Cheryl Snell's books include a novel, Shiva's Arms, and four collections of poetry: Flower Half Blown, Epithalamion, Samsara, and the winner of the Lopside Press 2008 Chapbook Contest, Prisoner's Dilemma. Murmuration, an electronic chapbook, has just been published by Gold Wake Press.Interview
Please tell our readers what project you are currently working on.
I'm drafting my second novel, and awaiting the publication of my first. My fourth poetry collection, Prisoner's Dilemma, is in the editing stage. That was fun to do, because I worked with my sister, Janet Snell. She did a set of drawings of rather eccentric heads for the project-- emotional, spontaneous, self-sufficient statements with an expressive life of their own. Her pictures do not tell the story of my poems, but extend meaning.
Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?
Many. I love modern art. Looking at it loosens my ability to make connections between disparate things. Did I just define a poem?
If you were to pick an artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?
Besides Janet? The late Ed Dugmore, an abstract expressionist who had a very lyrical side. To me, his work embodied what D. H. Lawrence called "the direct utterance from the instant whole man." I wrote a poem about his work; it would have been nice to see what he did with mine.
Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?
Yes. Not doing your research just irritates everyone involved.
Have you ever regretted submitting your work to a specific publication? And if so, why?
Recently I submitted a story to one of the big magazines. Thinking it didn't have a chance, I sim-subbed it elsewhere. By the time the first place accepted it, the second place had already published it. Oh snap!
If full poems could be placed on tombstones which poem would go on yours?
Anne Sexton's "Courage".
What is your poetic statement?
I must startle myself.
