What, Why, How: Andrew Collard

What:

I write poetry! My first book of poems, Sprawl, won the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize and was recently published by Ohio University Press. Sprawl is about life in the metropolis of southeast Michigan centered on Detroit. It attempts to evoke the complex relationships between various people and places within that metropolis, as well as Detroit’s relationship to other places. The opening poem, “Diorama,” deals with some of those issues directly and is something of an ars poetica. At some level, Sprawl is also a love letter to single parents. I tend to write out of encounter, which results in poems set in specific places. Particular cityscapes and suburbs figure prominently, along with the diners, grocery stores, gas stations, parks, and neighborhoods within them. Ultimately, it’s about me and my kiddo making our way through all of that.

I love the poetic sequence, and there are several sequences of poems threading the book together. In the “Autotopia” poems, I use the name “Autotopia” as a shorthand to address the metro Detroit area directly, touching on labor and the environment. In the “Sterling Assembly Plant” sequence, I repurpose language from old news articles to illustrate the situation of a local Chrysler plant that produced Redstone missiles. There is also sequence of “Sub-pastorals” that deal with suburban landscapes and attempt to subvert the pastoral tradition.

Why:

As many others have written, poetry can be a way of naming the experiences we don’t otherwise have language for. It allows me to more fully inhabit my own life, to notice things I wouldn’t otherwise, to engage with the way I relate to other people more deliberately. It also allows me to better understand my continually changing relationship with language.

What drew me to poetry originally was, of course, how it made me feel as a young person, but also the fact that poetry was available to me. I was lucky to encounter some really powerful poems in early high school by Langston Hughes, E.E. Cummings, Gwendolyn Brooks, Theodore Roethke, and Allen Ginsberg. The poems seemed to draw attention to things other people might define as insignificant or that I might otherwise overlook. They also basically whispered “Pst, hey kid, you can do this too. Your experience is valid.” And it’s true. Anyone can write poetry, and every life is worthy of poetry. It doesn’t take expensive equipment or training to make poems. All I needed was my own experiences, my own language(s), and a library card.

How:

I tend to write in pieces and compose over long periods of time. I’ll go on long jags where I generate ideas and writing based on what I’m reading and experiencing, then go on long jags where I go back and compose poems out of all that. For awhile I was taking direct inspiration from The Beach Boys’ Smile album sessions and fragments; they recorded in pieces and then constructed the larger song structures from the pieces. It became very inspiring listening to Brian Wilson direct this crack band of session musicians through multiple renditions of 30 second snippets of what would eventually become songs (or not). I also take inspiration from the 60’s Motown “assembly line” in this way. One step on the line is the writers and production teams, another is the musicians playing on the records, another is the performers adding vocals, another is the choreographer working with the performers on their appearance, etc. I write poems in steps.

Powerfully and precisely attentive, beautifully crafted to encompass the imaginative breadth of his witness and vision, Collard’s poems provide us with indispensable ‘field reports from the interior’ with deeply articulate, heartfelt fury.” —Lawrence Joseph, author of A Certain Clarity: Selected Poems

Bio:

Andrew received a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Western Michigan University, and currently teaches as a Visiting Professor at Grand Valley State University. Over the years, he has served as a poetry editor for Witness and Third Coast Magazine, and as an associate editor for New Issues Press. Poems from Sprawl have appeared in Ploughshares, AGNI, Best New Poets, and many more journals and magazines. He lives with his son in Grand Rapids, MI.

Links:

Buy Sprawl from Ohio University Press
Interview on Michigan Radio’s Stateside
Interview at Cincinnati Review
Author Website

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Linda K. Sienkiewicz is a writer, poet, and artist.
Multi-award winning novel: In the Context of Love.
Picture book: Gordy and the Ghost Crab.
Latest poetry chapbook: Sleepwalker

Social media links: LinkTree