I’ve gotten to know Marie as part of a writers’ group, Dirt City Writers. We gather every now and again when one of us needs feedback on a piece be it poetry, fiction, or nonfiction, or we just need to hang out and get a beer… Marie is an insightful reader, and a lot of fun. (and I love her dog Angie)
PLUME: When did you know you were a writer?
ML: I don’t know that there was any single defining moment where I self-identified as a writer, but writing was always my strongest creative and academic suit. My teachers and classmates started commenting on my writing skills when I was in middle school, and that’s when I realized that something that came easily to me didn’t come easily to everyone. I started exploring creative writing as an undergrad, mostly writing poems. Then I didn’t write poems for several years for some reason–I think I didn’t believe that I was good enough to keep trying. But after completing an MA in literature, where I focused on mid- to late twentieth-century American poetry, I started up again. It’s been an ebb and flow sort of discipline, but National Poetry Writing Month certainly helps. It’s the time in which I probably generate about 80 percent of what I write!
PLUME: Where do you get your ideas?
ML: Usually from other writers. I’m the type of writer who needs some kind of source material to spark a poem–whether it’s a line or image from a poem or novel or a strange turn of phrase I hear when someone’s speaking. I went to a reading by Ruth Awad the other night (who is amazing, by the way) and someone asked her about her writing process. She said it usually starts out as a flicker of an idea and then she reads something to shake the rest of the poem loose. That really resonated with me.
PLUME: How supportive is your local community for writers?
ML: Very! Albuquerque is full of creative types, and I’ve been lucky enough to meet a group of people who are enthusiastic about getting together to read and discuss each other’s work. There are always readings, too, which helps to keep the momentum going.
PLUME: We at Plume consider you a successful writer–How do you define “success” for a writer? For yourself?
ML: I think it really just depends on the individual writer’s goals for their writing. The literary industry is so different now than it was a few decades ago and commercial success is certainly much harder to come by. Success for me just means writing as regularly as I can, getting some of my work out into the world, and hearing some positive feedback about it. A friend from grad school who now teaches literature taught one of my poems in a class, and that was a real honor. Just to know that someone found a poem of mine interesting and culturally relevant enough to teach totally blew me away.
PLUME: Do you have a writing shero? A fellow woman writer from whom you get inspiration?
ML: Some of my favorites are Anne Carson, Harryette Mullen, and Lynda Barry. I’m pretty sure I’ve used images or phrases from each of their work as that initial spark for a poem, and I’m so grateful that they are putting their genius out into the world.
PLUME: What are you currently working on?
ML: Very slowly, I’m working on a poetry manuscript that takes as source material email exchanges between me and a long-ago, ill-fated love interest. Over the years, I became more and more interested in the power dynamics of that relationship, the role that poetry played (they are a poet as well), and that way that poems and other pieces of writing can be iterated over and over again into different versions of themselves. I like the process of creating new things and new meanings out of material that may otherwise seem worn.
Marie Landau writes and lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has a master’s in literature from the University of New Mexico and currently works as a grant writer. A 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems have appeared in Spry, inter|rupture, District Lit, Gramma, Powder Keg, and elsewhere. Her essay “‘What is here and now in the world’: Larry Eigner’s Perceptual Place Making” is forthcoming in the collection The Life and Work of Larry Eigner (UNM Press, 2020).
More about Marie: marielandau.com
or on social media IG: marie.landau; FB: https://www.facebook.com/marie.landau ; Twitter: @webdating_gems