Today, I’m excited to share an interview and prompt from the poet Lisa Alexander. I’d love your suggestions of other writers, artists, teachers, and wise humans I might feature here. You can just reply to this newsletter with ideas.⚡⚡
I first met Lisa Alexander in a Madwomen in the Attic poetry workshop led by Jan Beatty many years ago. I remember Lisa sitting across from me at the workshop table wearing a black hoodie, her long dark hair a bit wild around her face. I remember liking that she was never the person who talked to try to sound smart. When she spoke, everyone listened hard because they knew she had something original to say—something important that nobody else had even considered.
Lisa writes surreal/queer/Pittsburgh/camping/gritty/desire/ body poems, but each one is bigger than whatever the subject is—each one makes you actually feel more alive, awake. I highly recommend that you order a copy of her first full-length collection of poems, throttlebody, which just came out from Get Fresh Books. Judith Vollmer says that it “mark[s] a real contribution to American surrealism.” Jan Beatty calls her poems “fuel-injected, running hot, alive.” And, Ross Gay says, it’s “hurt, heartbroken, dreamy, yearning, funny, tough. And in the true beautiful music of a voice I love, and love more the more I listen to, and could listen to forever.”
I love what Lisa shares here—her wisdom is a balm and a challenge to help me move forward. Now I’m off to try the prompt she shares below, hearing her Grandfather’s voice in my head: “Leave be!” ⚡⚡
What is your writing practice like? Do you have any writing rituals?
My writing practice ebbs and flows, reliant on nothing clear that I can see. I do write less when I’m overwhelmed. Ideally, I try to do a little reading and writing early in the morning before the talons of the day sink in, dragging me off into Responsibility Land. Mornings work best because my mind is less cluttered then, and I like using any leftover dream strands in my writing elixir. Some days (many days) all I can manage to do is stare out the window of my studio, though. This is where I do pretty much all of my writing, as it’s in my home which is where I spend most of my time. I live on the second floor of a duplex on the edge of a city park, so there are plenty of birds and trees to look out over. More dedicated work (revising, etc.) tends to happen either when it can or when I’m preparing for a workshop, reading, or something more formal. Deadlines are good for me even though they stress me out.
In all honesty, I have a lot of fear and resistance when it comes to my writing simply because it’s rather overwhelming to put what’s in my head out onto a page. But not doing it doesn’t seem to be an option. The being visible thing is a strange experience and dealing with that kind of tension has been a lifelong relationship.
What kind of writing are you working on?
I’ve been living and working within the space of one book for the past 17 years, and it’s just come into the world via Get Fresh Books. So, throttlebody has occupied and driven my attention in many ways for a very long time. Now that it is finally out, in addition to tending to its first steps in the world, I’m feeling excited about generating and focusing on new work. I feel open in new ways, so I’m just going to go with that for a while and see what comes.
What helps you when you get stuck with your writing?
Reading other people’s work and listening to music helps me when I’m stuck. I turn often to Jane Mead’s To the Wren (her collected & new) because it contains so many different kinds of poems to consider, and her voice is strong and solid throughout it all. Other times, I’ll go to my shelf and pick something to peruse. Not pressuring myself is my best defense. Sometimes I’ll browse my old journals to find snippets of useful things that I didn’t realize were useful when I wrote them. Even now, I write things down and think “this might be crap,” but then the wind changes direction, and it’ll fit somewhere or bring up something I didn’t see coming. Sometimes it really is crap, though. How to know the difference? Does it actually matter? Crap reflects what’s around it, so anything can be useful if it has the right support.
Music helps a lot, too. Most of the time I need silence when I write. But occasionally, getting swept up away into some tunes helps loosen up my grip on whatever I’m squeezing too hard.
Sometimes, while I’m listening to music, I’ll do some over-the-top free writing. I mean, really just let the pen fly (I’m always pen first, computer later) and whatever comes to mind, I write it, sense or no. The distance between the pen and the thought is so much farther than it seems and it’s full of pitfalls and distractions. I frequently find myself just making sounds on the page. Often nothing useful comes from these exercises, but I think of them more as exorcizes to get the junk out of the way.
What are your mindfulness practices?
Mindfulness takes on a few forms for me. One is that I do try bringing forward things and people I’m grateful for each morning. I stare out the window a lot and take stock in what I see/hear/feel. It’s so hard to be still.
Personally, I consider boxing and lifting weights to be a kind of mindfulness simply because I can’t think of anything else in those moments other than the combos I’m throwing or the reps I’m counting. It’s centering for me. No where else in my day am I thinking of one single thing. I also try to walk a lot and just listen.
Not using social media is also a kind of mindfulness for me. It’s not good for my mind to be subjected to whatever happens to be flipping around on the screen. So I take in information about the world and about the people in my life in other ways where I have a little more control over how and what I’m receiving. It’s slower, but it's more meaningful for me. I seem to need a lot of space.
How often do you practice mindfulness and when/where?
I try to inject mindfulness into my day somewhere whether it’s on a walk, at the gym, or in my studio, but so often I get caught in the net of “I have to get this done” that I freeze and then nothing gets done: no mindfulness, no responsibilities, and then deadlines draw closer, and I get more stressed growing farther and farther away from mindfulness. It’s a gross place to be, so I try to avoid it as best as I can by allowing myself to reset.
Reading books helps. The tangible experience combined with giving my brain something to eat can help slow that degradation enough so that I can right myself and start again.
It’s always about going back to basics: reading, walking, listening.
