A Week of Poetry Talk

Posted byKendall DunkelbergPosted inPoetry, PublicityTags:, , , , , , , , ,

It’s hard to imagine a better week than one where you get to talk poetry every morning for about an hour, but maybe doing that with morning coffee from the comfort of your own home would qualify as better.

This week has been like that for me, as I’ve been working on an interview about Tree Fall with Birdsong with C. T. Salazar. Each day, he would send me a question for the interview, and I would spend the first part of my morning writing up a response, letting him know I was finished, and then waiting until later in the day to see what question would come next.

We got into discussions of form and myth, and that took me back to an essay I wrote for my Masters thesis on Dutch experimental sonnets. I was glad to verify that Libre Office will still open my old WordPerfect files from the 90s and those files aren’t lost to time or relegated to the paper copies that may still be filed in a filing cabinet or box somewhere. I even revisited another essay I wrote on sound and sense in poetry, which I have to say isn’t half bad, and I know it still informs what I think about poetry. I spared C. T. and the interview audience the trip down that rabbit hole, though. Revisiting Pythagoras and sonnets was enough nerding out for one morning.

We also got into how the book found its final shape and the journey it took to find its title and find a publisher. I also reveal in the interview why “Tree Fall” is two words but “Birdsong” is one word, and why I like the asymmetry of that construction.

I haven’t heard when the interview will be published, but it is slated for the Southern Review of Books, so I’m very happy that C. T. was willing to do this with me, and I’ll be sure to let everyone know when it is available.

In other news, Ken Wells, author of Gumbo Life (released again last year in paperback) and other amazing books, wrote to tell me he had given Tree Fall with Birdsong a good review on Goodreads. I was thrilled when Ken ordered a signed copy and gratified that he wrote to let me know he’d read the book and liked it. That he took the extra time to write a review and give it five stars is even more gratifying. Thanks again, Ken! I so appreciate the support of my writer friends!

Published by Kendall Dunkelberg

I am a poet, translator, and professor of literature and creative writing at Mississippi University for Women, where I direct the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing, the undergraduate concentration in creative writing, and the Eudora Welty Writers' Symposium. I am Chair of the Department of Languages, Literature, and Philosophy, and I have published four collections of poetry, Tree Fall with Birdsong, Barrier Island Suite, Time Capsules, and Landscapes and Architectures, as well as a collection of translations of the Belgian poet Paul Snoek, Hercules, Richelieu, and Nostradamus, and the textbook A Writer's Craft: Multi-Genre Creative Writing. I was born and raised in Osage, Iowa, and have lived for over thirty years in Columbus, Mississippi, where my wife Kim and I let wildflowers grow in our yard to the delight of spring polinators and only some of our neighbors.

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