Oh, look! I'm not in a cave in Siberia!
It's been a little while, which is ironic considering the name of my blog (yeah, yeah) but I had an idea for my favorite month and I figured you'd all be cool with it. For the season of glitter, snow, and gratitude, I wanted to do a little something different on my blog and broaden your horizons a little bit. As you know, since leaving the indy wrestling scene, I've been writing (or trying to) and meeting a lot of great, influential people along the way.
One of these fine young people is multi- Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee Kristin Garth, a poet best known for her sonnets that range from pop-culture references, current events, social issues, and concocted characters. No matter the topic though, her words are woven so well that it's no wonder she's got a handful of books already published and a couple more on the way.
Not only that, she runs her own poetry site called the Pink Plastic House and has often pitched in and edited with the harrowing task of compiling anthologies for new, up and coming poets and writers.
This is how we met- she gave me a chance when I submitted for the Rhythm & Bones:
You Are Not Your R*pe Anthology, and I have been forever grateful.
That, and I'm a huge fan of her work. I mean, she wrote poems about Nip/Tuck and Dexter. How am I supposed to not adore this person? *swoon*
Her poetry is so on point with the pulse of what's currently going on, but her choice of words is the top-shelf stuff that would make my AP English professors proud. But more than that, she's a sweet, encouraging, cool person that I wanted you- all of my remaining fans and friends to know.
I promised you I'd stay in touch, and these are the hands that are keeping me safe. Let's welcome her into our fold- she has a new book coming out that we need to get excited for!
Kristin Garth
DL: When did you begin
writing?
KG: I
can’t remember not writing. I don’t have
the best memory of my earliest years
and
sadly I think that is because I was abused, and there is probably a lot I don’t
want to
remember. By five, though, I was both being abused and
keeping my very first of so
many
diaries – or as my family called them journals.
It’s
ironic because journaling, which was my primary writing audience most of
my
life, is a habit I attribute to two otherwise negative influences on me: my
father
and the Mormon religion. Mormons are
very into journals. In my family,
very
young, there was mandated journal time. My
dad would gather everyone
in
our living room with their journals on Sundays evenings, and we would all sit
around
in what was an awkward but also kind of blissful silence in a chaotic home,
and
we were all required to write. It was
one of the weird times I felt I fit in.
Diary
writing was an obsession to me, and I did it far more than the appointed
Sundays filling
either
the hokey religious journals purchased at Mormon bookstores
or
the unicorn/kitten/Lisa Frank notebooks I would purchase more to my own
whimsical,
cheesy
girlie taste with rants and poems. It was such an outlet to me to exorcise so
much depression, repression and abuse I knew at the youngest age. I found it ironic a culture so
cloistered,
judgmental as my Mormon culture was also encouraged creativity albeit in
highly
prescriptive ways.
Journals,
in my culture, were written to document your life and be read by your offspring
and ancestors. To me, writing in a
diary, as I always called it, sounds more private and less performative -- was
tantamount to masturbation. If I
wouldn’t do that in front of you (and maybe even if
I
would) I wouldn’t let you read my diary.
It was for my release and pleasure only.
It was the
place
to learn to speak raw and real and not worry about being judged or critiqued by
anyone but my own eyes and ears – language is also very auditory to me. I cannot emphasize
the
import it played in my development as a writer.
All my earliest sonnets were written
in
diaries, and many are now published and out in the world for anyone to see.
 |
| Kristin Garth's journals of choice |
DL: Which authors and artists
(from any medium) do you draw inspiration from?
KG: I
have so many influences, writers, filmmakers, photographers, artists. One of my biggest influences as
a writer is Joyce Carol Oates. I read
Joyce Carol Oates as a young girl, and while I loved her dark literary style,
it was her discipline and work ethic that I think spoke strongly to my Capricorn
nature. I started collecting her books –
which is not easy as she has written so very much and not all the books in
print still or easily found. It became a
fun game when going to used bookstores and library sales to look for the Joyce
Carol Oates books I could find – some under pennames.
I
used to read that people criticized her for being so prolific and think to
myself, who would ever criticize a writer for writing? For the actual act of writing? Obviously their content is fair game for
critique.
