Author Q&A with Alicia Elkort

Alicia Elkort’s first book of poetry, “A Map of Every Undoing” was published in 2022 by Stillhouse Press with George Mason University, after winning their book contest. Alicia’s work appears in numerous journals and anthologies and she reads for Tinderbox Poetry Journal where she also writes reviews. Her poem, Ode to the Wet Towel on the Floor, appears in our spring issue.

Tell us about yourself.

I started writing poetry 15 years ago. Five years ago I moved from Los Angeles to Santa Fe, NM, place of my birth. I love hiking in the mountains and clouds and art and good food, so I’ve found a kind of heaven.  

What unique or surprising detail can you tell us about the origin, revision process, and/or final version of your piece appearing in this issue?

I wrote Ode to the Wet Towel on the Floor not long after my mother passed away in 2016. The poem poured out, all the dualities that I was facing, how she was no longer alive, but she lived on in my memory and also how I had conflicting memories of her love. I worked on that poem for months and months and when I thought it was as good as it could get, I sent it out. When it wasn’t getting picked up, I stopped sending it out. Recently I pulled it out again. After having been away from the poem, I edited it down from four pages to three pages. As always, when I come back to a piece months or years later, I am a different person, a different poet from when I first wrote it, maybe better, maybe not better, just different. I was able to edit out what now seemed not needed. I started sending the revised poem out and was pleased that it fairly quickly found a home at TGLR. 

What did you learn (about yourself or craft or life in general) through writing and revising it?

I am always amazed how the more I take away, the stronger the poem becomes. How craft and mastery rely on concision.

What do you hope readers take from the piece?

I hope they take what they need, whatever that might be. 

After sending the link to the poem to friends, the responses I received were varied. For one friend, the poem reminded her of how loved she felt by her father, though he never used the words. For others it was about how memory shifts and may be unreliable. For others, the poem captured the complicated feelings one has when a person close to us passes. 

Years ago at my very first featured reading, with another poet, when we were done, the host asked each of us to read one more poem. I had brought this poem but was hesitant to read it because of its length. But when they asked for one more poem, I decided to give it a whirl. After the reading, a woman came up to me with tears in her eyes, saying that her mother had just passed away and she was conflicted about her death. She said my poem gave her permission to feel the ache of the loss while also recognizing the limits of her mother’s ability to love her. It was okay that her mother was both a good and a bad mother, and now she could move on. I ended up in tears too, thinking if no one else ever read this poem, this moment is why I wrote it. 

What fuels your desire to write (or engage in other creative outlets)? Or what have been the biggest influences in your writing?

I write to learn what I know. I write to transform my losses and yearnings and traumas into something beautiful, to get them out of my body and on the page. I write to bring myself closer to the ineffable. I write to play with language and meaning and expression. I write for the sheer pleasure of having written. I write to express something that I don’t have words for. 

But I also write to re-write paradigms. I love taking old myths, fairytales etc. and re-creating the paradigms/stories behind them to one that is more consistent with women’s autonomy and agency.

The influences in my writing are usually individual poems where the poet captures something extraordinary and that might be something mundane, if that makes any sense. I want to emulate their consciousness or skill or ability to express the fundamental gorgeousness of it all, including the ugly and profane, meaning the fullness of human experience. Ross Gay’s “The Opera Singer,” slays me every time I read it. “Another Insane Devotion,” by Gerald Stern. “It’s 4pm in the ER and I Am Rearranged with a Small Sadness,” but Sonja Halvorson. “Ballad” by Diane Seuss. I could go on and on. And tomorrow I will fret that I didn’t name four different poems.

How do you make expression a part of your daily life? Or how do you find a balance between your writing and other responsibilities?

Writing is a responsibility. Almost every day whether I want to or not. 

What do you think when you hear, “the good life”?

When I hear “the good life,” I think freedom, freedom to choose how I spend my time. For me that is art, nature, family, friends, animals, fresh food, contemplating the divine. But it’s also my ability to be an expression of good, of love in the world, to give and to receive. 

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Thank you, Alicia, for being a part of our growing community and for spending extra time with us on this Q&A. We’re glad we were able to connect and we wish you the best with your current and future writing endeavors.