WEBVTT

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G.C. thank you so
much for that reading.

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Do you want to do the Q&A?

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We have a few minutes for
a short Q&A. Does anyone

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have a question?

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And if you have a question
speak into the mic

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so it gets onto the recording.

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Which will only make
everyone more self-conscious,

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but that's fine.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I'm here.

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I'm live.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Ask me about lycans,
medieval theology.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Yeah.

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Thank you for that reading.

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It was lovely.

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I was wondering when you
were working collaboratively

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with John what
happened to the poems

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that you were
writing by yourself?

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Were there any poems?

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Not to separate them,
but I was just curious

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what happened to that process
in that place with yourself?

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Well, like most of
us who teach, I mean,

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there are some people who can
write poetry while they teach--

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In Joshua's case,
he doesn't really

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write poetry while he teaches.

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He teaches while
writing poetry, which

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is beautiful and different.

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I was discovering I couldn't
write much while teaching,

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and it was really painful.

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All of my energy,
psychic energy,

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was being drawn to my students,
which sounds beautiful

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until you're in that position.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And then you feel like there's
something vampiric happening

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in the world that you
have no control over.

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And John felt the same way.

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So in some ways,
the project was--

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we told everyone
we weren't writing.

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I mean, because in the sense
of writing our own work

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and our usual process,
we weren't writing.

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We weren't writing anything.

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I think I wrote maybe
eight poems of my own

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in that 16 months that
were separate from this.

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It almost felt like not writing.

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Most poets either write early
in the morning or late at night,

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the studies show.

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And apparently there's sound
neurological reason for this.

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It has to do with chemicals in
the brain and something else.

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But I'm a night writer.

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I write from 9:00 to 1:00,
9:00 to 2:00, usually.

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And he's an early
morning writer.

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And so we switched it up.

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He would come home from work--

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children, children, children,
wife, wife, wife, bed.

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And then he would read what
was on the computer from me,

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and he would write back.

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And I would wake up in the
morning-- coffee, coffee,

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coffee.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And then I would read his
poems, and write back.

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And because it wasn't the
way we normally did it,

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I actually don't have a lot of
memory of writing some of mine.

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[LAUGHTER]

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When we were revising,
which was much harder

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than the actual writing,
there was one time

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that I really kept
pushing against one poem.

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And I wanted to
make changes in it.

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And then I really wanted it out.

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And he kept saying, "OK, OK."

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And I said, finally
I said, "Well,

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you're really not
defending this poem."

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He said, "Dude--"
quote, unquote--

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"why would I defend it?

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It's your poem.

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If you don't want it, chuck it."

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[LAUGHTER]

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And I didn't remember
that it was my poem.

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[LAUGHTER]

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So the answer, I
mean, the answer

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is, we didn't write much else.

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But we wouldn't have anyway.

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We would have just felt
cruddy about not writing.

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And this way something
was happening almost

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without any effort.

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The hardest thing for
an artist or a poet

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is to make up something
new out of whole cloth.

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You all know that.

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Most of you have
experienced what

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it's like to stare at a blank
sheet of paper, and think,

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I'm going aphasic.

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I have no talent.

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I have no imagination.

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I should be working
for the Postal Service.

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[LAUGHTER]

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You think these things.

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And apologies to anyone who's
working for the Postal Service.

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Put the gun down.

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But I didn't have
to during this time,

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because every time
I'd have another poem.

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And all I had to do was write
a response to that poem.

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And that was also
very beautiful--

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to keep that chain of art going
in a way that was sustaining,

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not having to start over again.

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But not writing, you said
that it wasn't a constraint.

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I don't think we did
much writing separately.

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I mean, again, I know
I did almost none.

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And I don't think
he did much either.

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Another question?

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You mentioned rules when
you were in collaborating.

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And I was just wondering, did
you start with a set of rules?

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Mm-mm.

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Or, did they just
come about naturally?

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And how many did
you end up having?

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Well, they came and
went, because John and I

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share a quality.

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We don't share many
qualities, but we're poets,

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we're men of a certain age.

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We're in their 40s.

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But we're easily bored
with our own work

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and with other people's, too.

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So we changed them up.

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Originally, the
way this started is

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John as a gesture of wanting
to be friendlier with me,

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he was sending emails to
me talking about poetics.

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Talking about in a prose in
a reasonable way about how

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and why we do what we do.

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Well, I had just
had a friendship

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that self-destructed
with another poet,

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because our conversations
about poetics went to a place

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where she didn't want it to go.

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So I was not about to
answer these emails.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I was like, no.

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I want you to--

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"Stay my-- Please
stay, my friend."

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And so I didn't do that.

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So I started writing back
poems as answers to his emails

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about poetics.

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And then he got really
profoundly annoyed.

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And he wrote some poems
back to those poems.

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And we did that for
about a week or so

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in annoyance with each other.

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And then, suddenly, he
said, "Should we do this?"

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And I had just come
off of two or three

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also failed collaborations.

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I had wanted to collaborate
with another poet,

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but just because you're
friends with someone

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doesn't mean you work the same
way with them artistically.

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And those collaborations at all
failed for different reasons.

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And so this time it didn't fail.

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But the rules just came--

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we would every now and
then we would suggest one

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to each other.

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And then we would
do it for a while.

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The rules were made
up as we went along.

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We were already doing the thing
with the words in the title

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almost rule-like
before we decided, hey,

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look what we're doing.

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Let's make it a rule
for a little while

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until we're bored with that.

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Can I ask what you're
working on now?

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What am I working on now?

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I don't really know.

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I was in the process
of writing a book when

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the collaboration
interrupted and going

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back to that was
really hard, because I

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was almost two
years older and had

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all these other experiences.

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So I finished that
book, which may actually

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be two books in August and
sent it off to my publisher--

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and have no idea
what they think.

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I had a residency at
the MacDowell Colony

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in July and August,
and spent a lot of time

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thinking about
lycans, and reading

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the work of Gennady Aygi, the
Russian poet, and RS Thomas,

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who's a Welsh poet, and writing
really short poems that I

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think are homages to them.

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I don't know what-- as I told
that Penn State grad student,

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I don't know what
they're doing yet.

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But I'll need some years
to figure that out.

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OK, one more question.

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Where or what do you draw
most of your inspiration

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to write from?

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I wish I could say my dreams.

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My dreams are really boring.

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And mostly like being trapped
in a doctor's office waiting

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room for years

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[LAUGHTER]

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Scraps of language I overhear.

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A lot of the time, scraps,
little scraps of language,

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Eavesdropping.

00:06:53.610 --> 00:06:54.270 align:middle line:90%
Eavesdropping.

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A few words here and there
that have a shine to them.

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Yeah, that's usually
where I get things from.

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And I just start playing
around with them,

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and they suggest something else.

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And then we go from there.

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The language is, it's
older than we are.

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And it's bigger than we are.

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And it's smarter than we are.

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And sometimes you can
do worse than trust

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the language to show you where
to go has been my experience.

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It's a hard one to learn.

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Thank you all, again.

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[AUDIENCE APPLAUSE]

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Thank you all for coming.

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Stick around, buy some
books, get them signed.

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And you can actually check
our spring reading series

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on our website.

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We've published it.

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Thanks.

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