What, Why, How: Bunny Goodjohn

WHAT?

…poetry, prose and status updates:
.         free verse, sestinas, sonnets, tankas, triolets,
.               prose poems,
.                       novels, short stories, “cigarette” stories,
.                                comments, tweets, missed connections, for sale…

WHY?

When I think about having to write (think deadline or obligation or guilt) I feel wretched. I get horribly envious of people who don’t write. Maybe gardeners…or trombonists. How lovely to kneel down in the yard and grow things or make loud brave noises with a shiny and beautiful object. How I hate the idea of the screen (always smeared with fingerprints: honey, peanut oil, general grubbiness) and keyboard (always sticky…I am such a slutty keeper of my tools). But sometimes when I write, I feel the kick and jolt of language and idea. Picture the crack user, her ecstasy, the way her eyelids fall, her checking out of the everyday and into something unnamable. That’s the same kick and jolt I get from writing. I write because I crave that place and sometimes I get there…and sometimes I don’t.

HOW?

Always on a keyboard. Never with a pen or pencil*. For fifteen years, I was a typist. I prided myself on 100 words a minute (an IBM Selectric “golfball”: avocado green). Today, my typing and my thoughts happen at the same speed. I like to be able to check spelling, to swap, to research, to delete delete delete delete. There is no good time for me to write, but in recent years, I write less at night. Unless I am in a state park cabin with no clock and no radio and no internet. Then I write or walk. All day and much of the night.

* Every morning, I write a page longhand in a student-ruled pad. I put the date at the top and then I write about yesterday’s moments and today‘s necessities. Then I read yesterday. Then I read this day last month. And then I read this day last year. Then I get up and begin the day.

Bunny Goodjohn, English professor and Director of the Writing Program at Randolph College in Lynchburg, is published in both poetry and prose. Her work has appeared in a number of literary journals including Connecticut Review, Zone 3, The Texas Review, and The Cortland Review and has won several poetry prizes including The Edwin Markham Prize for Poetry in 2011 and The Liam Rector First Book Prize for Poetry in 2014. Her poetry collection Bone Song was published by Briery Creek Press in May 2015. Her first novel, Sticklebacks and Snow Globes (Permanent Press 2007) is pretty much a memoir in disguise. Her second novel is The Beginning Things (Underground Voices 2015). She blogs (when the craving hits) at www.bagoodjohn.com

Bone Song and Sticklebacks and Snow Globes are available via Bunny’s Etsy store (which is a whole ‘nother story) where she makes the most money on each sale. The Beginning Things  is also available on Etsy and Amazon.

Web page: www.bagoodjohn.com
Etsy Store: Recowind

Angelica had always suspected there was something deeply disturbing about her family, but the truth was more than she bargained for.

What makes us step back to examine the events and people that have shaped our lives? And what happens when what we discover leads to more questions? In the Context of Love, contemporary fiction by Linda K. Sienkiewicz, revolves around the journey of Angelica Shirrick as she reevaluates her life, and its direction. Available on Amazon.