A mere two-ish weeks left in our submission period, people. If you haven’t submitted yet, get it in soon.
Here’s Marie, who let us publish her poem “Women.”
Describe your work in 25 words or less.
Exorcism.
Tell me about your poem “Women.”
“Women” to me is about the emotional violence women inflict upon themselves, but also about the external aggressions big and small we experience on a daily basis. The internalizing nature of misogyny.
What or who inspires you to write?
I started out taking fiction writing workshops when I was in college, studying with Joseph Bathanti and Kelly Cherry. Prose is, more or less, my background. Writing poetry can be like delving into black water. I write poetry to make sense of an emotional state I am in and to discover what I know, as Flannery O’. once said. And to fingerpaint, linguistically!
What authors have influenced you as a writer?
Audre Lorde, Annie Dillard, Lydia Davis, Gregory Corso, Laura Kasischke, Amiri Baraka, Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, Noam Chomsky, Gertrude Stein, Simone de Beauvoir, Carson McCullers, Octavia Butler, Diane DiPrima, Ray Bradbury, Patti Smith, Anne Carson, bell hooks, Albert Camus, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Frank X. Walker, …
Do you have a blog/website?
Where can we read you next?
For now, I post rough cuts fairly often on Tumblr. Check #alt lit.
What are you working on right now?
Searching within for shiny new ways to be brave and honest. Writing 3-5 poems every spare day I have. One in ten pieces, I estimate, will eventually make their way out into the world. Also, I am reading everything I can get my greasy little hands on.
Any advice for other writers?
Read more than you write. Don’t stop. Read magazines like this one!
Anything else you’d like to say?
I would like to say that I always loathe this question when in job interviews. And yes, it is only tobacco in that pipe.
Bop Dead City 
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