Watch for the application deadline for next year's fellowships! The deadline is usually in August or September.
KL: How did you use your time together? And Morgan, if you
can offer a particular nugget of wisdom you got from Brenda this year, would
you?
MV: Brenda and I met on a monthly basis, primarily at
Physical Graffitea on St. Mark's Place. At one point we worked on a
collaborative poem, and I think we met three or four times that month to figure
that out. Otherwise, it was once a month to share work with each other. It
wasn't just me bringing poems—Brenda would bring in examples of her work in
progress, too, which was extremely useful to see.
One thing I've picked up from Brenda is that curiosity can
be a sort of embodied position you put yourself in. You can physically spark
the action of writing by actually going to places that evoke desire.
BC: Morgan defined the our meetings very well. We had
meant to take a trip to the Hispanic Society in Washington Height because its
such an odd and neglected site. And to visit the neighboring grave of John
James Audubon at the Trinity graveyard, but the rough winter never let up so we
based a collaboration on the trip we never made.
On one occasion we visited Simon Pettet in his old tenement
apartment in the famous E. 12th St. poet's building that was home to Allen
Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. Morgan had an upcoming reading with Simon and I
thought it would be great to introduce them before hand. Simon served us tea
and gave us an intimate history of the East Village poets.
KL: What has changed for (either of) you as a result of this
fellowship? Morgan, do you feel better equipped to surface and be?
MV: I think being told that other people believe in my
writing has been a really encouraging event for me. There's always been an
approachable nature to the Poetry Project, but all the more so as I've gotten
to participate more regularly. The Project is mostly filled with people who are
giving kind but stern attention towards poetry. I think there's hope that an
incredible meaning will come out for if we all listen well, and it's been
easier to be a poet the more I see that in the community.
BC: Literary transmission is essential for any community to
survive, and in meeting Morgan, I found a younger generation of serious readers
and artists. It was a valuable experience in all; listening to Morgan's
take on poets that I've known for a decade or two and to see that a younger
generation found the work of my peers and my seniors as worthy as I do.
KL: To what extent is mentorship hierarchical? Did you adopt
any practices to subvert this in your meetings/exchanges?
MV: Brenda started the mentorship with very little intention
of enforcing hierarchy. In terms of working through poetry, she really leaves
it to me to take her advice or not, and to work on my own through any problems
she might raise. But on the other hand, for me, it's incredibly useful to
recognize her as a writer to admire and look up to. Writers can be so different
from each other, but certain traits come up a lot. All writers have curiosity
and rhythm, for example, but practiced writers have specific ways that they
handle those things, and I can learn from that because I'm still working it all
out.
BC: I wasn't sure what a mentor is/was? I did not
approach this as a teacher/professor, but as a friend, a bit more seasoned in
the community.
KL: To my knowledge neither of you has what's become the
'conventional' poet's life of academia / adjunct scrambling (maybe I'm wrong).
How did this fellowship fit into your lives alongside your professional, maybe
also personal, commitments?
MV: I think that my work as a creative person is right now
the most pressing aspect of my life, but I don't think I will make a move to
finance my life through creativity any time soon. At this point in time,
pursuing one's life as a poet (particularly as a young one) is weirdly
complicated by how defined that track can be. There's so much pressure to be
involved in higher education. And I really believe in education, but I'm more
interested in self-education and community education. At the time I applied for
the fellowship, I had been taking workshops regularly at the Project for three
years. They have always been good models for me of communal learning, in that
they don't define a lot about what you are required to do, but instead provide
a lot of opportunities to participate. The fellowship has been an experience
just like that, generous in terms of personal freedom, and generous in terms of
opportunities to participate. I don't know if academia is good or bad for
poets. Probably both. But I do know that I wanted very badly to proceed as a
writer, and that I felt uneasy about submitting myself to a larger institution
in order to make that progress happen. I like having a job and being a poet,
and seeing where those meet, as well as where they can't meet. The most special
thing for me about the fellowship has been the feeling that I am able to be
taken seriously as a poet, solely based on the work I do as a poet. I think
that has a lot to do with the fellowship, but probably has more to do with the
Poetry Project in general.
BC: I do teach but I teach what I call meat and potatoes
(basic comp and survey literature courses to non-writers who are preparing to
enter the medical fields). I don't have tenure or other forms of security
that a university might ensure; however, I am rewarded by teaching at a college
with one of the most diverse student populations in the city.
