Michael's poem "Faith" appears in Issue 1.

If I were to sum up my take on writing in one, tidy, six-word definition, I’d call it: the creative expression of an idea. I’m a storyteller at heart, and one of the great truisms I’ve come to accept over my development as writer is that few, if any, stories are wholly new. It’s how you organize the pieces, the details you convey, the climax at which you arrive, and the words you choose that make it your story. And oftentimes, its commonalities your stories and those of others that make them most appealing.
 
I am not a poet by trade, but have an on-again-off-again love affair with the form—its capacity for communicating mood, the way in which it demands from the poet an economy of words and a sharpening of imagery. Most importantly, though my instincts lead me toward narrative, I’ve found that poetry pushes me to slow down, focus on a moment, and flesh it out until it’s actualized on the page.
 
And so, for me, the poem starts with a moment—the squeal of a bedspring, the sight of chalk drawings on a basketball court—and expands to what came before, what came after, or what layers exist within that very moment. It’s my job to unpack that moment the best I can, and I’m done when the story of that moment has been fully realized.
 
Michael Chin writes and manages content for The A Cappella Blog – www.acappellablog.com.

Daniel Ford's poems "Grief and Moon Pies," and "Summer Debris" appear in Issue 1.

Describe your writing process. Where does a poem begin for you? How do you know when it's done?
My process is pretty haphazard, and much of it involves avoiding writing poems by doing anything but that; vacuuming, cooking, cleaning, organizing, reading, exercising, even grading papers. But when it comes down to it  I feel pretty certain that poems have to start with sound and words, rather than 'ideas.' I think if you, well, if I, start with ideas, the idea crowds out the potential of the language in order to make itself heard. Once I have some words and sounds I write them down, and I move them around till I have something. Occasionally I get lucky and a line or part of one will just sort of appear in my head, and then I know I have to chase after it or it will evaporate. In the latter case, writing the poem comes a little easier; the former can take months to sort out, the latter a matter of days or even hours. I write everything by hand till I have a workable draft I wouldn't be embarrassed to let a close friend who is interested see, and only then does it go onto the computer, though I find that once it does get on the screen it can change drastically.

I know a poem's done if I can't stand to deal with it anymore.

Who has influenced your work? What inspires you to write?
In terms of influences, some contemporary Irish poets, like Longley and Montague, are among my favorites to read and I would love to call them influences. Reading Wallace Stevens has had an enormous impact on how I think about poetry, and writing. I was lucky enough to be taught by some great poets like Eric Pankey, Peter Klappert, Sally Keith, Susan Tichy and Jennifer Atkinson.

As for what inspires me to write? The blank page, sometimes. I'm not sure I believe in "inspiration" nearly as much as I believe in being consciously aware of language all the time, of obsessing over words, and of working hard to make the words reveal something. Working hard is, frankly, certainly the most important part.

Why poetry and not prose? Or do you write both?
I write both, and really enjoy writing fiction; that tends to be more fun than writing poetry, which is a sort of "sweating blood" process. Fiction I can just let go, lower my standards, and generally goof off. Why poetry? it goes back to seeing Michael Longley read when I was a freshman in college, having messed about with poetry mostly as a way to try to impress girls, and finding myself thinking "I want to do that for real."

How long have you been writing?
I guess since I was eleven, in a 6th grade class, I simply started writing a story rather than taking notes on Earth Science or whatever that class was called. I started trying out poetry when I was fifteen, and I got serious about it around eighteen. So, 21 years, 17 years, or 14 years, depending on which answer matters.

For you, what's the most important part of a poem?
I don't know if it's possible to isolate it into one "part" but to me the most important aspect of any poem is whether or not it's beautiful. I have this sense that "beauty" is something we are, in contemporary poetry, distrustful of, wary of, busy keeping at arm's length and sort of admiring sidelong, slyly, without admitting it. So I greatly admire poetry that is beautiful in some way, but I don't know that I can isolate that into one "part" of a poem. Saying "I know it when I see it" is a pretty facile answer, but it could be located in many parts; tone, voice, rhythm, imagery, sound, form, meter, any of these and more. It can be strange or familiar, new or old, challenging or comforting, I just want it to be beautiful.