It
was wild to me, even before I was a published writer, to be criticized for the
very act of writing and publishing too much.
I have to giggle at this now because I have been criticized for this
myself now, so it’s for sure a thing.
It’s not a way of thinking to which I would ever subscribe. I write for myself. Come along for the journey or don’t, but I do
my thing. That’s my personal evolution
from a girl who didn’t to this iteration you’re experiencing, and I don’t
believe in going backwards.
People
will always criticize you for something.
I will always write and publish.
It’s a compulsion, an obsession, a necessary act of my survival that has
turned into something greater than that – my absolute joy in life. I deprived myself of the joy of publishing
for almost 40 years; I will never deprive myself of it again.
I
am also inspired by writers like Shakespeare, Stephen Dobyns, Edna St. Vincent
Millay, Tennessee Williams, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allen Poe. A book that I read recently that has
resonated with me so much was Dietland by Sarai Walker. It’s such a reaction to misogyny that is
written in an over-the-top satirical style I love – a la Swift’s Modest
Proposal. I’ve written a few poems like
that including this one Stepford Whore (published in Blue Pages Journal, which
also references my love for films of the 70’s and the books of Ira Levin – the
decade of my birth.)
DL: What are the most
magnificent parts about writing?
KG: I
love everything about writing. My
favorite kind of day is to wake up and get dressed and pack my computer bag
with my headphones (I love to write to music but it has to be music without
lyrics be that classical to electronica, witch house I love) and head to a
coffeeshop and order an iced coffee (required), a pastry (optional), put in
those earphones (required, can’t write with any human voices in my head) and meld
with my laptop keyboard – if I’m writing an essay (if I’m writing a poem I
often write it on my iphone plus.
I
love the ritual of this routine, and my brain turns on in a predictable way
because I think I have trained
myself
to perform like this, like an athlete who goes to the gym regularly and is in
shape. That’s how I feel my brain works best to be
very disciplined. I am not a person who
thinks that everyone’s process is or should be the same. I flourish in this routine though. (Wish I was equally disciplined at the actual
gym in this metaphor). My favorite part
is when I’m halfway into a coffee, a poem and the coffee shop is packed and
probably loud but I have no idea; I’m deep in a world inside my head.
 |
| womanchild writing ritual in progress |
DL: What challenges do you
encounter as a writer?
KG: Oh
gosh, noise, scheduling time sometimes to get to that coffee shop – the way
that real life can work in total contradiction to the quiet and ritual required
to make art, my own laziness. That last
part will probably make some people in this community laugh because say what
you will about me, I produce a lot of work but I’m also an extremist. I suffer from depression, and it is very easy
for me to do nothing. I’m not great at
moderation, so if I get off my routine it’s easy for me to sink into
inertia. That’s why my writing rituals
and routine are life and death to me as a writer.
DL: What specifically drew
you to the sonnet?
KG: It
was a high school school English assignment and I was resistant, but I am a
girl who thrives in order (having come from a lot of disorder and chaos), so
sonnets, the rules and structure were a comfort to me. Ultimately, though I would have never though
it, once I wrote a sonnet I was hooked.
It was that feeling when you do something that you know you are MEANT to
do, and you suddenly have a purpose.
I
got a partial scholarship to graduate school in creative writing based on my
sonnets (before I’d ever published one).
The creative writing professor I’d studied writing with as an
undergraduate took me under her wing.
She thought what I was doing was important both the formalism and my
content which was unabashedly anti-puritanical while living in Pensacola,
Florida – a very conservative, Bible Belt small old South town. Receiving that recognition and help to go to
graduate school was truly the greatest accomplishment of my life – to be valued
for my writing and my mind from the Poet Laureate of my town.
Even
though I didn’t finish that program (the partial scholarship not being enough
to facilitate me breaking free of an abusive home) and finished my grad school
years on a stripper pole, I still always knew in my heart that someone believe
enough in my writing to make that space for me.
It had a huge effect on me and my confidence in my writing
abilities. Deep in my schoolgirl
stripper heart I was always still a sonneteer, and I believed that. I believed I would come back to it eventually
and do it right. I wrote so many sonnets
during this period about the work I was doing and the chaotic life I was
leading. I’m so proud of myself for
becoming what that 25 year old wanted very much to be but could not.
