My dear friend, Ellaraine Lockie, whose next book coming out is Coffee
House Confessions, tagged me to take part in this exercise begun by Poet
Elizabeth Scanlon, and I've just tagged her back. The Next Big Thing exercise is part of a network of self-interviews (see TNBT Blog-Hop Database for a near-complete list: Nate Tower) in which each writer tagged with a book
coming out tags another set of writers, with the idea being that we all get to know
what our writer pals are currently up to.
The Next Big Thing Interview for
Eve Hanninen, Editor of The Centrifugal
Eye:
What is the working title of the
new book?
The Centrifugal Eye’s 5th-Anniversary
Anthology.
Where did the idea come from for
the book?
Sometime during the 4th year after TCE’s inception, I kept getting asked if there would ever be an
anthology of works that first appeared in TCE. You know I had to do it after the 10th
inquiry.
What genre does your book fall
under?
Contemporary Poetry
Which actors would you choose to
play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
All the poets included would have walk-on cameos — Ellaraine Lockie
sighted in a Starbucks, Karla Linn Merrifield riding a dolphin, Clint Frakes caught
snipping the head off a Bird of Paradise — but yes, there’d have to be a few
celebrities representing TCE’s shining round-up: James Franco, Liam Neeson, Meryl Streep, Lucy
Liu, Lauren Graham, Denzel Washington, Emma Stone, et al…. Oh, can’t forget Morgan
Freeman, of course.
What is the one-sentence
synopsis of your book?
The most Ka-Pow poems published in TCE
from 2005-2010 that can reasonably fit in 200+ pages.
How long did it take you to
write the first draft of the manuscript?
Essentially 5.5 years for the poets to write it, and another 2.5 for
staff and me to nominate, select, and format.
Who or what inspired you to
write this book?
Oh, my adorable poets! Their
moving words, their stirring images!
What else about your book might
pique the reader’s interest?
While the anthology doesn’t talk about which themes the poems
originally were published under, the sections are arranged yearly and secretly subdivided
by issue. This creates a slinky flow of
subjects and tones that readers might delight in.
Will your book be self-published
or represented by an agency?
The book is represented by and published under an imprint of The Centrifugal Eye poetry journal, called
Centrifugal Works. It’s just now available
through TCE’s Spotlight Store on Lulu.com:
Here’s who I’ve tagged for The Next Big Thing and who's posted about their project:
Karla Linn Merrifield: Lithic Scatter (Mercury Heartlink)
