Poets & Writers Talks to francine j. harris About Here Is the Sweet Hand

Poets & Writers spends their Ten Questions this week with francine j. harris! In harris's new book, Here Is the Sweet Hand (FSG 2020), "[t]here is fighting, argument, and blood spilled. There is also great love and repair: literal and metaphorical suturing." From their conversation:

3. Where, when, and how often do you write?
I write sporadically and edit often. A lot that I write lately is connected to instruction and teaching. Communications go up when you join a faculty and it’s interesting how much attention in the first year is devoted to lucidity and availability. Particularly with the pandemic, there has been a focus on being available to one another that makes my job feel very public. I can see how this will settle and I’ll get back to a quieter place in my head where I usually write from. That said, the atmosphere in my brain just now makes it a little bit easier to focus on fact-based writing and research, which is very helpful for the fourth collection I’m working on. 

4. What are you reading right now? 
A few things: Garth Greenwell’s Cleanness, Michele Wallace’s Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman, Natalie Diaz’s Postcolonial Love Poem, Tamiko Beyer’s We Come Elemental, and Dawn Lundy Martin’s Good Stock Strange Blood.… 

The full interview is at P&W.