Meet your new small press/poet/visual artist superhero: Kristy Bowen.

I discovered the brilliance that is Kristy Bowen earlier this year, when Melissa Broder posted this about the most recent Vinyl poetry issue. For a taste of what you’ve been missing:

From “The Synaesthete’s Love Poem”:

If you listen, you can
hear the holes in the alphabet,

the sounds lit by the lamps
of our bones. Perhaps

with this page I could fashion
a boat or a very convincing window.

A dress made entirely of vowels.

Whoa, right?

I know.

But what I didn’t know until I checked out her great website is that she is not only a bang-up poet:  1. she is a stunningly talented visual artist, 2. she has her own small chapbook press, dancing girl press & studio, 3. she edits her own online zine wicked alice, and–is if that weren’t enough–4. she also has her own vintage-inspired gifts line.

Feel like an underachiever yet? Well, I do–but somehow hearing Kristy Bowen talk about her    incredible universe of creation makes you feel like you could do it all, too. She’s magical like that.

*Full name?:

Kristy Bowen

*Day job?:

I’ve been working in libraries for about 10 years, first in an elementary school, now in an academic library.  It gives me a steady paycheck and benefits, keeps me surrounded by books, and immerses me in a creative environment which I love.  Mostly, I work the evening shift during the school year, so it gives me free time in the mornings.  I also keep some pretty late nights writing and working on things.

*When did you start taking the idea of being a poet seriously? Was this before or after you decided to dedicate serious time to becoming a visual artist? Or did these aspirations develop together?:

I think because I was so book crazy from the time I could read on, I always had aspirations that writing was something I wanted to do.  I remember trying to write a horror novel (badly) in junior high, spurred by all the Stephen King and Dean Koontz I was reading.  The poetry bug bit later, when I was in high school,  but even still, “poet” never seemed to be something one chose to do, or went to school for, like deciding on a career in teaching or journalism.  I knew people who were teachers and reporters, lawyers and dentists, but  a “poet,” let alone being one, might as well have been synonymous with “unicorn,” something mythical and wonderful, but possibly made up.

This was before everyone was so connected like they are now via the internet.  I pretty much had an outdated Norton anthology, Sylvia Plath’s journals, and a few issues of Poets and Writers to go on.  I was one of those college students who flitted back and forth between potential careers, but all along I was writing and wanted it to have a place in my life.  I thought for a while after college I might want to teach and went to grad school to get my MA in literature, but decided afterward that what I really wanted to do was find some bookish, non-stressful job that would allow me to write the rest of the time.   I spent a couple years submitting and publishing poems in online journals before I decided I wanted to start one myself  (wicked alice) and dancing girl press sort of grew from that endeavor.  My interest in visual and book arts actually sort of coincides with the development of the press.  Even though I’ve always been an art lover, I’d pretty much always engaged the world primarily via words before that.  I guess my mind was pulled in a more visual direction as I began designing and choosing covers for our chapbooks,   It’s helpful to my creative process to be able to move between them, between something that goes on mostly in my mind and something that goes on mostly with my hands.

*You have two books of poetry, in the bird museum and the fever almanac, in addition to several chapbooks. Some repeating themes in the poems are weird myths of womanhood, as well as secrets and confines of the body–but they’re not expressed in your typical aging female English professor-poet way. It all comes from a much more fantastical, other-worldly, distant-Victrola-playing place (since Victoriana seems to be a present motif, too–which gets me all excited, I might add.) Do you find themes are things you already aim to write about when you start, or do they develop as the poems come out?:

I think all the stuff  I write about just sort of just filters through the things I’m interested in, the things I’m passionate about.  I can think of a lot of younger women poets who are probably writing poems with similar themes to mine, but I sometimes do it through weird Victorian subjects because that’s what makes me insanely happy. The things I love have an insidious way of showing up in my writing.  the fever almanac is full of wide rural vistas, old houses, roadside motels.  in the bird museum has a lot of Victorian details, gothic novel motifs, ghost stories.  I have another book that’s all about sideshow and carnival women.  I’m a research freak, so I love those sort of projects.   I usually know what sort of project it’s going to be from the beginning, maybe even the title, and work from within that.  I have noticed that when it comes to individual pieces, my approach has changed over the years. Before, I would sit down and just write a poem.  Now, the development owes much more to a sort of collage approach from which a poem is assembled, no doubt influenced by the more visual things I’ve been doing.  It actually makes writing more fun for me and less like work, more this fun sort of play where you never know what you might end up with.

*You are also the founder of dancing girl press & studio, which releases a yearly series of chapbooks by female poets. You also somehow find time to publish the online zine wicked alice. What do you look for when you choose work for both the press and the zine?:

I tend to like things that are quirky and surprising.  Not what you would expect in terms of language construction, genre, subject matter. I have an innate fondness for work that engages things I am interested in—art, history, science.  Other than that, I find myself open to the spectrum of work from more traditional lyric oriented poems to more fragmented and experimental and pieces.

*Oh, and you run your own online arts & crafts store dulcet. What I’m saying is: you’re an art-making, paper-loving, ink-spilling, beauty-creating machine. What’s your secret?:

LOL. I think my almost pathological to-do lists might account for the productivity, but it’s hard to balance everything  Sometimes one thing takes a back seat to others, ie. one month I’m more focused on my own writing and art and sometimes more focused on the press itself.  When full-on retail mania hits in November /December, everything gets pushed aside for shop-related tasks.  I’ve learned try to avoid most time suckers (tv, video games) but I still get sucked in on the internets way too much. I try to multi-task, watch movies while I work on stuff for the shop, layout chapbooks during downtime at the library.  Sometimes I’m pulled in so many directions I don’t know which way is up.  I get extra OCD about my to-do lists then.  I always said I would never be a workaholic, but I guess I never took into account that you tend to become one if you can focus on the things you love…

*And your personal favorite three horror movies. Go:

The Shining (wins for scaring the beejeezus out of me as a kid at the drive-in where we saw it when I was 6 years old..) The Ring (wins for scaring the beejeezus out of me as a grown-up). Trick or Treat (actually less scary and a bit of satire, but a fun Halloween movie.)

**Personal note: I am now asking for a small crappy personal letterpress machine for Christmas. Operation ‘be more like Kristy Bowen’ commenced.**