#eli willms

How did you start out as a writer? How has your craft or method of writing changed since then?

I began writing poems in earnest when I was a teenager, inspired by Neil Young’s song Thrasher. The song paralyzed me with its combination of direct earnestness and abstract imagery. I wrote the lyrics out by hand and taped them to my bedroom wall. Then I typed them out and taped those to the wall. My own writing followed shortly afterwards, unleashed by the possibility of writing I gained from Thrasher. I began studying the lyrics of other songs by Bob Dylan, Robert Hunter, and David Bowie.  By the time I discovered Alan Ginsberg and George Bowering, I was already reading with an eye on technique and affect, and thinking about how I was writing and could do more. All of those early poems were not for anybody but myself. My writing style shifted dramatically when I realized, many years later, that poetry can also have an audience.

What was the planning process like for a poem like “The Obvious Flap”? Was there a clear beginning and a clear place you wanted to go?

“The Obvious Flap” began with a series of experiments that Gary Barwin and I passed back and forth to each other. We kept editing one piece in particular, adding more and more lines until those broke off into new poems. It evolved very quickly and organically. There was no plan until we had a full manuscript was complete and then we went back and edited. The beginning of the book was the idea that language was weird and wonderful.