Have you encountered resources or books on the craft of writing poems that have been especially valuable to you?
Wallace Stevens's notebooks, letters, and lectures have been enormously - well I don't think I can say helpful, but important - in thinking about the writing of poems for me. Nothing beats great teachers and I had plenty of those, as mentioned above. As for a specific book about poetry, Paul Fussell's Poetic Meter and Poetic Form is my favorite resource on form, and I keep it handy.

Besides writing, what other interests do you pursue?
I love to cook and do most of the cooking at home; my more ambitious cooking tend to be classic French recipes. I read a great deal, not just poetry, but a lot of fiction, fantasy, science fiction, and comic books. Love to play complicated narrative games with friends. I am a passionate baseball fan (of the Baltimore Orioles - we are supposed to suffer for our art, right?)  who devours both the poetic, narrative aspect of the game's history as well as the statistical side of its present, and I am a fan of college football and English soccer as well. I've played a number of instruments and still occasionally struggle with trying to teach myself the mandolin.

I maintain a poety-related blog at soundingline.wordpress.com.

I met Duotrope twice.  Our first meeting was much too brief and left me unable to remember its name, and it came at that "floundering hopelessly" stage of my first semester of teaching college.  But my second meeting with Duotrope has refreshed my writing in ways I can't count.  It's like the writing secretary I wish I had.  Duotrope is a massive database of markets for poetry and fiction, and it includes not only links to literally thousands of journals (of which Floorboard is one), but also their average response times, acceptance rates, and--a feature I find especially interesting--other places where writers are submitting work in addition to each listing.  Perhaps most notably, Duotrope provides a submission tracker for registered users, which includes dates, days out, and type of response.  If you ask me, Duotrope is addictive in a similar way that Etsy.com is addictive, or super dark chocolate: I'm so glad we met.  Keep it coming.

Carol's poems "Night Gathers Its Churn and Breath," "First Letter to Darkness," "Second Letter to Darkness," and "Third Letter to Darkness" appear in Issue 1.

Describe your writing process. Where does a poem begin for you? How do you know when it's done?
My writing process begins, if I’m lucky, with a walk.  I use that time to try and find an image of the day (my former teacher Jon Woodward taught me to write an image of the day) and then after that, try and write in my journal for at least fifteen minutes a day.  With a new job, I haven’t been making that time, but it’s a good goal.

Who has influenced your work? What inspires you to write?
Sylvia Plath was the first poet who blew my socks off.  Now I try and read a lot of chapbooks.  Also, I have read a lot of biographies of poets—Frank O’Hara and Anne Sexton and Elizabeth Bishop.  Those can be amazing sources of inspiration to read how they dealt with the writing of poetry and just living day to day.
 
Why poetry and not prose? Or do you write both?
Why poetry?  Good question.  I think most poets have probably written in many different genres (although I have never attempted the novel), but some just feel more at home.  I enjoy writing critical essays about poetry….but poetry when I’m writing it and it’s working, well….I get to create something like a snowflake.   Small, intricate (hopefully), and able to spin in a myriad of directions.
 
How long have you been writing?
I actually have not been writing that long.   But I have been a reader for a very long time…a serious reader.  Tolkien got me through 7th  and 8th grade.  Reading was my escape.  When I was in college, I finally got good grades—and in writing.  It was my first clue.
 
For you, what's the most important part of a poem?
To me sound is really important.  My sisters and I are all very hyper-sensitive to people who make chewing sounds….We have been known to walk out of The Nutcracker due to gum-chewing.  We’d really punch each other if we were chewing food loudly…and our father used to make us sit at the dinner table for twenty minutes.  His jaw clicked while he ate (an attribute I’ve since acquired) and we were nearly on the ceiling by the time dinner was done.  So I’m very aware of the sounds of words and how they fit in the mouth.
 
Have you encountered resources or books on the craft of writing poems that have been especially valuable to you?
I love Steve Koweit’s In the Palm of Your Hand, and Kim Addonizio's Ordinary Genius.

Besides writing, what other interests do you pursue?
I’m a birdwatcher…so while I walk, I take notice of the birds I see.  I live in New England, and to watch bluebirds hanging around in the conservation area where I walk is always a gift.  The other day I had to stop for a dozen turkey trying to cross the street and seeing a pheasant run across my driveway when I first moved here was enormously pleasurably.  I’ve had pilated woodpeckers thunk at my trees and the redness of cardinals grace some pretty gray days. 
 
