on our plates—including cantaloupe or watermelon for dessert. That magic moment when a corn shoot breaks free of its seed, climbs through dark soil toward the light—sometimes alarmingly far away when one of us pushed the seeds too deep—filled me with wonder then and now. I know our tremendous debt to Earth for producing food, plumping it with minerals our bodies need. And to we owe the many humans present and past whose labor and invention make it possible to stock a grocery store.

It’s like the difference between falling in love with an abstraction and a man who snores. If I had not had the planet’s topsoil under my fingernails and its well water popping in beads from my forehead, I don’t know if I would have begun to care deeply about its health. When I read about a polluted river or a scalped mountain, I have brain cells and neurons that fire in response. Such scenes correspond in my body, making the causes and effects tangible and the need for responsibility real.

“Hands” – Photo credit: Susan Bryant

“I remember when I loved to be sad. I could feel sorrow coming on 

like a cold, which I also had my fair share of in those days.”

- from “Perhaps It Is Only Age” – by Amy Wright

“Oh, Heart” – Photo Credit: James Yates

Life. Death. Life.

I love what you’ve written in “Oh, Heart,” an essay you posted at Cowbird: “If John Keats was, in his youth anyway, ‘half in love with easeful Death,’ I am absolutely swept into the clench, the hiccup, the cough of Life.”

Death is the hardest, but sometimes life is hard for those who go on living. More thoughts?

That particular piece—in a small way—gave me a taste of those fifteen minutes of fame Andy Warhol promised everyone in the future. I collected so many “loves” on that essay, it stopped feeling like something I did as much as something I was taking part in—the way you might get swept into the momentum of a parade. Of course, I owe the photographer, James Yates, for the image, which spoke to so many other heart-heeding humans.

But, to answer your question, I feel I owe it to the ones I’ve lost to live fully. My younger brother died of bone cancer at twenty. To honor his memory, I try to be vigilant in attending the resources pumping through my irises, cochlea, fingertips. He asked me to do as much before he left.

“Hair Flying” – Photo credit: Susan Bryant

“the terrific blue, the movement of the hands upraised and hair flying”

- from “Fearlessening”– by Amy Wright

Sunflowers, amaranth, or salmon-colored orchids? And why, oh, why?

For the same reason species can evolve, metamorphose, mutate—because there are those of us who can taste words and there are those who can season them. It’s like canning. There are ways to preserve the sun-ripened bounty of a mulberry harvest for a February night.

“My Boon Companion” – Photo credit: James Yates

“We are never alone, johnnie; we are only–for varying stretches of road–entirely together in ourselves.”

- from “My Boon Companion” – by Amy Wright

I understand your latest project involves heritage as it threads from past into present, with a close look, as you’ve noted, at “one particularly marginalized and unstudied culture” in the south.

Would you tell us more about these poems? It sounds as though you may be crossing poetry with memoir, creating a hybrid of forms. Is that true?

I have long been interested in the relationship between research and creativity, and my scholarly essays and travel pieces reflect that. Recently I’ve been applying that dimension to the lyric in the form of anthropological case-studies of my life’s characters and stories. I’m interested in how cultural diversity can be threatened alongside many wildlife species. Thus, I want to preserve aspects of the culture I inherited, even as I have revised some of that conditioning.

My father learned to cane chairs from a blind man. My great-grandmother dipped snuff and taught school in a one-room Appalachian schoolhouse. Both of these facts seem akin to spotting a red-cockaded woodpecker, and equally worthy of attention. So, I’m wedding a few reference books to memories and running them through that great Victrola of the English language until something catches in my head like a tune.

Amy – Photo credit: David Iacovazzi-Pau

Amy Wright is the Nonfiction Editor of Zone 3 Press and the author of three chapbooks, There Are No New Ways To Kill A Man, Farm, and The Garden Will Give You A Fat Lip. Her fourth chapbook, Rhinestones in the Bed, or Cracker Crumbs is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. Her work also appears in a number of journals including Drunken Boat, Freerange Nonfiction,American Letters & Commentary, Quarterly West, Bellingham Review, Western Humanities Review, and Denver Quarterly.

Read more of Amy’s poems and essays at Cowbird.

http://cowbird.com/amy-wright/

“Leaning Back” – Feature photo credit: James Yates

 *

The Poppy: An Interview Series

Four to six questions begin as pods, then burst open with answers, bright lapis, 

black-stamened, conspicuous—ornament, remembrance, opiate.

*

This interview first posted at Hothouse Magazine.