Here’s
the answer, in sonnet form, Ophelia Interrupted, published in Cabinet of
Heed:
DL: How
long does it take you to write a sonnet?
DL: My
sonnet babies are like actual babies in that they all come in their own precious
time. They are, by definition, 14 lines,
which isn’t long but with complex rhyme schemes and thought, they can take me
as short as maybe a couple of hours (the very fastest) to the norm which is
often a couple of days to the extreme case of one I put in a drawer after
toying with it for some months and found twenty years later. It had a good central, weird image that I
loved but I did not execute the sonnet well at all. I just don’t think I was experienced enough –
had written enough to say what I wanted to say.
The raw ideas were there but poorly executed. I revised it and published that – assuredly
the sonnet that took me the longest to write, decades, though it ruminated for
quite some time in my weird evolving brain until I was able to finish it. It
was published in Rabid Oak, and here it is if you want to see it in its
finalized weird state:
KG: How
has your use of audio and visual formatting for your work you helped broaden
your fanbase? Are there any challenges?
DL: Oh
wow, well, my use of anything online is very tentative because I’m terrible at
tech. I do try very much to do videos of
reading poetry. For a poet like me,
living in a remote place from the Twitter poetry community, it makes me
accessible to people online, more fully realized I feel, have maybe heard me
read. It’s ironic because I’ve never successfully read poetry in public. Even
when I was in graduate school for the time I was, we were required to do a
reading and I raced off stage embarrassed and crying in the middle of my
poem.
It’s
why I forced myself to start making videos so that I might one day be able to read
in public. I was so scared on my first
videos, and you can see it. I feel like
I’ve gotten a lot more confident and I actually crave doing them. I haven’t as
yet read in public though I do have a public speaking engagement in April at
the Southern Literary Festival, and I’m pretty terrified about that, but I said
yes because it’s literally do or die time, you know, about conquering this
fear. I was afraid in my 20’s, and I’m
in my 40’s now, and it’s time to womanchild up and speak for an hour (oh my
god) in front of people. So this is all to say I need to make more videos – a
lot more videos.
DL: Are you able to select a favorite poem you’ve
ever written? If not, is there one that stands out to you more than any other
(one that you learned the most from, one that you get the most praised from,
etc.)?
KG: The
poem above, Rosemancy, comes from a fantasy book that I just finished and is in
preorders at Twist in Time Magazine called Flutter Southern Gothic
Fever Dream. Flutter began as one poem which was, in fact, entitled Flutter,
about a young girl who is covered in moths and haunted by death and dying. When I wrote that poem, I knew immediately
that it was a much larger world. but it took me about a year before I was ready
to start asking questions and exploring it. Once I did, though, I dove in deep
and the poems came to me like revelations.
Flutter is
the story of Sylvia Dandridge, a teenage in 1880’s Pensacola, the town where I
live. Like Sylvia, I live in the woods
amidst a LOT of longleaf pines (though less than she does), and there is
something so otherworldly about these incredibly tall, skinny trees. They
completely inspired me to write this book which is a celebration of the
imagination. Sylvia Dandridge is an invalid who has suffered through many
terrible fevers and conditions including yellow fever, which she lives through,
and scarlet fever, which she does not.
Sylvia
is only a teenager when she succumbs to the last and in her dying days realizes
that her short life is depriving her of much of the experiences of life –
romance, drama, childbirth. However, Sylvia isn’t defined by her conditions. She
defines them. Her imagination is the monarch on an estate of moths, it flutters
and reigns supreme over the inhabitants – especially the imaginary whom she
created and who will outlive her and are the subject of the second half of the
book.
Flutter is both a love story to
my geography, the trees where I live which I love so very much and give me such
strength and inspiration. It’s also
peppered with a tiny bit of history of fevers and the doctors in Pensacola who
fought scarlet fever – which at the time of this book was the number one killer
of children (killing two of Charles Darwin’s children). For children who did
succumb in 1883 like Sylvia Dandridge, they did so at the end of the worst
mortality rate of this disease. In a matter of years, this will not be such a
problem, but that will be too late for Sylvia.