My website can be found here:  http://carolbergpoetry.com/wordpress/

Madeline's poems "Baggage" and "Affliction" appear in Issue 1.

Describe your writing process. Where does a poem begin for you? How do you know when it's done?

My writing process differs from poem to poem. I like to write ekphrasis poetry, poetic responses to art, film, theater, or literature. For example the poem “Nightlife (or The River Wife)” in my forthcoming book, Sprung, responds to the novel The River Wife by Jonis Agee. When I began the poem, I thought it would be focused on the novel, but through the writing and revision process I came to see what it wanted to be. When you read a good book, the outside world disappears—what you’re sitting on, what you’re wearing, the noises outside or inside the house, and the weather. When you pause your reading, suddenly the world comes back, but is haunted by the world inside the book. Momentarily, these two worlds are layered together, intertwined. You think--How is the heroine going to escape the flood being trapped in the tree?--while you’re walking to the closet to get another blanket, given the blizzard. You think-- Will the water rise over the tree tops? Will she be able to hang on?--as you settle yourself back down onto the couch. You think--Will someone come to her rescue?—as you glance to the window wondering how hard it’s snowing now, but you can’t see. You think--Will she swim to another tree to rescue herself?--as you study the window, now entirely frosted over. Thus, the poem “Nightlife (or The River Wife)” attends to those between moments when you’re neither fully in your world nor the world of your book, but hover ghostlike in the ether.

Who has influenced your work? What inspires you to write?

I’ve written many ekphrasis poems because I’ve felt inspired. Every semester I take my creative writing students to the art museum and ask them to write a poem about a painting, a sculpture, an instillation, or a photograph. I always write with my students, and sometimes I get great poems from this writing activity. For example, there’s a poem in my chapbook My Imaginary that responds to a sculpture. On several trips to the museum I had studied the piece, unsure why I felt drawn to it, but had passed it by to write about another. Then on one such field trip I decided, yes, I do have something I have something to write. “Another Princess X” responds to Princess X, a marble sculptureby Constantin Brancusi displayed at the Sheldon Art Museum in Nebraska. The original artwork appeared in the Salon des Indépendents of Paris in 1920. Brancusi’s inspiration for Princess X was an imaginary person, however a scandal followed its appearance in the Salon that culminated in police intervention and the removal of the phallic sculpture.

My chapbook, Branding Girls, forthcoming from Finishing Line Press, is almost entirely ekphrasis poetry, responding to pieces by Melanie Pullen, Lauren Greenfield, Miwa Yanagi, and Camille Solyagua. For years I was an editor and writer for the feminist ‘zine Empowerment for Women. The magazine is currently on hiatus after ten years. I wrote dozens and dozens of reviews on books and music. I discovered the above mentioned American and international artists and wrote reviews of their books. There was something about their art that disturbed me, and though their books sat on my shelf, I would find myself opening them and paging through one striking image after another. Eventually, I started writing poems in response to the images. Some things stay with you, haunt you, and for me, those things often make it into poems.

Why poetry and not prose? Or do you write both?

I was accepted into my PhD program writing both prose and poetry, something I continued to do throughout. However, I made a conscious decision to select one to focus on for my comprehensive exams and the dissertation because I wanted to learn one craft well. My creative dissertation, two poems of which you’ve published here in Floorboard Review, is a collection of poetry, based on the life of the nineteenth century suffragist and lecturer, Matilda Fletcher (1842-1909), who is also my great-great-great-grandmother. The manuscript seeks to preserve a voice that might otherwise be lost from the historic record. Told from a variety of perspectives and based on extensive research, these poems use experimental and received forms as they seek to invoke the political, educational, and suffragist landscape of the nineteenth century. Matilda wrote poetry and prose as well. Her published books were all prose, but her lectures were often delivered in the form of a poem.

My poem “Affliction” is based on several pieces of information I found while researching Matilda. Matilda gave birth to only one child who lived, Alice M. Fletcher, or “Allie.” Allie died very young and is buried in the Woodland Cemetery in Des Moines, Iowa beside her parents. Much family lore notes the relocation of the Allie’s body from Council Bluffs, IA, where Matilda had lived in the late 1860s, to Des Moines, Iowa. Likely, this was done around the time of her first husband’s death in 1875.