Sharon Millar: from Caribbean to Commonwealth

“Out the window, the tide is changing, the sea frothing and roiling into the tight channel. But beyond, in the harbor, it expands in relieved swells, glad to be past the slick mountain walls. Four months ago, Laura had gone to see Dr. Harnaysingh. She’d made an appointment because at forty-six, her body was suddenly an unknown entity. Once calm and predictable, a source of surety and absolutes, it was now dense, fleshy, prone to thickened skin and odd middle-aged lust… pregnancy was not something she’d considered… When she’d told Mark, he’d lifted her nightie, rested his dark head between her ribs and hipbones, and traced gentle circles around the hard space above her pubic bone. She’d imagined a light swooping and fluttering deep inside of her as Mark murmured to the quicksilver heartbeat, that mere conspiracy of cells. A baby.”

– from “The Whale House” 

by Sharon Millar

 2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize co-winner

Sharon Millar – Photo credit: Mark Lyndersay / lyndersaydigital.com

Sharon Millar, a Trinidadian writer, shares her insights about writing in terms of language, landscape, cultural identity, and literary influences. Her lyrical stories are informed by the Caribbean and address issues central to life there. For instance, how life repeats itself in traditions and behaviors laden with love, sexuality, and violence. That we shared a writing mentor—Wayne Brown, the late Trinidadian writer who wrote from his home in Kingston, Jamaica—is an honor. Wayne had high expectations, which Sharon fulfills in her writing, her prose remarkable in its risk-taking, compelling narrative voice, and lush language.

Trumpet flower

Forest foliage

The language of your writing is rich and detailed and saturated in landscape and sense of place. Would you speak about the Caribbean, as well as your inspiration and your process?

It’s interesting to try and see where inspiration comes from. How do we choose to tell the stories that we do? It’s taken me a long time to pin down my process.

I’ve been writing seriously since 2009. I’d always dabbled before, but it was only when I began writing with Wayne Brown again (I’d done workshops with him in the early 1990s) that I began to really write. Sadly, I kept almost none of this early work. This was before the days of the internet, and to take part in his class I had to rent a typewriter. That’s one of my biggest regrets. I’d love to look at the work now.

I write from landscape, which is to say I often have no idea what I want to write. Random things are triggers. Right now it is July in Trinidad. We have moved from dry season to rainy season. It’s almost like a different island. The light changes, the humidity in the air increases, little ferns appear on telephone poles.

Trinidad's tropical waters

All of these are subtle cues. I tend to latch onto a feeling in the air or a certain heaviness of the light through the humidity and this will propel me in a certain direction.

The Caribbean islands have complicated histories of oppression and violence. Like the American South, slavery is an inescapable and tragic blot on the region. We are a young country. Just barely 50 years old with a very multi-ethnic population. Daily the population struggles with issues of identity and belonging. That’s the negative side. The positive side is that there are so many stories to be told. I really believe in the power of the story to help us see ourselves.

My biggest challenge is to write against all the stereotypes of the Caribbean. The rest of the world sees the Caribbean region as having one culture, one people, one collective history. I think it’s up to the fiction writers to show the world that each island is different and that we are much more than the tropical stereotype.

I’ve been told that I write in a very specific manner. I do this deliberately because I want the reader to see and hear and taste and smell what it is I am trying to convey. So I pay close attention to the small things. The plate of food on the table, the way the chair feels under the protagonist. What’s gratifying is when people say – oh, I felt this story had to be addressed to me because only I could feel this way – that’s very rewarding. I think that the specificity enables the work to be both very personal and very global.

Sharon and her parents

Family relationships, including the passing of happiness as well as grief from generation to generation, are prevalent in your writing. Would you share a bit about your family and your background?

We are white Creole and have lived here for as long as my family can remember. My mother’s paternal family goes back to the 1600’s (out of Barbados), her maternal family are more recent, coming to Trinidad in the mid-1800’s from Lisbon. On my father’s side, it’s a mix of English and French. The white Creole narrative in the Caribbean is one that is difficult to reconcile with my day-to-day life. But I am moving slowly towards mining the stories, both the good and the bad. And there are so many stories.

Sharon as a young child

Sharon and her sister Jennifer

My younger sister and only sibling, Jennifer, lives in Miami. She is about five years younger than I am. We had a good childhood with many pets, vacations near the sea, friends.

Sharon's mother as a child

But there were defining tragedies that shaped us.

When my grandfather was in his early sixties, he died suddenly. He had a heart attack in his study and died at his desk. It was the day after my birthday. I had just turned five, and my sister was only nine months old. My grandfather was an independent senator, and so his picture was posted on the front page of the newspaper. I remember my mother crying. She was an only child and very close to him, so this was a loss from which she never fully recovered.

At 54, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and succumbed to the disease ten years later. Her death is the hardest thing I’ve faced. And, Karin, you have put it so eloquently – the passing of grief from generation to generation. And it’s strange that I’ve honed in on this area of my life. I feel as if I’m the keeper of all the stories now.