The
book however is not a defeatist book or even depressing, I hope. It certainly has sad developments but it’s
ultimately about the triumph of the imagination over the physical body and
mortality and its limitations. I sincerely hope that other feel that the way I
did writing it. Not only does the book
feature my writing but also the whimsically fantastical art of Mathew Yates
which I feel honored to have my words accompany.
(You can preorder here or also at my site you can order an annotated
or signed copy for $25 or $35 respectively at my website.)
DL: Was
“Flutter” always the title, or did it go through changes as the book was
written? Does it have significant meaning within the context of the book?
KG: “Flutter”
was
always going to be the title because, as I explained above, it comes from the
sonnet Flutter, which I’m including below. I wrote it early in my poetry career and
Hedgehog Poetry Press published and nominated it for a Pushcart Prize. Sometimes I think my sonnets are like little
flash fictions where there is a real character that is not me at all – doing
something I wouldn’t or haven’t done, just in verse. This was definitely the
case in Flutter, and I wanted to figure out why this young girl seemed
so marked by death and changed and in the thrall of the natural worlds, these
moths. Once I figured that out, it made
it very clear to me what this story was.
“Flutter”
has so many meanings in this book. It
started because of the moths who surround the young girl in this poem (which
I’ve included below for your reference. But it has to do with mortality as
well. That’s a lesson about this book
that I didn’t learn until the end of writing it when a relative of mine passed
away, and for the first time in my life I was with a person when they
passed.
He
had been in a coma for a week without hardly any responsiveness at all. The
doctors would say none. I took comfort though, albeit maybe inaccurately, that
his eyelids fluttered a lot – a thing they told me was automatic and probably
sadly meaningless. I noticed it though
when I would touch his hair, it increased and so then I started touching him
more and encouraging others to do so.
The moment that he died that’s what I noticed the end of the
flutter. The book had already been
titled and mostly written but I wrote a poem based on that moment for Sylvia
called Monarch in which the last few lines say:
“They whisper history
to a young, moribund monarch
— birthright, imagination, unlike another,
sovereign as when her eyelids fluttered.”
Here is the poem Flutter that opened up this world to me. My poetry manuscripts often come like this by
the way, one poem opening a world into which I dive with great enthusiasm and
hopefully without limits on the imagination.
DL: What prompted you to
construct the Pink Plastic House (Journal)?
KG: I’ve
been very fortunate in the poetry community to have a lot of people who have
sent me poems to read and give feedback, and I always thought, you know, it
would be great to have a way to feature other writers. That being said, though, I’m terrible at tech. So when I originally floated the idea of
doing a weekly poem feature, it was to a friend who had a larger journal and
offered to host it and input the work.
At first the journal had another name The Sonnetarium and did a lot of
interviews as well as a poetry feature.
I
decided at a point to change the name of the journal to an aesthetic that I
very much embrace – not that I don’t embrace a sonnet but honestly I was asked
endlessly during the life of that journal “Does it have to be a sonnet?” I never, ever intended to make a journal that
was in any way exclusive to a form.
Though I myself write primarily in a form, I read and love poems of all
forms. Occasionally I write other ways,
too.
So
then I thought of something that speaks of inclusion, a house – and because I’m
a womanchild, I thought dollhouse. I
had, in fact, written a chapbook my first very one that was called Pink
Plastic House. People had really
responded to that name and idea and feeling.
I decided my journal being tiny too – only publishing one writer a week
would be Pink Plastic House a tiny journal.
The
hard truth about having your own journal is that no matter how tiny it is,
there is an enormous amount of work. I
wasn’t able to fully participate in that workload in the current scenario, and
so I made a decision to take ownership of my journal entirely and move it to
the only place I could at the time, my personal website. It was a scary change, having problems with
tech as I do. People were very patient
with me, and it’s not a fancy journal but I do my very best.
Recently,
it’s grown as I came to Instagram myself and began an account for Pink Plastic
House that I call there the Pink Plastic Instagram vacation dream house,
@pinkplastichouse. It’s introduced the
journal to a new audience and the format of Instagram really shows off the
rooms and the poetry as a collective entity in a way that I think is so perfect
for the journal.