My poem “Baggage” responds to the portable trunk plan, sketch, and specifications Matilda filed with the United State Patent Office on August 21, 1874. The patent was granted December 22, 1874 (patent number 158,056). Matilda’s first husband, John, was sick with tuberculosis that he had contracted while serving in the Civil War. Matilda was the breadwinner in the family as she toured the country on her lecture circuit.

Both poems deal with pain and loss. For me as a writer, I felt the only way to portray the emotional depths of Matilda’s character was to do so in the form of poems. I am working on essays about her work as well, but the poems came first.

How long have you been writing?

I’ve been writing since I was a kid. I think I wrote my first poem when I was seven, or at least that’s the first poem I remember writing. I wrote it for my mom who was pregnant with my kid sister. I remember only one line “I will defend” and I know it rhymed. At my elementary school a first grade girl had been kidnapped and the police had not been able to find her. Looking back know, I think I wanted to defend my mom and my sister from potential kidnappers. In the seventh grade, my best friend and I wrote a novel called The Etress. I still have a few handwritten pages of it and the sketches I did of the protagonist. Once you get the writing bug, there is only one cure: writing.

For you, what's the most important part of a poem?

I think that is something that changes. I used to think a lot of about the endings of poems. Where do you end? How do you end? If the poem is in form, how does the form move toward the end? I took a poetry and creative nonfiction workshop with Ted Kooser. Every week during the half-hour tutorials I would bring in four or five poems or an essay to show him. Several times he would point to a line or a stanza in my poem and say, I think your poem ends there, suggesting to chop off half the poem or several stanzas, or to reorder the poem.What his suggestion made me ponder is the movement toward the end. What do you do as a poet to get to the end of the poem? What are the steps? Where are the turns? What is the poem turning towards? This thinking helped me re-see my own poems. For example, my poem “Las Vegas Brand” in Branding Girls was a poem I was able to re-see after I had set it aside in a drawer for months and months. In revising it, I found the last lines were actually buried in the middle of the poem. I rewrote and reorganized all the lines of the poem to get toward that ending.

Recently, I’ve been thinking a good deal about beginnings, “the hook” that pulls the reader into the poem. I haven’t come to a conclusion yet, just looking, thinking, wondering.

Have you encountered resources or books on the craft of writing poems that have been especially valuable to you?

I love teaching and reading the wonderful book The Poet’s Companion, edited by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux.

Besides writing, what other interests do you pursue?

Reading, gardening, and traveling are interests I pursue; sometimes these interests even make it into poems. In my chapbook Ghost Girl the poem “Ghost Girl Wonders if she’s Always had Bad Eyes” is a meditation on vision, but also on how when we travel we remember to see the world around us. In the poem Ghost Girl flies to Florida to walk the white sands, tours a city garden of roses, and visits an art museum with an exhibit on artistic responds to Hurricane Katrina. Of course, I had gone to all those places and the places became a set or scene in the poem to consider the looking outward from the self to the strange, wonderful, and sometimes, eerie world.

www.lauramadelinewiseman.com

Describe your artistic process. I am drawn to mostly rural subjects. I like to drive down dirt roads and look for subjects. Whether it is nature or manmade objects, I look for a sense of peace and silence. Some days are luckier than others.

Who has influenced your work? What inspires you to take photos? I have a number of favorite photographers - Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, but many lesser known photographers have influenced my work. My wife Linda is someone who inspires me. She is a wonderful photographer and is very involved in equine photography.

Why photography and not any other visual art form? Or do you do other kinds of art, too? Photography is the only visual art I have been engaged in, and only for a few years. My wife Linda and I both went through cancer, operations and treatments in the last four years. I found that photography was a way for me to be creative during a rough patch. I have been primarily a writer for most of my life. Photography has been another approach to creativity, and sometimes I combine the two forms in given piece.

What is the most important part of a photograph? Ansel Adams wrote that a good photograph often depends on where the photographer stands. Sounds simple, doesn't it? Obviously there is much more to a good photograph. I wish I knew the secret. All I know is that, photograph by photograph, I try to capture the spirit of a thing or place. Someone else can decide on the importance of that.

