BarBar – We’ll start easy. Tell us a bit about yourself outside of writing.
Alison – I moved to San Diego in 2019 after growing up in Richmond, VA. I moved for the sun, and to help distance myself from my job so I could better focus on writing and my children. I own three adult stores in Richmond where I promote sex positivity which I also try to do in my work. In San Diego I got my yoga and aerial yoga instructor certifications. I live with my partner, my two kids, two dogs with seven legs between them, six chickens, four fish, and a snake that is loose in the house somewhere.
BarBar – Let’s get to know you, the writer, a little better. Do you prefer to write alone or with people around, say in a public place?
Alison – I go through phases. In Richmond I would write on my porch swing every night and edit at a coffee shop after work the next day. I occasionally write at coffee shops here but mostly I’m at home. Currently I’m trying to find the right balance of writing in a notebook and typing on a computer. I like the speed of a computer but writing by hand feels more organic.
BarBar – Inspiration strikes whenever it wants, wherever you are. Will you list some of the places you were at when you either conceived of these poems or actually wrote them?
Alison – Everywhere! When inspiration strikes and I’m not near my desk or my notebook I’ll voice notes into my phone. I’ve done this on walks, while driving, even jumped out of the shower to quickly record some words.
BarBar – What is your relationship to writing like? Do you love it? Hate it? Do you think your art comes from within you or do you believe in muses, or a divine spirit that uses you as an antenna? Further, do you write quickly and wash your hands when finished or do you labor day after day over one poem, scrutinizing every word choice?
Alison – I love writing but I also put off doing it which is amusing and frustrating to me. I think it’s the pressure I put on myself to produce something good. I don’t know about a divine spirit but I do like to think that the words come though me. In Osho’s book on creativity he says that artists are like bamboo through which the art flows. When I find myself working too hard I remind myself to “be the bamboo!” I have a tattoo backpiece of a bunch of dead writers and poets at the bottom of which is a typewriter that says “Don’t Try” which is on Charles Bukowski’s grave.
I find my best poems are the ones that come out complete. The more I edit, the less organic they feel. I attend a poetry workshop every week where we each share one poem and give each other constructive criticism. I don’t think I’ve sent out a poem in four years that didn’t first go through that group.
BarBar – If you could cure yourself from the writer’s bug, would you take the cure? What do you think you’d do instead of being tormented all day long by the existential anxiety of creation?
Alison – Absolutely not! I feel very fortunate to be a writer. I started writing in elementary school where I placed in and won contests on the regional level. I knew then that that’s what I wanted to do. I was poetry editor in my high school’s literary magazine and I entered college with a major in English (though I eventually switched for something that would better help me career-wise.) After college life got in the way and I wrote very little. I look back at those years as the most “untrue” years of my life.
I see my writing as an interpretation of life and life, itself, as art. It helps me better understand the world and myself.
BarBar – Let’s get to know your work better now. Tell us about the title.
Alison – The word “blink” is in the first line of the first poem and there it’s used to describe taking a photograph with your eyes, storing a snapshot of a moment without using a camera. My poems are all snapshots of my life.
BarBar – If your collection manifested into human form, what would your first date be like?
Alison – On our first date we’d split a bottle of wine and have sex.
BarBar – If your collection was a constellation, what would this new sign be? Can you give us a brief horoscope reading for someone born under that sign?
Alison – She would be a Leo, Aries rising, because I am. She’d be fiery and confident, but not as confident as she seems. She’d be introverted but she’d also love being the center of attention. Nowhere in her chart would there be Cancer or Sagittarius.
BarBar – Let’s return back to you. Great work always leaves you wanting more, where else can we find your work? Do you have any future plans for writing?
Alison – You can find some of my previously published poetry as well as a poorly updated (but I promise to be better!) blog at ThroatstotheSky.com. Also through that site you can get to my literary magazine, Throats to the Sky Magazine. You can buy my first chapbook called Flowering, (adj.) at Weasel Press, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.
BarBar – Speaking of, what are your three desert island books?
Alison – Desolation Angels by Jack Kerouac is the book that made me realize that writing didn’t have to adhere by certain guidelines and that I could be free to express myself however I wanted, so definitely that. I’d also take Bukowski’s Love is a Dog from Hell and Obituaries by William Saroyan.
BarBar – What if we said you could take those three, but also one guilty pleasure. What would you take? Ignore the logistics. It can be a book, album, or movie.
Alison – A vibrator.
BarBar – Lastly, how do you see the rest of your life as a writer?
Alison – My partner and I recently bought a house in Joshua Tree that is to eventually become our “forever home.” I like to think of myself there, spending days and nights writing in the desert. As far as what I produce and how, where the whole thing takes me, I don’t know, but I hope I will continue to devote a lot of time and love to it.
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