Allison CobbAllison Cobb is the author of two volumes of poetry, including the recently-published Green-Wood.  (You can read an excerpt here.)  She’s a native of Los Alamos, NM, and came to Portland by way of Brooklyn, NY.  She’ll read for the Spare Room reading series with Jesse Morse this Sunday, Feb 7 at Concordia Coffee House on Alberta Street.  We caught up with her to talk about poetry and places, among other things.


Q: You’ve published two books of poetry with small presses (Born Two with Chax Press, and Green-Wood with Factory School.)  How hands-on was the experience?  How involved were you in the process of publication?  And would you recommend the small-press experience for poets who want to publish?

A: Both publishers (Charles Alexander of Chax Press and Bill Marsh of Factory School) are poets, members of my poet community, and people I admire. They publish books because they feel passionate about poetry and making it available to a readership. I feel like it is an extra privilege to be published by a peer, someone who wants to publish your work, usually at a loss to themselves (because small presses don’t make a profit, as we know).

As far as recommending the small press experience, it’s the only publishing venue available for most poetry, and it is only available thanks to some very dedicated poet-publishers. I would recommend that poets buy small press books to keep these presses thriving!

Q: I recently reviewed Peaches & Bats 5, a local poetry journal, for this site.  I really enjoyed your poem excerpt titled “From Green-Wood.”  Can you say a bit about the longer work this came from?  What led you to write about the Green-Wood Cemetery, and what other themes are you drawing from in this work?

A: I moved across the street from Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY, in 2002. It was an accident that I started writing about the cemetery — I just began wandering around in it because it is 500 acres of open space — the largest in Brooklyn.  Then I got interested in the history, and one thing led to another and eight years later became a book. I think in the end I discovered that Green-Wood and the history of its development could be used as a kind of “mirror” for the American landscape. Green-Wood became a departure point for examining post-September 11 America. Like, how did we get here?

Q: You’re from Los Alamos originally, you’ve written about Brooklyn, and now you live in Portland.  How does the physical landscape, or your sense of a place and its history, inform your writing?
A: Well, place is what is. It’s like the body. It’s the thing that you have to deal with. Maybe coming from Los Alamos made me extra sensitive to a sense of place, but I feel like anywhere I go I want to know what was before–what exists beneath this surface of the now?
The Portland poet Kaia Sand has just published a book called Remember to Wave that charts her personal encounter with some of the history of Portland, including the Expo Center, which during World War II was an “Assembly Center” for Japanese citizens forcibly sent to internment camps. Kaia reports that the same old-growth wooden posts still hold up the roof of the Expo Center. That kind of thing astounds me — that to touch that wood is in some way to touch the Japanese who were held there. It underscores that all things and people are connected, not in a cheesy, spiritual kind of way, but in a quite concrete and literal way. How would that change our choices to be constantly suffused with that kind of awareness?

Q: You write about the natural world, and our (often toxic) relationship to it.  Do you think of yourself as an “environmental” writer–and if so, what does that mean to you?  Are there other writers concerned with ecological issues whose work you enjoy or admire?

A: This was kind of an accident, too. After I spent three years getting an MFA degree at George Mason University (something I’m very glad I did) I was equipped for no particular paying work, but I had had some PR experience, and office work seemed like it would leave more time for writing than teaching would, so I got a job at the Environmental Defense Fund, a national environmental nonprofit, and stayed there for 11 years until I moved to Portland.
I worked there during the time that awareness about global warming was growing and there was this sense for the first time that humans could cause their own destruction ecologically (not just by nuclear weapons). So I became attuned to that fact in the same way that I think many other people did, just maybe more so because I had to think about it so much.

I am drawn to writers who are concerned with the “big issues”–and ecological destruction would fall into that, but I wouldn’t say I’m drawn to “environmental writers” per se. Alice Notley is my favorite contemporary writer. Susan Howe is big for me, too. Alicia Cohen is an amazing local poet whose recent book Debts and Obligations takes on these issues.

Q: What are you reading right now?  What’s propping up your night stand, what’s on your wish list, and if your next book HAD to be a re-read, what would it be?
A: Right now I’m reading about the history of plastic. Pretty much all of us have traces of toxic BPA in our bodies, so that seems like something to confront. (The Oregon legislature is considering a bill to ban BPA.)
Next on my nightstand is Touching Feeling by Eve Sedgwick about the role of emotions in theory, behavior and performance.

I would re-read Alice Notley’s Close to Me & Closer … (The Language of Heaven) and Desamere. I always seem to, anyway.

Thanks, Allison!

Related Posts with Thumbnails