Have you encountered resources or books on the craft of photography that have been especially valuable to you? I have looked at a number of photography books. I have never taken a photography course. One book I am reading now is TAO OF PHOTOGRAPHY. I find it fascinating, but also reassuring.

Besides photography, what other interests do you pursue? I have been a writer since I was in high school. I have published a novel, THE DREAM PATCH, a book of prose, UNDER A RIVERBED SKY, and a collection of stage monologues for actors, HEART SPEAK. I have written a number of plays. I have no favorite form, honestly, and simply do what seems right given the moment.

Christopher shares this website with his wife, Linda: Moonbird Hill Arts - www.moonbirdhill.exposuremanager.com/

The Ground Floor is Floorboard Review's rolling contributor feature column.  Today's featured contributor is Ruth Foley, whose poems "Muchacha en la Ventana" and "The Importance of the Body" begin Issue 1.

The other day Floorboard formally accepted its first photo submission ever.  Oh, just wait until you see these things--absolutely captivating images from David Patrick's journeys in Croatia, Bosnia i Hercegovina, & Macedonia.  The images capture the imagination in a way that transports the viewer--just wait until you see them!

I am so pleased with how the poetry submissions are going, too.  I am hoping that this weekend I will be able to finally take a look at them--believe me when I tell you I'm like a kid at Christmas waiting to read poems!  I am confident that we'll have our first beautiful issue out around Christmas, in fact!

In the meantime, I am soaking up the anticipation.  Delicious stuff!

The other day I got Floorboard's first batch of postcards in the mail.  They turned out pretty cool, even if they're cut a little imperfectly.  They are already circulating at school, and the plan is to get them out to all the editorial staff and friends within the next few days. 

I've been calling for submissions on Twitter and Facebook, and I'm so excited about what we've received so far--I can't say too much about it yet, but I anticipate a very cool first issue.

We've been figuring out how to manage our submission manager, and I just have to say again how much I enjoy Submishmash.  As a not-that-technically-inclined person, I appreciate Submishmash's relative simplicity and their incredibly helpful, speedy-to-respond staff.  Some cool new features just rolled out too--very cool stuff.

Personally, new things have been happening too: last week we said goodbye to a good friend who lived a beautiful, long life, and I received news of my chapbook's acceptance for publication.  A full and varied week for sure.

September 23, 2010

One thing at a time, Jen, one thing.

The other day my husband and I watched "What About Bob?," that wonderful Bill Murray movie about the charming obsessive-compulsive guy who overcomes his neuroses one baby step at a time.  Baby steps out the door.  Baby steps to the elevator.  Baby steps.  In the process, he sabotages his psychologist's vacation and burns down his family's house--but for some reason they love him anyway.  Baby steps.

Building a literary journal probably should go one baby step at a time, I think.  Over the last few weeks, I've been trying to put all of these tiny steps into one great big, very effective giant first step.  As you can see, there aren't poems here yet, because taking all of those steps at one time is not a possibility.  Yes, at some point I want Floorboard to be a member of CLMP.  Yes, someday there will be fund raisers and a budget and a wave of advertisements in prominent places. 

In the meantime, I think taking baby steps is the best thing to do.  So here we go.

September 3, 2010

I have learned a couple of things today... or maybe it's more like I have added a few more things to the big pile of How To Make The Floorboard Review.

I was reading through this fabulous article on the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses website.  If I am considering whether or not to trust one of my poems to a publication, and if I'm on the fence about it, the little CLMP stamp in the corner of the website will always give me that little nudge toward "submit."  Those journals just seem more together, more legit, more awesome.  Today I learned that before you can join CLMP, your journal must have published at least one issue and also have some promotional materials on hand.  Promotional materials--posters, brochures, business cards, maybe some little specially printed folders... Anyway, membership is $75 a year.  Good to know.  "First things first," you say, maybe, but a girl's gotta have long-term goals.  I have learned that you have to think about these things!

I read also, and you'll have to forgive me because for the moment, I don't remember where I read this--that if you're a non-profit you have to act like one.  That means you have to have fund-raisers.  When I think about non-profit fundraisers--and you'll have to forgive me again, because this is insane--I think of chandeliers.  And then I think of franticness.  Thankfully, we're not quite there yet.

