[G. M. Palmer]

I don't know how impressive it is, since it was in a response to an open call, but I did have an interview published recently:

here.

Best,
Michael

[Tim Murphy]

Congratulations, Michael, but I have a couple observations. I've done several of these. Furthermore, I just conducted one, of Alan Sullivan for Able Muse. I expect my interlocutor to have read all of my work, easier for me than for you. When an interviewer has read all of your work, then you're set for an interview that can justify ten pages, not just a blog entry, that might have some literary merit. This was very cursory, but when the occasion arises again, perhaps you can establish ground rules.

[David Anthony]

Originally posted by Tim Murphy:
I expect my interlocutor to have read all of my work, easier for me than for you.

--You're an incurable optimist, Tim.

[Tim Murphy]

Gerry Cambridge, Steve Smith, Cynthia Havens, Curtis Gale Weeks, Chuck Haga, and Paul Stevens all managed to clear the bar I set, David; so I don't think that's incurable optimism. I think we should be careful about whom we confide in and upon what terms we agree to speak.

[Michael Cantor]

Tim is right. That wasn't an interview - it was some silly blogger asking anybody who wanted to waste the time to fill in the same list of twenty questions. There was no follow-up, no dialogue, and no sense that she had the remotest idea of whom she was "interviewing", or the slightest familiarity with their work.

[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited September 07, 2008).]

[David Anthony]

Interesting.

I'm CEO of a company that was listed until recently on the LSE, so have some experience of press interviews.

As a rule of thumb, if the interview was set up by our PR agency I'd assume the journalists had skimmed the handout; otherwise best to assume no prior knowledge or research, even though the financial implications could be significant. There are exceptions, of course.

It's good to hear that poetry interviewers do their homework better.

Regards,
David

[Tim Murphy]

I'll ask Paul Stevens to look in on this thread, and talk about his experience. He not only read the Wulf and the published books, he read in manuscript the unpublished books. Steve Smith at Texas Poetry Journal did the same. For the earlier interviews it was a lot easier, simply because there was so much less Murphy for the interviewer to get his arms around. I imagine that interviewer and interviewee have devoted eighty hours just in batting questions back and forth, not to mention the hours of preparation. The gold standard here, of course, is Between the Lines, Phil Hoy's series of book-length interviews with major poets. Tony Hecht decided that in lieu of writing a memoir or autobiography, he would consent to doing a book with Phil. It is the most important extra-textual source we have on Hecht. Dare I say it is a masterpiece? I do. Sorry to hijack your thread, Michael. I'll ask a mod to move it to general talk, and I'm interested in your reaction to your interlocutor's sloppy and disrespectful approach.

My interview with Tim is here .

It was the first such interview I'd done, and so is very much a beginner's piece on my part. I swotted up on Tim's work, read everything I could find, and was greatly helped by Tim's kindness to a novice. Since then I have interviewed Alison Brackenbury here and have just finished interviewing John Whitworth for the forthcoming Chimaera (due online later in September). When that is done I will start work on an interview with the Australian formalist poet Stephen Edgar for the January '09 Chimaera, and after that, English poet Ann Drysdale for the May '09 issue.

In each case I get hold of everything by the author that I can find, either through books I already have, or books sent me by the poet, or by his or her publisher (thanks, Harry Chambers!) or purchased by me from internet booksellers, particularly abebooks.com. (Alas! Not a tax deduction because it's not for purposes of income.)

The process of reading the poet's work, thinking about it, preparing questions, then follow-on questions, is very rewarding for me. Communing on a personal level with these three very different writers and personalities-- Tim, Alison and John -- has been most pleasant, enriching, and educational. I've really enjoyed getting to know them better, and learnt a great deal about poetry from these accomplished practitioners. And I hope I am getting better at my end of the job as I go on.

By the way, I don't have anything against the kind of interview Michael participated in at Bekki's blog, where a pre-set bank of questions are answered. It's just a different text type, with a different purpose. In fact I've been inspired by Michael and sent my own set of answers off to Bekki, which was great fun. And of course I rarely miss an opportunity such as that interview to promote the three-headed beast and the Creek. I did a similar interview a while ago for Nic Sebastian, here .

[Maryann Corbett]

The subject seems to have morphed quite completely, so I've taken the liberty of moving the thread.

[Tim Murphy]

I think three of my interlocutors were doing their first author interviews. Cambridge, Stevens, and Smith. Stevens and Smith both approached me on the basis of my cooperating with an as yet to be designated interviewer of some unforeseeable stature, but Steve and Paul wrote proposals which revealed that they knew much of my stuff cold, so I proposed that they just do the job, and they did. When Alex Pepple asked me to interview Alan for Able Muse, I'd never done it, and it had to be short. I think I came up with fourteen questions, but it was like being the caddy, teeing up the ball for Nicklaus. Obviously I knew every word he'd written, and Alan responded with thoughtful essays, not cursory quips.

The great ones in this genre are Bill Baer, former editor of the Formalist, whose interviews with authors graced the pages of his magazine and continue in Measure. Bill's interviews with Gioia and Wilbur gave me my notion of how this sort of thing should be done. Then Cynthia Havens, who has interviewed Steele, Mason, Murphy, Davis, lord knows how many authors--and who would NEVER come to an interview without knowing the author cold. Cortland Review, that's where Cynthia interviewed me, and it is on line, so I suspect it can be found, along with mp3 files. We were both rather new to this, then, but how hard she worked! Gerry Cambridge parleyed his experience into many subsequent interviews for the Dark Horse.

At first, we were tape-recording telephone conversations in which I was half-smashed. Later we were using facsimile machines, the means by which Phil Hoy made his Hecht masterpiece. Now, Paul Stevens and I can bat Q and A back and forth by email. Gerry Cambridge reacted to my assertion that my interview with Paul was the best I'd done, by vehemently protesting that The Horse was the best. Peace to Gerry, but I just reread the SCRII interview, and it's better. In the intervening years the interviewee did some growing. Tim

[This message has been edited by Tim Murphy (edited September 08, 2008).]