Allison Blevins, Author of Where Will We Live If the House Burns Down?
Interviewed by Melissa Joplin Higley
MJH – When and why did you first start writing poems?
AB – I started writing poems after reading Teen Magazine as a girl (not a teen). The magazine had a poetry page in the back, and I loved the drama. My mother bought me a journal, and I filled and filled the pages. I still write much of my work in the same way now.
MJH – Who are your main poetic influences?
AB – I worked with Claudia Rankine during my MFA. My obsession with the prose poem came directly from her. Julie Marie Wade and Lynn Melnick have been great mentors and friends as I’ve developed as a writer. Julie’s ability to transition from poetry to essay and back again is truly inspiring. My dear friend and mentor Laura Lee Washburn has been a major influence on my writing since I started my MA over a decade ago. I was also heavily influenced by the poet Robinson Jeffers’ imagery and devotion to the natural world.
MJH – How would you describe your work, as it has evolved over time?
AB – When I started my MA in Creative Writing, I had no clue what a poem even was. I just knew I had to write down my thoughts, or they would overwhelm me. My work is therapeutic in many ways. I began with just the emotion. I’m so grateful for all of my teachers along the way. My work’s evolution comes directly from all the writers who have been willing to give generously of their time in classrooms, workshops, and writing groups. Over time, I’ve started to write essays and work more with the boundaries of the prose poem. I want to stretch and pull at the line between poetry and creative non-fiction. Some may call this hybrid writing, but I just love experimentation. I love working to create something new.
MJH – What inspired you to write this book?
AB – I’ve had so many folks call my work surrealist. I’d never thought of my writing in those terms. I started researching surrealism, mostly female surrealists, and I leaned into the term. I love ekphrasis. This book is heavily ekphrastic and relies on the work of several incredible female surrealists. The sample section references Dorothea Tanning’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and Julie Curtiss’ Food for Thought. One of my main resources for the collection was Whitney Chadwick’s Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement. This book is a must-have for folks interested in surrealist art.
MJH – How did you determine the voice and form these poems would take?
AB – I wanted to write a book about marriage, but I needed a way in. Art and ekphrasis provided the way. I started writing in first person. I quickly realized that put me and the reader too close, as if I’d zoomed in. The book needed a narrator, and the narrator quickly became its own character in the book. Using a narrator allowed me to see into the story from multiple angles.
MJH – What were the challenges when writing this book and what did you learn from the process?
AB – The biggest challenge writing was deciding who was speaking. The narrator and main character vie for narratorial authority, and I knew I wanted the distinction to fall apart as the book progressed. Making the two different characters was challenging. I learned more about the revision process from this book than any other, and it helped me see my other types of writing differently.
MJH – How does this book fit into the scope of your other work? Is it a progression, a diversion, or something else entirely?
AB – Where Will We Live If the House Burns Down? was a progression for me. I’d been dabbling in lyric essays before this book, but I’d never written a book length piece of lyric prose.
MJH – What are you working on currently?
AB – I recently finished a collection of micro essays that juxtapose my MS with black holes. Scientists call a type of MS brain lesion a black hole, and this struck me as odd. The book references and relies on the work of numerous female scientists. Much of it was written in the IMAX theater at the MN Science Center while watching interactive exhibitions on space. The book is forthcoming from Persea Press.
I’m also wading through pages of notes taken during the early days of my breast cancer diagnosis, and they are slowly becoming poems.
MJH – How do you structure your typical workday?
AB – Most of my day is spent at my teaching job and at doctors’ appointments. I’m lucky to work from home, and I’m able to sneak in writing around my work. I take notes on titles, images, experiences each day. Only occasionally am I able to sit down and try to turn my notes into something!
MJH – What’s the most interesting thing you’ve read or heard recently?
AB – I recently read Nicole Callihan’s collection This Strange Garment as research for my book. The collection is stunning and raw. It is a must read for anyone with breast cancer.
Sample Poem (untitled):
Grim’s pain doctor asks what her goals are. I want to tell him that the chronically ill don’t have goals. They don’t want to be ill. Grim wants her old body back. She doesn’t want to be in his office. Grim tells the doctor, I want to stand long enough to make grilled cheese, want to walk the dark living room at night to check the children are breathing. She wants to say absurdly large sunflowers block her path, her hair floats toward the ceiling as if her body is sinking in water, the flowers vine out and wrap her hips and arms like a handshake. She wants to stop the knife from cutting into her head like cooked meat on a platter of lettuce and tomatoes.
Read our review of Where Will We Live If The House Burns Down?
Allison Blevins (she/her) is a queer disabled writer and the author of six chapbooks and four collections. Winner of the 2024 Barthelme Prize, the 2023 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award, and the 2022 Laux/Millar Poetry Prize, Allison serves as the Publisher of Small Harbor Publishing. allisonblevins.com