What do you do when a mindfulness practice isn’t working?
Honestly, not forcing myself to be mindful. I’ll let myself binge the same movies I watch every year (The Legend of Billie Jean, Beverly Hills Cop, Away We Go) – stuff that feels familiar, feels like me. I’ll play video games, screw around with the cat, work on this Lego Typewriter I’ve been working on (the cat likes to “help” with that), drink wine and play cards on the porch with my partner. I just let myself bob along to whatever feels most like myself until I can sit quietly again. I always eventually need to sit quietly. Sometimes it takes me awhile to get back to it again.
Do you see your writing and mindfulness practices as connected? In what ways?
Interesting question. I think in some ways they are. Actively practicing mindfulness, for me, is when I’m really noticing something. When I’m truly present and aware of what I’m seeing in that moment. These things do absolutely make it into my poems. So much of my work is mental archeological digging – not necessarily for things that come from my own life – although sometimes true – but for the things that have colored it. A retrofitted mindfulness, maybe. Sometimes I don’t realize what I’ve tracked and recorded (mentally) until later when I’ve pulled some poetry string and down fell the mirrored gloss of a piano or the smell of a roller rink rug.
How do you see your writing/mindfulness practices related to any other work or practices you do?
I adjunct at Carlow University, teaching composition. I’m also the Operations Director for Calliope: The Pittsburgh Folk Music Society. So I’m pretty busy all the time. When I’m overwhelmed (which is often), I try to remember that everything I do is in service to writing and music – neither of which should be stressful – and underneath the grading, the grants, the concert production, the non-profit life, are two basic components of human expression. Keeping that in mind helps me stay steady. Especially since these two things are what I turn to in my attempts to be mindful.
What is your mantra or motto for life? What piece of wisdom do you have on a post it note to help you remember it?
There are a few things I keep in mind, but currently on a Post-It above my desk is a quote from a former colleague, Judy Lightner, that says “You really can’t react to what you don’t know.” It’s something she said in passing as she walked past my desk probably in reference to a grant I was working on, but it lit up my brain because I excel at reacting and responding to what I’m afraid of or what I worry will happen, and that’s done nothing good for me. If I could adhere to her suggestion, I’d be golden.
Are there any books / writers / teachers that have been transformative for you that you would recommend to readers?
That’s a huge question. I’d never be where I am without key teachers telling me I could get here. It took me forever to finish college, which was the path that led me to getting my book out there. I know that’s not the same path for everyone, but it was for me strictly because of the teachers I encountered along the way. I dropped out (or, ghosted, rather) maybe twice. I started college in 1995, but I didn’t graduate until 2010. Was it 2010? Then I got my MFA in poetry. I didn’t even know what an MFA was for most of my life. I struggled a lot in various ways, but poetry was the lifeline. It always made sense to me even if I didn’t feel educated enough or well-read enough, but once I grabbed onto that bar, I just held on.
Books I turn to over and over: Lynda Hull’s Collected Poems, Steve Scafidi’s Sparks from A Nine-Pound Hammer, Judith Vollmer's The Sound Boat, Jan Beatty's The Switching/Yard, Ross Gay's Bringing the Shovel Down, Bruce Weigl’s An Abundance of Nothing, Gerald Stern’s Early Collected Poems, Larry Levis’s Winter Stars, I could go on and on.
A prompt from Lisa
Sometimes I find it difficult to write the things I really want to say because even that can be hidden from me for various reasons. To combat that, I give my writing time.
Write it / leave it for a while / come back / write it again without looking at it / leave it / come back / look again.
Things happen in the blank space, in the time between, when you just let things settle.
My Grandfather used to often say “Leave be!” (in his Italian accent) when I was fussing with something. I think this applies to poetry too.
Give it space. Give yourself space to come back when your cells and the wind are different and see what you see.
For more from Lisa and her new book, throttlebody
If you’re near Pittsburgh, the Launch Reading for throttlebody is happening on Sat, Sept 28th at 6 pm at Bottom Feeder Books in Point Breeze. Lisa’s reading with the legends Jan Beatty and Judith Vollmer and you *really* need to show up to this even if just for me because I can’t.
If you’re waiting for her book to arrive and want to read some poems published online: here’s “Kids out the window” at Tupelo Quarterly and “Evacuate My Brain” at Pittsburgh Quarterly with this note: (“Pegasus was open to the 18 and older crowd on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and as soon as I was old enough, I went, and I went for years after. It was a place so different from any other place I knew: the crowd thick and liberating. There wasn’t a thing I had to do other than be there, and that was a welcome respite in the hard business of being human among other humans. It was the first place I really could just be. Something to note: this poem references a line from a Sneaker Pimps and a Tori Amos song”).
Lisa Alexander is the author of the full-length collection throttlebody (Get Fresh Books, 2024). Her poems have appeared in various journals including Tupelo Quarterly, 2 Bridges Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, and The Burnside Review, among others. She holds an MFA in poetry from Drew University and is a longtime member of the Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops in Pittsburgh. You can check out her website here and follow her on IG here.
Be Where You Are is a newsletter about how to use writing and mindfulness to be where you are. If you have ideas to share for future newsletters, you can reply to this email or email me at emilymohnslate@gmail.com. You can support this newsletter by liking, commenting & sharing it with other people. You can also find me on Instagram or Facebook or find more info at my website. Thank you for reading!⚡⚡
great interview. great writer.
I find such comfort when writers say they find inspiration from other writers! Writing is this continuous life-giving process.