Photo responses by Denise Duhamel, Issue 75 poet
Interview conducted by Julia Clare Tillinghast, Minnesota Review Poetry Editor
When (and how) did you start writing?
What’s your writing “routine”? (Do you write every day at the same time (morning/evening), or wait for inspiration? Editing process?)
What writing instruments do you use? (Do you compose with a pen(or pencil?) and notebook (lined/unlined), or on a computer?)
Who are your favorite authors/influences?
How would you describe your work?
Denise Duhamel’s most recent book is Ka-Ching! (University of Pittsburgh, 2009). She’s a professor at Florida International University where she teaches in the MFA program. Although she herself is not on facebook, many of her friends are: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=30751218893
The Minnesota Review 
I started writing when a Catholic priest friend of mine heard me quoting some poetry I’d made up. He gave me a little black book and told me to fill it with my thoughts etc. He told me it would be published someday. He was kind of right. I take it from the wheelchair we can imagine it has been a long time, a lifetime (as it were) of writing? Maybe not.
I use the computer because I am a spelling mistake personified! Do you write with the makeup of I imagine you using the q-tip to scribble in the fog of a bathroom mirror. You know? Like the thoughts we have early in the morning that whisp away before our first cup of Joe. Lost in the transition between dark and light, mist and mirror, reflection and self doubt.
My favorite authors are the unknown 12; Horace mellow, Nealbot Havener, Janice Grevely, Shattoh Johnsfigger, Farley Mowatt, Ernest Chabeux, Shandra Haley-Jamison, Sir Thomas Boyer, Martin Orofax, Grandma Lynx, Tad L. Shalloway, and R.G. Peterson.
My work is an orbit of sorts. Always closer and more magnetic than you want it to be, and yet strangely repulsive at just the right times. Enough to keep you off balance, faltering, and flailing madly at a body that is just out of reach.
Would you say your’s was revealing, embarassed, or just the naked truth? I can’t tell from your picture. But do let me know!
MB