~ Delta Poetry Review ~

 Tobi Alfier's Interview by Dixon Hearne

First and foremost, thank you for taking the time for this interview, Tobi. Our readers will appreciate your personal thoughts, valuable experiences, and suggestions. We want to nurture the ideals of a sharing community.

DPR: In light of all of your responsibilities (co-editor/manager of San Pedro River Review, Blue Horse Press, poet/writer), how do you manage your time?

TA: Well, full disclosure, I’m currently in the middle of the greatest MS flare-up of all time, and I’m not going anywhere. My time is managed by appointments, and I work on SPRR around them.

DPR: What helps you unwind?

TA: I work on my own writing. Jeff and I spend some time watching British crime shows, and we talk about things he’s seen when he’s out of the house. I unwind by doing a lot of thinking and by doing submissions when I can. It’s kind of boring in the house!

DPR: What kind of poetry or aesthetics appeals to you? Any specific example?

TA: I write narrative poetry of place, and that’s the poetry that appeals to me. I seem to always have a human in my work, but that is not a requirement in the poetry I read or like. I am not a huge fan of first-person poems unless they are “fake” first-person. I love poems that speak about the beauty of landscape, and there are always those poems that bring me to my knees that I can’t describe. It’s the language.

DPR: How important do you think it is to experiment with form, or to at least have background knowledge of the way certain forms of poetry work?

TA: I think poems want to be a certain form, and you need to write them in different forms to see what works right. I don’t mean go crazy with every form you know, but write a poem in couplets and tercets to see what’s right for that poem. I’ve had to “un-form” a poem before because it was wrong. In my opinion, its important to have a trusted reader read your work. Let it sit overnight and see if you still respect it. 

DPR: What challenges spur you onward? Inward?

TA: Personal health challenges spur me onward. They’re boring and not poetic, so I won’t be writing about them—but it’s hard to write around them. When you have a line like “The stained-glass wings of a hummingbird,” you want to do it justice. That spurs me to think.

DPR: You have received recognition for your excellent writing. How do you approach writing poetry? Is it generally mood-driven, image-driven, emotion-driven, place-driven, or event-driven?

TA: I write narrative poetry of place. Emotion is important if you let it be controlled by negative capability. Image is also of immense importance to me, as well as figurative language used effectively.

DPR: Some contemporary poets grumble at “what passes for poetry” these days. What, in your own mind, qualifies as “poetry”?

TA: I do think there is poetry, and there is prose. My issue with first-person poetry is that it can often be prose. It’s important to look at the language. There are many answers to the definition of poetry for me, but a sense of concision is important – the policing of adverbs, adjectives, and articles – that keeps poetry clean and sharp and is more likely to render memorable images.

DPR: Many writers have specific times and places that entice them to write. Where and when are you most creative? What books of poetry are currently on your bookshelf?

TA: I’m mostly a morning writer. On the shelves in my office are the poetry books of Jack Bedell, Joseph Millar, Patricia Smith, Larry D. Thomas, Larry Levis, and Yusef Komunyakaa, as well as several collected volumes of various poets such as Jane Kenyon and Frank Stanford.

DPR: What other interests do you pursue that influence your writing?

TA: Reading fiction, especially novels by well-loved authors, fuels my poetic imagination and gives me various triggering towns—to use Richard Hugo’s term. Photography also feeds the poetry side of me, including photos that Jeff sends me from his travels. There are also the overheard conversations that give me poetic grist. I’m the biggest eavesdropper ever.