Karan

What I find most striking about your poems is their employment of metaphors. In “My Ex-Husband Ponders…” you employ the metaphor of the ex-husband as the sun and the speaker as bioluminescent plankton adds depth to the exploration of their post-divorce relationship. Then in “Meditations on the Lines…” your use of cosmic elements like “love notes orbiting planets” contribute to the poem's intricate exploration of loss and self-discovery. And finally, in “Hydria”, the metaphor of the kiln-fired hydria and beasts of burden dragged into its wet skin becomes a powerful symbol for the process of self-creation. In all your poems, metaphors serve as vehicles for expressing intricate emotions, relationships, and personal transformations. They elevate the poems beyond literal narratives, inviting readers to engage with layered meanings and symbolic representations. Is metaphor-making a conscious part of your craft, or is it something that happens naturally when you set out to write? 

Hillary

This is going to sound gross and braggy, but a lot of the time when I write, I can anchor in a metaphor pretty quickly. I’ll have a concept swimming around in my head that I know I want to be a conceit of my poem and from there, I craft around it. That’s not to say I don’t do some pretty intense revisions. Megan Falley has a great term: “the world of the poem” (or as I’ve abbreviated it, WOP), which is a fantastic revision tool. The idea is that all the metaphors, symbols, and “cloudy” language a poet includes should be anchored in a concrete world. For example, if I were writing a poem about a breakup, I could say something that sounds “poetic” like, “My heart broke into a million fragmented stars, lost to the darkness of the universe.” And, like, that’s nice, I guess — and also a bit obvious. But let’s say the WOP is my ex’s living room where we spent so many evenings. Then I can write, “My heart was that orange mug I dropped when I brought you camomile tea for the last time.” So much better, right? I’ve got the same idea but the metaphor is doing so much more heavy lifting.  Language is so cool and, as you noted, nuanced, so when you pull things from the poem’s world, you create a cohesive narrative that makes figurative language more effective. 

Shannan

I remember when Karan first shared your poems with me after he’d read them in the submission queue. He was elated at how charged and vibrant your writing was. Both of our immediate favorite was “Lucy the Fuckdoll.” And now, returning back to to the poem, I’m first entranced by the forward slashes, which take on the form of punctuation, breaths, breathlessness, adding both sensuality and tenderness, as in “This box slaps / a reminder….” Then, the slashes disappear in the mid-section, where italics take over. The language is sharp and humorous, but also…melancholic. There is an inverted feminism here that might be difficult to see on the surface. In fact, that is true of all your pieces, I think. And I mean, look at the audacity of lines like this: “Tonight, Ruth Bader / Ginsberg Guy will moan, / his mouth between my legs, counting / how many / times I cum.” I don’t know whether to laugh, be shocked, be amused, get turned on and in that spiral of thought I just keep going back within the poem. I’d love for you to touch on how this particular piece began and also to comment on how you perceive and execute the presence of feminism throughout your writing. 

Hillary

Somebody told me once that, if you tell a story more than three times, you should turn it into a poem. This post-divorce saga was a favorite anecdote of mine because the whole debacle was just so typical of my entire marriage. Not that there were always boxes of dismembered-torso-sex-toys showing up on the porch; more of the lack of connection, ability to communicate, want for something different. This poem started as what can only be described as a rant and then evolved to express the complexities I experienced following divorce. As such, I invite you to be amused, shocked, and turned on all at the same time. 

As far as the presence of feminism goes, I mean, that’s just who I am. It’s funny that you mention it explicitly in “Lucy, the Fuckdoll” because this is not a poem where I sat down and thought to myself, “Let us express feminism.” Some other poems I do intentionally weave in the feminist agenda (winking at you, Tucker Carlson), like “An Open Letter to Gretel from Ursula,” so I’m guessing that, if you’re reading feminism in most of my work, that’s just a product of some excellent parenting on my mother’s part.

Shannan

I’m so drawn to these lines from “An Open Letter from Gretel to Ursula”: “More like women written without claws for hearts, / “freedom from hungers, a life / “unobstructed by trees.” There is a mysticism that runs throughout this poem that enchants and spellbinds me. I think of fairy tales gone wrong, of young girls that are dealt bad cards and grow up trying to build a house from them with the flimsy structure inevitably collapsing all around us, and the struggle…the stirrings of hope that still rise within us to keep going, keep trying. I love the title of the piece too. It creates a mystery but it’s also quietly political. And sure enough, as the intensity of the poem builds, the narrative becomes more searing: “Contour your shoulder blades, escape / your bars, and keep your fire / burning.” Do you view your poems as platforms for what you believe in, what you’d like to see change in the world, in people, perhaps even in yourself? I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of these points. 

Hillary

To quote an O.G.: “Tell the truth but tell it slant.” Because I have no other frame of reference, my work focuses on the healing I’ve had to do in my life. My mom died from ovarian cancer right before the world shut down and just a year after an older sister of hers; I spent my teenage and young adult years neck deep in an undiagnosed eating disorder; I was bullied pretty relentlessly all through school because I was fat; blah blah blah other hard things; and there was still so much opportunity for exploration and laughter in my life. Poems are a unique opportunity to experiment with ideologies and realities while simultaneously working through whatever need(s) arose to create that poem in the first place.

Shannan

Finally, we would love to know your most influential poets.

Hillary

I love Rachel Wiley. I have at least one poem dedicated to her. If you haven’t read Fat Girl Finishing School, get yourself a copy. I’ve recently — like legitimately in the last week — inhaled works by Eleanor Lerman. I love the way she uses anchors in her poems and makes them both conversational and “poetic” (which is an adjective I don’t love, but am apparently employing again). I also cannot recommend enough: Ollie Schminkey, Kayleb Rae Candrelli, and Chen Chen.  Also a huge shout out to the lady who got me into poetry, Emily Dickinson.