10 Questions with...NYC Poet Aimee Herman

Aimee Herman will be one of the featured poets in(as well as the host of) Raining Words: A Spring Poetry Extravaganza on Saturday, April 12 @ The Pomegrante Gallery, produced by 3Po3try NYC (https://www.facebook.com/3po3trynyc).

Herman is a performance artist, poet and teacher with an MFA in Creative Writing from Long Island University in Brooklyn, as well as a longtime Inspired Word host. She teaches at Bronx Community College and is a faculty member with Poetry Teachers NYC, offering affordable poetry workshops and creating spaces for other performers to lift their words off the page. She has been published in various journals and anthologies such as: Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics (Nightboat Books) and The Understanding Between Foxes and Light (great weather for MEDIA). Her full-length book of poems to go without blinking was published in 2012 by BlazeVOX books. She can be found wrapped in caution tape in Brooklyn or at aimeeherman.wordpress.com.

The following is our quick 10-question interview with Ms. Herman, who like poet e.e. cummings believes in writing all in lowercase:

What one word describes your writing style?

experimentallyserrated.

What's your idea of the perfect poem?

there is no such thing.

What's your best writing moment?

when the words arrive.

What's your worst writing moment?

when they forget themselves.

What time of the day do you mostly write?

all times.

What do you do to get into your writing sessions?

disembowel my brain stem, remove my clothes, eat nato with okra, masturbate, read, listen to miles davis (not necessarily in that order).

What's the weirdest place you ever wrote?

in a dungeon on a saturday surrounded by various forms of bdsm.

What's the weirdest thing you ever wrote on?

none of it's been weird. i'm just grateful that there are other things to write on besides paper. bodies. trees. buildings. bathroom doors. library books, refrigerators, on bread......

What book changed your writing forever?

blood and guts in high school by kathy acker.

What poet, dead or alive, would you like to be friends with?

tie between kathy acker and bukowski.

To purchase advance tickets to Raining Words: A Spring Poetry Extravaganza, go to http://3po3trynycdebut.eventbrite.com.

Photo credit: Jay Franco (http://jayfranco.co/).

10 Questions with...NYC Poet Graham Willner

Graham Willner will be one of the featured poets in Raining Words: A Spring Poetry Extravaganza on Saturday, April 12 @ The Pomegrante Gallery, produced by 3Po3try NYC (https://www.facebook.com/3po3trynyc).

Born, raised, and still residing in Brooklyn, Willner is a pre-school teacher and poet who writes thoughtful pieces about the human condition. He says he “braids together semantics and syntax” to “rhythmically, metaphorically, and meaningfully point something out.” He finds himself most influenced by the “simple complexities of being human.”

The following is our quick 10-question interview with Graham:

What one word describes your writing style?

Metaphorocious (not a real word)

What's your idea of the perfect poem?

The perfect poem to me is based on a physiological response...when the back of your mind feels warms, your ears literally perk up, when goosebumps rise from your skin, tears form in the back of your eyes, and one side of your mouth smiles involuntarily.

What's your best writing moment? What's your worst writing moment?

My best and worst writing moments are hopefully both yet to come.

If you could steal one line from any poem, what would it be?

"Maybe there are cartwheels in your mouth, made they'll grow up to be gymnasts, maybe you've been kicking people with them by accident" - Andrea Gibson, A Letter to the Playground Bully

What time of the day do you mostly write?

I almost exclusively write while I'm on route to work...or going anywhere on the train. So, in the morning and the evening.

What do you do to get into your writing sessions?

I'll sometimes listen to a poem I want to emulate the sentiment of.

What's the weirdest place you ever wrote?

When I was the assistant teacher at a pre-school in Brooklyn, I would write during the children's nap time.

What's the weirdest thing you ever wrote on?

The underside of a giant water heater.

What book changed your writing forever?

I don't think any one book could change someone's writing "forever"... unless they never read another book again after that one...but I've been reading Salman Rushdie in hopes that it will effect my writing.

Do you have any writing superstitions? If so, what are they and how do you deal with them?

Yes...I superstitiously believe that the first way in which I phrase a line in a poem shouldn't be discarded...even if I've decided to re-phrase it. I deal with it by writing the line as it was originally phrased somewhere else.

To purchase advance tickets to Raining Words: A Spring Poetry Extravaganza, go to http://3po3trynycdebut.eventbrite.com.