Laura Mullen

"Does it matter where you first encounter a book you love? Doesn't the book become instantly and forever its own world, at once familiar and strange? Head full of words that must not be spoken, you read them, duck pit, radish patch, threshold, notebook, tongues that wander a girl's mouth or flutter on a line, the gaze fixed on nothing (as required), a huge sky blank, white…—Stéphanie Chaillou's first book transports me. Yes. But. And. A grey light falls through the large windows of one of Paris' many wonderful small independent bookstores, where I am standing in the poetry section, quelque chose se passe open in my hands, feeling that arrow shock of joy: here is a voice I longed to hear, telling me something I need to know. White sky of the open pages, rain light of Paris in autumn: bright dimness like the magic of reading words in one language (French / source) and beginning to hear how they'd sound in another (English / target). Of course the possibility of recognition is conditional: you only find the book you need (you know you need) because you found or were given other books; what and how you read depending on what you have experienced (and how you came to think of and describe that experience)." This paragraph is from the translator's introduction for something happens (just out from  Lavender Ink / Diálogos, but I cite it here because I realized that--as I joyfully raved (over the weekend) about S. J. Kim's THIS PART IS SILENT--that I really do experience the same rush of happiness, when I fall in love with a book, that I feel when I fall in love with a person. My heart opens in my chest and the world seems wider and better. Recently (because I have the time) I'm more inclined to try to share that love: so I'm running a free poetry book club that meets once a month in Ventura, and writing reviews for the California Review of Books. Monica de la Torre. Denise Newman and Norma Cole. Forrest Gander. So many people have had their sense of poetry limited (by lack of exposure) or damaged (by clumsy and controlling teachers)--it really seems necessary to make spaces and provide the tools for better encounters. Watch the events page at Timbre Books  for book club information, check out VITA Arts Center if you want to take a workshop with me, and if you need a manuscript consultation / editing, go through the Black Square Editions website.

These interview questions were sent to me by Lola Gerber. Lola Gerber earned an MA in Poetry from Southern Illinois University, and is currently an MFA student at Naropa University, where she is currently exploring the notion of the body as bridge and as barrier. Lola has had her poetry published in various journals, both print and online, includingPoemsMemoiresStories magazine, Monkey Puzzle Press, Dead Snakes, and Mixed Fruit Magazine, and have self-published a novel titled Serrated Soul.

Lola Gerber: I really enjoy both your performances and your writing. What is the relationship for you between performance art and writing? Do they work independently of each other for you, or is there an intersection?

Laura Mullen: I came to writing via performance (if “via” can describe the long and wildly twisted path!). Growing up I had a passion for theater as well as a passion for poetry, and while poetry “won” (as it were) when I committed to that genre I wrote works I wanted to read out loud and music guided composition in important ways. I wrote the songs I wanted to hear—I might say. And the hybrid texts only expanded  Read More