DL: You’ve recently started
photographing for the Pink Plastic House to promote upcoming poems. How do you
select the pictures (are you inspired right away, or does it take some time)?
How long does a setup take?
KG: Oh,
wow, the pictures are a lot of work! I
decided to do it because though I used sharable dollhouse and Barbie themed
pictures that I modified and titled by the room, I wasn’t taking the
pictures. People would compliment me on
the pictures, and I just felt weird. I
would try to explain that like most journals I was curating the pictures but
something just felt wrong about it. The
whole thing about moving the journal to my site, changing it to Pink Plastic
House was so that I was building an aesthetic completely my own and take
responsibility for the work. I guess
using other people’s pictures, even if it was fair, didn’t gel with that
vision.
Plus,
I have four dollhouses in my house. I
know wild, right? One came with the
house. I’m responsible for the other
three. I have lots of Barbies. I already was taking pictures of my socks
every day and putting them online. While
I didn’t think I was a great photographer or anything, I seemed to be providing
photography content that made some people happy. So it occurred to me – take your own
pictures.
I
honestly don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before, but it didn’t. Once it did, I became obsessed with doing
it. I have so much fun. I was already used to reading the poems and
immediately assigning them a room or an element of a house in my head. Now, immediately the next step was what am I
going to design to express this.
The set up can take a short time if it’s simple,
and I have everything I need, but often I don’t. Two good examples of the latter category were
two elements “Doormat” and “Cutting Board.”
“Doormat” was my first original Barbie photograph, and you can see it
below. I was reading a poem called “Welcome
Mat” by Madison McSweeney, and clearly I needed a doormat, but I didn’t have one. I fashioned one from a peach legwarmer (I
sacrificed a leg warmer for my art), and I used stick-on small letters to write
the word Barbie. Then I posed it outside
the Pink Plastic House. People really
were kind to me about the picture. It
gave me motivation to do more.
 |
| Photo by Kristin Garth |
The
second picture that took me a good little while to create because I lacked an
important element was Cutting Board. You
can see it below. I was reading a poem
by Peach Delphine called “Companion” that was a really spooky cool piece about
a knife. I have lots of Barbie dishes
and foods even some flatware but for some reason I was missing the all-important
knife. For this photo, I broke down and
went to the store and found a little Barbie dishwasher that came with all
important miniature flatware. I then
decided I wanted to make a surreal picture with some menace in an ordinary
setting. I cut a cutting board out of a
piece of cardboard and gave Barbie – surreally beautiful ballerina Barbie the
task of chopping food on a cutting board.
But when we find her, she seems to be aiming her knife in another
direction. I love this photograph. It’s my favorite I’ve taken so far. I actually may use it for a secret project
I’m working on because it speaks to me on a deep level.
 |
| Photo by Kristin Garth |
DL: You’ve described yourself
as an avid knee sock enthusiast- do you have a favorite pair?
KG: I
am such a kneesock enthusiast – really all socks but kneesocks and over the
kneesocks are a favorite. I photograph
some kind of sock most days on social media and put them up. It’s a big part of my self expression. When I first started on social media, I
didn’t post a lot of pictures of my whole self at all. It was really the socks. I suffer from body dysmorphia, and it’s hard
to feel good about how I look on a lot of days.
My legs I feel weirdly good about, and so it felt like a safe part of
myself to share.
Now,
I post more pictures of myself, but it’s still a lot more scary than just the
sock pictures. Sometimes people come
into my DM’s, men and women to either judge how much breasts I’m showing or the
angle by which I take the pictures. It’s
a lot of engagement that is hard for me as a person who is really sensitive
about their body and actually does these things to try to desensitize myself to
it – to feel normal.
With
the leg pictures I’ve only ever gotten one bad comment on in my three years on
social media posting every day. It
gutted me at the time though – someone saying that I had “wrinkly knees,” not
owning the commentary themselves that someone else said it to them – and while
they disagreed, they felt compelled to share it with me. At the time, it made me cry. Now, I think it’s ridiculous. The sock pictures have been a very good
confidence builder for me.
