Alchemical Reactions: Cynthia Cruz in Conversation With Kaveh Akbar at Divedapper

Cynthia Cruz is the star of Kaveh Akbar's latest interview published at Divedapper. The author of four collections of poetry, Cruz speaks with Akbar about her writing process and her life experiences, including growing up multicultural, which inform her work.

How is it where you are? Is it a nice day?

I think it's nice. I haven't been outside, but I think it's nice. It's sunny, but it's hot. How about where you are?

That's exactly how it is where I am, but that's sort of the perpetual condition of being in Florida—it's sunny and hot. I've never lived south of the Mason-Dixon line, or anywhere hot, really. So I'm not used to the heat.

Wait, what are you doing in Florida? Do I know this?

I'm getting a Ph.D. at Florida State, so I teach and take classes.

I think I assumed you were someplace else. It's funny, you're all over the place.

Haha, I hop around. And you were just in Germany, right?

I was in Berlin for two months. It was amazing. I'm half German. I was born there, I grew up there, and I spent a lot of time there. And the last few summers I've been going back. The last summer I was in Berlin, I was there for three weeks, and I wanted to stay longer. So this summer I stayed for two months. I basically lived there. I'm in a Ph.D. program for German Language and Literature, so I was taking some language classes and preparing for my area exam. I paid for it, so it wasn't connected to the school, necessarily.

Oh, so it wasn't like a grant or anything?

No. It made sense to stay because that’s what I'm studying, but it was really for other purposes.

Were you writing creatively then? I don't know if you're someone who can go on a trip and use it in that way or not.

I can't, actually. Whenever I travel, I can't write at all. The goal was to take language classes Monday through Friday for three hours and prepare for the exam. And then what happened was that somebody put the idea into me to try writing a poem every day starting June 1st. And I started, and weirdly enough it took off and created its own momentum. And I did write a poem every single day. It was the first time in my life that I felt like—well, I've had the feeling that poems come to me, for sure, but it really was this energy where the poems were just coming. It was amazing. So I wrote an entire book of poems this summer.

Continue at Divedapper.