KARAN

Sheila, thank you for these tender and electric poems. I’m a big fan of how you blend intimacy with the surreal: “your heart has a face / it is crooked and secretive, tucked away / in a meaty fold like something delicious.” Let’s begin with the process question. How do you start writing a poem? Does it begin with an image, a line, or an idea? Do you have a writing routine? And most importantly, why poetry?

SHEILA

An image or line is usually the spark for me. I’ve never had much of a writing routine – these days, I just write when the mood strikes. That being said, I do compose most of my poems on the notes app of my phone late at night while lying in bed. 

Why poetry? I guess a lot of the time I am motivated by this idea of “I want to tell the world how amazing or strange XYZ is, or what ABC experience is like.” On a deeper level, why do we create at all? I suppose we are always finding more answers to that question, or more ways to live that question through the process of creation. Maybe “Why poetry?” is the answer to its own question.

KARAN

Your poems often create these wonderfully fluid spaces where the body transforms and merges with its surroundings. In one poem, you write “i thought i was a heron made of fire / but i was only the patron saint of driving / myself home with a brain injury.” As both a writer and movement artist, how does your relationship with the body inform your poetry? Does movement influence how you think about language?

SHEILA

As someone who has been dancing for over a decade and practicing aerial arts for the past couple years, I get to be in my body a lot. Movement lets me realize how the body is so rich in sensation and capability. It is such a nexus of feeling and such a canvas. Consequently, one way that I know a poem is “working” is that it will affect me physically – it will hit me on a visceral level, for example, or feel like flight. 

KARAN

I love how you write about friendship and desire with such gorgeous specificity. In that poem about wearing borrowed pants, you create this intimate portrait through small details: “so you lend me a pair of your pants and walk me home / as i wear your too-big pants.” What is it about desire that is so inescapable? I sometimes say things like; “the world runs on desire.” How do you think about capturing these charged moments in poetry? 

SHEILA

For me, poetry and desire are naturally compatible. It is so easy to yearn in a poem – if not for a person or a memory or a world, then simply for a way to capture experience in words. As a person who is more or less aromantic, I find it funny how many of my poems come out sounding like romantic love poems. But love and desire are such expansive things. They expand to fill the page too. 

KARAN

Your work often shifts between narrative and surreal elements, like in the tulip poem where suddenly “you could pull a sword out of a stone / or out of your stomach and survive / needing only five stitches.” Tell us about this interplay between the everyday and the fantastic in your work. What possibilities does this movement between registers open up for you? 

SHEILA

Surrealism often feels therapeutic to me. It eschews conventional logic for something that feels more affirming to internal reality. It deals with transformation and surprise, and these are things that I seek when reading poetry, and what I hope to evoke in my own work. 

KARAN

The long, breathless lines in many of these poems create a sense of urgency and momentum. In “i want group hugs,” you build this beautiful accumulation of desires that feels both personal and universal. Could you talk about your relationship with form? How do you decide when a poem needs that kind of expansive energy versus a more contained structure?

SHEILA

Funnily enough, I went through a period of several years where almost all the poems I wrote were prose poems, regardless of topic or tone. I think it boiled down to 3 factors: 1) Line breaks felt like an affectation, 2) I felt too “lazy” to put them in, and 3) I enjoyed how the paragraph form made my poems look like tiny stories. 

Now I like writing lineated poems again. I like the possibilities line breaks introduce and how they visually shape the piece. As for line length, I find the poem sort of guides itself in that regard, whether its personality is more rambly or more reserved. 

KARAN

This is a staple question for us and I’m always surprised by the range in everyone’s responses: There’s a school of poetry that believes a poem or a poet can categorize their work in one of these four ways: poetry of the body, poetry of the mind, poetry of the heart, poetry of the soul. Where would you place your work within this framework, if at all? And do you see your poetry moving in a different direction?

SHEILA

I would say primarily heart and body for me, rooting more in the body over the past decade or so. Personally, I like to think of all poets’ work as touching all 4 categories in varying proportions. And perhaps cheekily advocating for adding even more categories … poetry of the spleen … poetry of the hyoid bone … etc.

KARAN

Memory appears in these poems both as subject matter and as a way of structuring experience. In that gorgeous piece about reading about the Trojan War, you write about how “menelaus” opens “like a struck oyster.” How do you think about childhood memories in your work? I don’t remember shit so I’m always so intrigued by people’s memories. What role does that earlier self play in your current poetic voice, if any?

SHEILA

I think childhood is incredibly spooky and strange. Everything is so new. The world moves in unfathomable ways, and it’s so big. But often too, something small – a sensation, a trinket, the sound of a word – can expand to become everything. And to this day, that’s a move I notice many of my poems making. 

Also, as a kid, I had no idea how to interact with other people, so I escaped into books and my imagination, which colored much of my reality. Looking back on it now, I think that loneliness and anxiety and magical thinking lent itself well to becoming a poet. 

KARAN

Several of your poems engage with queer desire and identity in ways that feel both playful and profound. In “i love the way you move through time,” you write “let’s make a language full of wildflower / fricatives and vintage memes and / lingering touches of the hand.” How does queerness influence/shape your language and imagination?

SHEILA

For me, queerness is close to playfulness, divergent thinking, and being open to a range of possibilities. I think both queerness and creativity involve saying “These don’t have to be my only options. I don’t have to play by these rules. We can imagine something different.”

KARAN

Tell us about your chapbooks Swan as a Verb and Moon Crumbs. How did you think about putting these collections together? Has working on longer projects influenced how you write individual poems? What are you working on next?

SHEILA

These chapbooks are composed mostly of poems I wrote in my MFA, with a few I wrote in undergrad. So both are rooted in a specific period of my life and the feelings and impressions that were part of my self-scape then. Besides that, I found that tone was another organizing factor – Moon Crumbs is more awe-inspired and excitable, while Swan as a Verb is slightly more reserved but still dreamy. 

Currently, I’m slowly putting together a full-length manuscript. I wrote two other full-length ones before this one, but I’m not sure they’ll ever be published, or if that’s something I want for them. Other than that, I’ve been interested in multidisciplinary and collaborative art, especially poetry × dance, and poetry × visual art.

KARAN

What is some of the best writing, or writing-adjacent advice you have received, Sheila? And if there’s advice you’d like to give to young readers, what would it be?

SHEILA

Imitate poets that you love, and in the process, your own voice will start to shine through. 

The most unusual part of your work may be the most valuable. Lean into it, in a way that feels authentic. Let your poetic freak flag fly. 

If you’re saying to yourself, “I have this project I’d love to do, but I should wait until I’m better at my art/craft” – go for it in the here and now. Life is a grand experiment. Life is also short. 

KARAN

We always ask our poets for a poetry prompt at the end. Would you provide a prompt for our readers, to help them kickstart a poem?

SHEILA

Write a poem inspired by a weird fact. 

KARAN

We’d also love for you to recommend a piece of art (anything other than a poem) — perhaps a song, a film, or a visual artwork — that you find particularly inspiring or that you think everyone should experience.

SHEILA

The film It’s Such a Beautiful Day by Don Hertzfeldt. It’s a pretty simple story about a stick figure named Bill, but so gut-wrenching at the same time. It left me in shreds, in the best way. 

KARAN

Finally, because we believe in studying the master’s masters, we would love to know which poets have influenced you most throughout your journey as a writer.

SHEILA

Federico García Lorca, for duende. Sylvia Plath, for irrepressible beauty. Zachary Schomburg, for dreams.