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SS: We do have some things on our website that are Internet-only, but for the most part I really like just the object of the book. So for books, I want books.
The Internet, though, has all sorts of other possibilities, both for publicity and also for thinking around what we’re doing. I would be open to doing some more online-only at some point. And we have PDFs of some of our chapbooks that Eric Butler designed and formatted specifically for tablet editions. We have some PDFs of out-of-print work as well that don’t look as good as those, but they’re available for free. So that’s another thing the Internet can be used for is out-of-print material.
WC: Why is it important for people to expose themselves to poetry in general and, more specifically, poetry that is linked directly to the place that they live in?
SS: When I teach introductory poetry, I’ve figured out that I’m not teaching people to become poets, necessarily. Because not everybody is. But I’m trying to teach them to look at the world in a different way and to open them up simply to noticing things—and to a kind of empathy with the world.
There are all sorts of things that you end up showing students that don’t even have to do with writing, really. So I think poetry, as a way of engaging the world and paying attention to it and especially paying attention to language—what words we use, why we use them, who’s trying to pull something over on us, that kind of thing—is really important.
As for engaging with your place, when I’ve taught place-based poetry in Hawaiʻi—or any place really—I find that a lot of people don’t know about the place they live in. You live here so long that you don’t realize that you don’t know it. So simply asking people to write about the street they live on, or the name of the street they live on, becomes another way to sort of engage with the world. But it’s hard because students are really scared of poetry. You have to get over that hurdle.
I’m thinking Tinfish might help with that. Because at least some of our publications are so playful and fun, students tend to enjoy reading them. Like Gizelle Gajelonia’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at TheBus, which takes famous poems and puts them on TheBus in Oʻahu. She empties out these famous poems and then replaces them with stuff she sees on TheBus—it’s very funny—and that really helps with getting people to engage with poetry.
WC: Thanks so much, Susan.
SS: Thank you.
WC: Why is it important for people to expose themselves to poetry in general and, more specifically, poetry that is linked directly to the place that they live in?
SS: When I teach introductory poetry, I’ve figured out that I’m not teaching people to become poets, necessarily. Because not everybody is. But I’m trying to teach them to look at the world in a different way and to open them up simply to noticing things—and to a kind of empathy with the world.
There are all sorts of things that you end up showing students that don’t even have to do with writing, really. So I think poetry, as a way of engaging the world and paying attention to it and especially paying attention to language—what words we use, why we use them, who’s trying to pull something over on us, that kind of thing—is really important.
As for engaging with your place, when I’ve taught place-based poetry in Hawaiʻi—or any place really—I find that a lot of people don’t know about the place they live in. You live here so long that you don’t realize that you don’t know it. So simply asking people to write about the street they live on, or the name of the street they live on, becomes another way to sort of engage with the world. But it’s hard because students are really scared of poetry. You have to get over that hurdle.
I’m thinking Tinfish might help with that. Because at least some of our publications are so playful and fun, students tend to enjoy reading them. Like Gizelle Gajelonia’s "Thirteen Ways of Looking at TheBus," which takes famous poems and puts them on TheBus in Oʻahu. She empties out these famous poems and then replaces them with stuff she sees on TheBus—it’s very funny—and that really helps with getting people to engage with poetry.
SS: Thank you.
Left:
Designed by Sumet (Ben) Viwatmanitsakul in 2010.
Perspective:
"I’m trying to teach them to look at the world in a different way and to open them up simply to noticing things—and to a kind of empathy with the world."