Oh--I also gleaned a helpful little tidbit about taking blind submissions--those without the author's name attached.  This way nobody will have reason to doubt the fairness of your editorial choices.  You can stay consistent with your vision without feeling like you have to accept something only because you know a person. 

Speaking of knowing a person: School started 2 weeks ago, and that means a lot of paperwork has exchanged hands over the last few days--syllabi, handouts, assignment sheets, quizzes.  Let me tell you, to my great embarrassment, almost every single one of those documents has had some sort of blatant error in it: a glaring type-o, the wrong date, information in the wrong box of a rubric, something unnecessarily confusing, a formatting problem... and I am a writer, a member of the Professional Organization of English Majors, one of those people who point out typographical errors on gigantic billboards and bumper stickers and signs in the pediatrician's office!  But, alas, though I am a writing teacher, paid to catch other people's writing errors, anthe most important piece of advice comes to mind.  Know thyself: I need a proofreader.  Once you find a skilled proofreader, suggests a bit of advice at CLMP, "never let that person go." 

Onto the big pile of things I'll use to polish the Floorboard.  (Probably at some point, punning about floor-related items will get old... but not yet!)

August 20, 2010

How did I not think of this before??

Of course we need book reviews!

The poetry and essays and photos will come out 2-4 times a year, and for a little pizzaz in between those times, we could have a rolling book review column.  So go ahead and let me know if you'd like to review a book of poems or non-fiction!  (I've been enjoying that brilliant idea--not entirely my own!--all week!  I'm so excited to share it!)

Next steps for Floorboard?  I think it's time to get to work on the non-profit status.  Which I know nothing about.  It'll be an adventure.  I've got my feet to the floor.  -jk.

August 15, 2010

Progress, Floorboard...ers? 

This week, thanks to my technically savvy husband, we were able to get our email functioning.  What a production.  Let me tell you how it went: I fiddled around with Google Apps for almost 3 hours.  "You want me to upload what now?" I said, over and over.  Finally, I surrendered.  "Let me look at it," Kyle said.  Less than 30 minutes later, jen@floorboard.com was fully functional.  There's a moral in there, I think. 

The other very exciting technical tidbit of this week is about our submissions manager program, Submishmash.  Once the email was up and running, we could set up a Submishmash account--and let me tell you, I am in love with the Submishmash.  (Check them out, for sure.)  As a writer, I find Submishmash extremely refreshing--brilliantly refreshing, even.  As an editor-type, and one who evidently has limited computer know-how, I can only rave about how wonderfully personable and helpful the staff at Submishmash is, and how incredibly simple it was to set up an account with them for Floorboard Review.  It's so exciting.  I love the Submishmash.

Another online literary journal-y thing I have been mulling around has been the very touchy issue of reading fees.  Wait, wait!  Before you close your browser and walk away disgusted, let me say that I am in two camps when it comes to reading fees.  On one hand, writers aren't looking for a place to spend money, they're looking for a place to send things.  As a writer, I can attest to this fact!  And from an organizational perspective, there are a lot of legal paperwork types of things to deal with once there's money involved, even with non-profits.   On the other hand, I have read about the benefits of a tiny reading fee. Some journals charge $2-3 per submission, which, some say, weeds out some of the less serious writers.  It also undoubtedly provides a bit of income to fund promotional moments like purchasing ads in Poets and Writers, for example.  Ads are definitely good.

In addition to all of these wonderful things, the most wonderful, and I think the most important thing that's happened with Floorboard has been the enthusiasm of a small army of writers and at least one photographer who have expressed interest in being part of Floorboard.  I am so encouraged and inspired by you all--thanks, from the floorboards of my heart, for your support!  -jk

August 9, 2010

Well, here it is.  The very, very infant begining of Floorboard Review.  Go ahead.  Soak it in.

I couldn't be more excited about this new project.  I am so much looking forward, with a few of my writer friends, to building a tremendously cool online journal.  The bricks will be outstanding poems, essays, and photography.  The mortar will be the readers.  The floorboards will be the collective love of the words.  I can't wait.

In the next few weeks and months, my biggest editorial challenge is going to be figuring out the technical end of making an online journal.  My biggest personal challenge will be building a fence around this project to keep it from over-running my entire life!  So wish me luck, and spread the word.  I'll keep you posted.  -jk