Ted Dodson Talks to Alli Warren About Her Newest Book, Little Hill

At The Believer, Ted Dodson interviews Alli Warren, whose new book, Little Hill, has just been released from City Lights. "I had an invitation from The Elephants to send them a chapbook, but I didn’t have any unpublished work, nothing, so I was like, 'OK, Monday mornings, before I clock in from home, in the time I’d usually spend getting ready, I’m just going to try to force myself to write,'" says Warren. More from this conversation:

[BLVR:] ...There is such strong political affect in your poems. There are clear stances. You often firmly outline yourself and your ideals as a poet. While these lines in context inscribe a sort of revolutionary action, it’s kind of like that over time equals the poem. And I don’t mean to be mathematical about it, but I want to bridge into this other idea about your poems as adjacent to political action. I mean, a poem can’t necessarily be direct action, but it is some sort of indirect action in a way. How would you situate your writing of poems within your political life?

AW: My poems are where I do a lot of my thinking. I don’t have an essay practice, and I don’t teach, and I’m not so good at taking notes while reading. So, aside from conversation with friends, the poems are where my thinking winds up. I don’t want to substitute writing for action, but the realms can talk to each other. Praxis and prosody has a nice ring to it. For me, being a poet in community has affected my life in terms of what I believe in and how I act, which is pretty fundamental, right? It’s been a source of education, both in terms of what I’m learning and attending to, and through the relationships I’ve formed. I want to contribute my voice to that fold, small as it is. It’s a way of thinking and feeling that I find powerful, and it can do things that a speech or a polemic or a tweet don’t.

BLVR: I like that you’re locating the use of a poem, which is a troubled idea, attaching some sort of idea of use value to poetry where it clearly has no place in a capital economy, so it’s interesting that you look at this idea of use within community. Is having a poetry-centric community important to your practice as a poet?

Carry on with the full interview at The Believer.