Name: Isaac Melum
Hometown: Seattle, WA
Education: BA from Gonzaga University, MA from Northern Arizona University
--Current projects and publications:
Current projects: a chapbook length of poetry: no specific theme yet.
Publications: “The Affluence of Drywall” in Temenos and “After Coloring a Forest Beneath the Mountains” and “Isaac Giants” in Reflection
1) How many years have you been writing? What made you start writing and what keeps you writing now?
I started writing during my sophomore year of undergraduate (four years ago) after taking an Intro. to Poetry class with Tod Marshall. My first poem was an exercise in iambic pentameter and was about a ribbon personified as my mother who was, at the time, struggling to stay financially afloat. I continued writing because I didn’t know how horrible of a writer I was at the time, but I knew writing poetry made me feel like a person, when most other activities in my life did not. The reason I wrote the poem about my mother was William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Blake’s content paralleled the emotional state and religious struggles I was undergoing when I wrote the poem. I realized then I needed this empathetical interaction to continue in my life where I could read a poem and then turn around and write one. I haven’t stopped, so hopefully that means I still believe in my ability to create a poetry that contains an excellence worthy of a reader’s empathy.
2) What do you primarily write? (Fiction, Non-fiction, poetry, prose, sci-fi, horror, post-modern, etc) Why and how does that certain genre speak to you/draw you in? How does your work tie in to your everyday life?
Poetry. Why and how: poetry is a political act. Creative writing in general is a political act as designated by our civil rights. The poet Sean Singer told me that every time we sit down to write a poem, we are participating in the political process, and I take that to heart. Poetry is also enticing for its improvisational and intellectually demanding temperament. The poet is charged with the duty to write something that seems unique while simultaneously unavoidable. In that sense, a poem tests how far the poet can take a note, a metaphor and still arrive back to the chorus. Excellent poems make this process feel like breathing, like walking although what is really taking place is a combination of sprints, jumps, jogs, etc. My everyday life sneaks into my poetry as outlooks or contexts. I try to produce a form and voice that comes organically from the idea of the poem. Poetry sneaks into my everyday life the same way, as outlooks and contexts. If you were a bug on the wall watching me, you would see me continually writing down nonsense words and phrases for later poems.
3) Which writers would you consider to be your influences?
What a horrible question that everyone wants to answer. Komunyakaa, Blake, Dean Young, Tony Hoagland, Eliot, Wright, Hicock, Laux, Lynda Hull, Tracy K. Smith, Sean Singer, and Tod Marshall.
4) Tell us a little bit about your writing. What makes it special and unique? Why do you write? What subject matter strikes you as particularly inspiring? Particularly difficult?
My poetry is unique only in that it reflects my psychological states and dispositions at the time the poem was written. Also, I enjoy stretching a metaphor, image, and/or color pattern as far in the odd direction as possible. The odder, the better. What I find inspiring changes on a daily basis, so today, it would be Oscar Romero. Particularly difficult: surprising myself during the writing process and establishing a solid first line that provides, for the reader, a tone and aesthetic taste for the upcoming poem.
5) In what ways has your writing evolved over the course of your writing career?
I started off horrible and now I can slightly stand my writing. I am going through this odd transformation, the cocooning process, most writers, I’ve been told, go through which is to love the act of writing so much that one starts to hate how his or her writing doesn’t achieve the excellence the writer demands of other writers: always falling short. My writing process goes something like this: I write a poem, for a day I think I’m brilliant, and after a week of letting the poem sit and then rereading it, I realize I’m far from a genius.
6) What’s in store for the future of your writing?
More poems. Hopefully, better writing, better reader-writer empathy being created.
7) What are you reading right now?
Komanyakaa’s Neon Vernacular. I’m reading or rereading the list of Pulitzer-prize winning poetry collections. I recommend this collection to anyone who cares about becoming a thoughtful poet dedicated to word choice and voice.
8) If you could live your life in any fictional setting from a book or poem, which book or poem would you choose?
Is it cheesy to say I like the one I’m living in presently more than any other one I’ve read about? If so, then I do. If not, Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
9) Tell us about your experience with the Waterlogged August collaboration. What was enjoyable about it? What was difficult? What would you do differently if you had it all to do over again? What was your favorite photo/piece of writing?
It was fun and I wish I hadn’t been so busy in my non-writing life to produce more poetry as inspired by the wonderful artist I worked with for the past month. My favorite poem from this experience is “Praise Song Sing” and my favorite artwork from Rudy is “Memoir”.