Here’s
a new sock picture I feel matches my personality a lot:
DL: What are you currently
reading?
KG: I
usually read some prose and poetry, right now I’m reading a thriller called
“Our Kind of Cruelty” by Araminta Hall, also Baby’s Breath by Dani
Tauber. I just ordered “Every Girl
Becomes The Wolf” by Andrea Blythe, and I’m excited to read that as well.
DL: What project(s) are you currently working
on?
KG: Wow. That’s a great question for a Capricorn. I feel like I’ve talked your ear off in here,
but I will do my best to not make this a novel right now. I have two current projects in progress, The
Stakes which will be published by APEP Publications next year. I think it’s one of the most important books
I’ve ever done. It deals with fire being
used against women historically and in contemporary times as a tool of
misogyny.
I
have a personal connection to this work for two reasons. I had a father who used to scare with me fire
stories, graphic, horrific stories from his job. It was done with the impetus of making me
“careful,” but it was done with no concern for not disturbing me as a young
girl. Of course, I was not treated with
care as a young child in other ways so this was hardly different. As an adult, towards the end of my years of
stripping, I was the victim of an arson.
Because I was an adult entertainer, I was perceived, by the police, as a
likely target of violence by many men.
Indeed there was one man in particular who I suspected of doing this
crime; he was an addict who had been arrested many years before for arson and
had played this down to me when I’d found it out. However, I also had a landlord at the time
who had a lot of suspicious arsons in his buildings including one that burned
an occupant severely. So this arson was
never solved, and in this fire I lost my beloved cat.
Because
of both of these reasons, I have a very intense fear of fire. I am sure I’m going to die by fire. It’s just a primal fear to me now. So when I read about two young women, one in
Bangladesh and one in Mississippi both 19 burned alive, it speaks to my worst
fears. I read a lot as a young girl about
people – mostly women being burned at the stake. These two things -- death by fire and
misogyny seemed conflated to me, and this book is about exploring that.
I’m
also, on the opposite end of the spectrum, writing what I refer to as a speculative
porn collection. Speculative writing, if
you don’t know, is basically sci-fi/fantasy, and these poems have a provocative
nature thus explaining my genre explanation there. The manuscript is called When Penetrating
A Planet, and it comes from a prompt from Detritus Online to write
about stripping from a non-human perspective.
I write a lot about stripping because that’s what I did for five
years. This prompt was amazing to me
because I wrote something I never would have – a poem about aliens who seek to
take over the planet by using an army of schoolgirl stripper sex bots. The bots know the secrets of the powerful men
– their mistreatment of these faux young women and deliver the planet to the
aliens. The aliens use a prototype of the fifth most downloaded porn star on
Pornhub, Bae, who goes on to become a deity on their planet. I’m forever grateful for prompts, any
opportunity to write.
Then
there’s that secret project based on Cutting Board, I referenced earlier, but
it’s not a secret if I tell you, and sometimes a girl has to be a little
womanchildish and have her secrets like that.
DL: What
is the best writing advice you’ve ever received, or heard?
KG: This
leads to your last question. My best advice for any writer is to approach any
opportunity to write with an open heart and humility, be it a prompt, a journal
assignment. It’s not to say that they all might work out, and certainly be
careful with your heart when writing about trauma and deciding to publish. However,
I don’t think attempting to privately write anything can ever be bad – as long
as it’s not hate speech obviously. Writing is a craft, and we grow as a writer
by doing.
Thinking
is a part of writing, and you should give yourself time to absorb ideas, and
that’s very valuable. The act of
writing, though, is how you grow better at doing it. You don’t have to publish
every attempt. You can write in your journal for 20 years like me and not let
anyone see it and act when it feels urgent and right. In this day and age, you
can publish so much and I see nothing wrong with that either. The point is whether you are publishing or
not, write write write, and you will get better at doing that.
DL: How
can our readers stay in touch with you?
KG: You
can follow me at my website kristingarth.com where Pink Plastic House a tiny
journal also resides or
on:
Twitter
@lolaandjolie or my journal’s Twitter @pphatinyjournal
Instagram
@kristiningridgarth or my journal’s Instagram @pinkplastichouse
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