Kris Falcon’s second poetry collection some blue, a little spur has been released this June 2023. Recent poems may be found or will appear in The Hong Kong Review, Red Ogre Review, Havik, Atlanta Review, SMEOP, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She received her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
You can read Keep It Lite in the October 2023 issue.
How do you revise your work?
There isn’t one specific approach. New poem, clean slate. Each one has its own needs, whether it calls for more stormy days, a little medical research, cataloging for surprise, an outline of a persona or a timeline pertaining to an obsession, trying on accordion skirts, looking for new cheeses to like, just finding other literary forms, art, media. It reflects in my new book, some blue, a little spur. As one review notes, “each poem has its own rhythm.” And BookLife writes that some blue is “like a city wall coated in layers of changing, warping, overlapping graffiti…a conjunction of the surreal and the real, the fully formed and fragmented.”
What are you working on now?
I’m working on my third collection. I thought I’d finished it, but I’m finding it doesn’t veer away enough from my new book, which has been described as “a metamodern cyclone of shadows.” I’m trying to give it a lighter step, more even breathing, maybe even some life-affirming takeaways, just to see if that’s the direction the book is meant to take. I suppose it requires me to step out of the movie theatre and catch more rays. It’s a challenge I engage in, that I hope reflects a bit in “Keep It Lite.”
How or where or with what does a poem begin?
Everything is poetry. I only have to tap into what is readily accessible to me, also where I can sustain my attention. Though I’m not consciously on the lookout for imagery or language that would inform a writing project, it helps not to exclude any detail of the day. There’s pleasure in letting unexpected pairings of words as well. I enjoy letting them swim in my head, first in this fisher’s bay, then that surfer’s tide. I hope this reflects a little in “Keep It Lite.”
Are there other art forms that inspire or inform your poetry?
I watch a lot of movies not in English and UK-English detective / crime drama, particularly those that have a very distinct language—Top Boy, for instance. I also visit online exhibitions. Occasionally, I find something looking at old photo albums of strangers on vacation someplace foreign to both me and the subjects of these snapshots. Sometimes I unconsciously build a playlist of only a handful of artists I can listen to for hours on end, then weeks can go by without a tune.
Have you ever received advice (or has there been something you’ve learned on your own) about writing or revising poems that has made you a better poet? What was it?
I’m not certain it has made me better, but it generally helps to have interests. Beyond obsessions, and not necessarily around caring about the current. I mean personal interests that one can focus on and still work with—work that would ideally yield to a less self-important and broader vision.