Thankful Thursday: Victoria Chang interviews Allison Benis White

Self-Portrait with Crayon by Allison Benis White


Double Thankfulness here-- Victoria Chang has been blogging a bit and does a great interview with Allison Benis White.

I just was handed this book by a friend so I was very excited to see an interview with the poet.  Yes, this is a beautifully written book and yes, I'd recommend it.   Oh and if you're interested in prose poems, it's the trifecta because the book is written entirely in prose poems.

(Note:  With the exception of Nin Andrews and a few other poets, I think sometimes the prose poem is used when the poet is tired and has just given up---um, I realize I'm talking about myself here and my a few of my own prose poems--but when a prose poem is good, you can feel it.  These poems, you can feel...)

Here's a bit from the interview about her writing process, something I always find fascinating--

VC: What's your writing process like?  Do you have any rituals?

ABW: I like to write in bed at night, in a spiral notebook, before I go to sleep. What I write is fairly stream of consciousness—I don’t worry about making sense or writing what anyone would consider poetry (actually I’d be pretty horrified if anyone ever read these notebooks—they’d think I was sentimental and deranged). Anyway, when I gather up enough material, I look for interesting phrases, sentences, images, relationships, etc., and then I work on the computer from there.

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