Sharon and her daughter Hayley

I’m married with one daughter. I’ve been lucky in many ways, but no one escapes grief.

Dusk at the Waterloo Temple cremation site

Literary influences?

I am influenced by what I read. I went to university in Canada and read lots of early Margaret Atwood, Margaret Lawrence, Alice Munro. Also Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer, and I love Bessie Head and Ben Okri. I always liked reading the women. I loved Russian literature for the sheer magnitude of the landscape. I don’t consider myself a feminist because the very label carries its own level of patriarchy, but the women appear in my writing. I’m still reading and learning the Caribbean canon, an intimidating and essential one. Sir Vidia Naipaul, Earl Lovelace, C. L. R. James, Sam Selvon, Derek Walcott, and too many others to list here, have set a very high bar. I recently heard Jamaican poet, Edward Baugh, read in Miami, along with Edwidge Danticat and Earl Lovelace. When you hear the work and it resonates so deeply, you think, okay, that’s it. These are the ties that bind; this is what we share. This is what it means to be Caribbean in 2013.

The Caribbean canon is young and is naturally, very politically charged with issues of ethnicity and identity. Migration and displacement are constant themes as are oppression, power, and authenticity. For a long time I couldn’t write because I couldn’t see how I could bring anything to the canon. I simply couldn’t find a voice within that context. Now that I am older, I can see my way in, which is empowering. I can only write the story I know.

Trinidadian writer Wayne Brown

There’s something about the Antillean landscape that infects our writers. I see it in the works of Derek Walcott, V.S. Naipaul, and Wayne Brown. There is a lushness that marks us all. I wonder if one hundred years from now if it will be obvious. The current generation has poets like Tanya Shirley, Kei Miller (Jamaica); Loretta Collins Klobah (Puerto Rico); Vladimir Lucien, Kendel Hippolyte (St. Lucia); Danielle Boodoo-Fortune, Vahni Capildeo, Andre Bagoo (Trinidad), Sonia Farmer (Bahamas), and many more that I haven’t had the opportunity to read. Even though I write fiction, I read poetry when I need an entry point and the texture of the words. Then I move to fiction to carry me along. I’m experimenting right now, and perhaps those most influencing my work are fiction writers, Alistair Macleod and Andrea Barrett. But that’s today.

White Witch Moth on a coconut tree

Blue-crowned Motmot - Tobago

You’ve been writing a story collection, and a few of the stories have won awards. Is there a project you look forward to working on once the collection is finished?

I want to move on to a novel. One of my short stories declared itself a novel very early in the process. I’m enjoying the research and also looking forward to discovering how the form is different to that of the short story.

Divali lights

Favorite line, and why you are drawn to it.

“Soon the harbor was a scatter of lanterns floating above the water, face level, shoulder level.” – from The Bird Artist by Howard Norman

I’ve read thousands of sentences since I read this line and I still remember how I felt when I encountered it. There was something about the idea of the lanterns floating above the water. By using the face and shoulder references, my mind made a leap and I imagined not just light floating disembodied, but also faces. It captured that odd ghostly mood with such a deft touch.

Trinidadian architectural detail

Novel, story, or vignette? And why?

Novel.

This was a hard choice. I very nearly chose short story. But the novel is a world to me, the short story a moment. While I have been transformed and charged and shocked by a short story, I still look to the novel to really remove me from my reality. The world building in the best novels leave you homesick for worlds that only exist on the page. That’s magic.

Caribbean bloom

Caribbean breakfast

Best breakfast ever!

A big slice of fresh avocado and buljol (salted fish, lime, onions, olive oil, and tomatoes mixed together).

Sharon Millar - Photo credit: Michele Jorsling

Sharon Millar is a graduate of the Lesley University MFA program and is a past student of fellow Trinidadian writer, the late Wayne Brown. She is the winner of the Small Axe 2012 short fiction competition and the co-winner of the 2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Prior to this, her work has appeared on several shortlists. She has been published in a wide range of Caribbean publications as well as Granta Online. Her fiction is strongly rooted in landscape and she draws her stories from both place and history. Cemeteries, the rain forest, and old buildings are all sources of inspiration. She lives in Port of Spain, Trinidad with her husband and daughter.

To read Sharon’s stories, “The Whale House” and “Earl Grey,” follow these links:

 ”The Whale House” - at Granta – “New Writing”

 ”Earl Grey” - at ArtzPub – Issue 20

*

Color artist photo – with permission of Mark Lyndersay.

Black-&-white artist photo – with permission of Sharon Millar – Photo credit: Michele Jorsling 

All other photos – with permission of Sharon Millar

 *

The Poppy: An Interview Series

Four to six questions begin as pods, then burst open with answers, bright lapis, 

black-stamened, conspicuous—ornament, remembrance, opiate.

*

This interview first posted at Hothouse Magazine.