A Latina writer, I am the author of five books and one chapbook: Boxing the Compass (forthcoming), On Wonderland & Waste, Prelude to Air From Water, The Tree of No, Telescope, and 32 Pedals & 47 Stops. In addition to serving as member of the editorial board of Evental Aesthetics, I also collaborate with Talan Memmott in producing short, experimental movies we call Nameless Films. Currently, I am Visiting Assistant Professor at West Virginia University where I teach Literature and Creative Writing.
My Next Big Thing Thing
What's the working title for the book?
Where did the idea come from for the book?
Ulysses. I wanted to give voice to Milly Bloom who never had the brother that was born her sibling. I was also interested in the unnamed corpse that washed on the shore and haunts the text throughout. All that got conflated with my urgent concern for global warming. Several versions later, I ended up with a book that's more like a flood than an ode to the modernist tome.
What genre does it fall under?
Literary fiction/Creative non.
What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
Michelle Rodriguez for the main role. A baker for another. A postman for another. An old, bent woman for another, someone too old to be an actress, too bent to have a face.
What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?
A woman lost at sea journeys to visit her mother's grave.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
The first draft took 3 or 4 years. The good draft took 12 inclusively.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
Nightmares of floods, hurricanes, environmental catastrophes. And the Bermuda Triangle. Shifting poles. The islands of Puerto Rico. Sailors who are lost and tossed. Others who are turned to cannibals. Cannonballs strewn across the ocean floor. And finally, my interest in a saturation of language that illuminates its total inadequacy.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
It took me 12 years to write rightly, and I consider it, probably more than any other book I've written, a book that's totally mine.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
It's forthcoming with Noemi Press and supported generously by Letras Latinas. To both, I am eternally grateful.
Thanks to Lisa Pasold for tagging me! I'm tagging Talan Memmott, Lara Glenum, Stacey Levine, Danielle Pafunda, and Carmen Gimenez Smith.
BOXING THE COMPASS
Boxing the Compass is soon forthcoming with Noemi Press. For an excerpt, follow this link on the Kelsey Street Blog.
ON WONDERLAND & WASTE
“A bellow that is not a bucket. A bucket that is not a bone. There is wisdom in slipping into oceans. Into those wider organs horning. The way churches slip into twilight. Stone after stone. See the plaything on the mantel. I lean toward the paintings. See the baby fastened on the mast. I lean toward the window. See the sea, see the ship, see the ship’s low hull. See the winding of vowels by the function of the fist.”
color with collages by Alexis Anne Mackenzie - www.alexisanne.com
PRELUDE TO AIR FROM WATER
PRELUDE TO AIR FROM WATER is out and available from Elixir Press and Small Press Distribution.
In a careful choreography of repeatedly missed 'moments,' the familiar characters of Florian's latest collection weave in and out of each other's lives sheathed in a postmodern isolation that keeps actual contact at bay. In them, we see ourselves, misreading, misinterpreting, or just plain missing all the signs--but not without humor, and a tenderness that makes them fully human. A primer for 21st-century relations. COLE SWENSON
An enthralling sequence of poems, Sandy Florian’s playfully uncanny Prelude to Air from Water anatomizes moments in time through which a menagerie of characters wander, pursuing and fleeing their desires, often lost to themselves, but always set in sharp, revealing profile for the reader, whom Florian moves to compassion yet also to an irreversible meditation on the intensities of feeling, wonder, and self-confrontation each moment hosts and elides. As readers of Florian’s Telescope and The Tree of No should expect, poetic invention and searching thought fuse in Prelude with astonishing results. ROBERT SAVINO OVENTILE
In Prelude to Air From Water, Sandy Florian deftly manipulates the countries between the prose poem and the experimental lyric. Better to call this a novel in verse where the trajectory of the prose poem is punctuated with experiments in language. The literary descendant of Gertrude Stein and Baudelaire, Florian plays a bluntly meaningful and still elusive music. Prelude to Air From Water is a symphony in declaratives where the abstraction of a 'Moment' appears as a character and sets up poetic associations that are playful and sublime. JAY SNODGRASS
Read an amazing essay/review of the book on Sobriquet Magazine.
THE TREE OF NO
THE TREE OF NO is available from Action Books and Small Press Distribution.
"As slyly humorous as it is sublimely poetical, Florian’s experimental novel riffs on Biblical stories from Genesis to Revelations to trace the career of a narrator who, unhesitant 'to taste the waste,' ventures forth from Eden to pursue meditations on imagination, quirky civic projects, and an odd love affair with the enigmatic Montgomery, all the while struggling toward a resolute affirmation of the earthbound self." Robert Savino Oventile
"'Beastly I fall at Adam under the shade.' Sandy Florian's second book dilates under Milton's Forbidden Tree, plumbing God's unjustifiable ways, and Man's. In a world made from scratch, eros and artifice, thanatos and theology give off mixed and exquisite signals, here buckled in Florian's bejeweled and rigorous sentences: 'words like chords like emerald snakes, words like lords like humble smoke.' Florian's intellect blazes in this bold, ambitious work: 'I have a war with history.'" from the publishers
"'Beastly I fall at Adam under the shade.' Sandy Florian's second book dilates under Milton's Forbidden Tree, plumbing God's unjustifiable ways, and Man's. In a world made from scratch, eros and artifice, thanatos and theology give off mixed and exquisite signals, here buckled in Florian's bejeweled and rigorous sentences: 'words like chords like emerald snakes, words like lords like humble smoke.' Florian's intellect blazes in this bold, ambitious work: 'I have a war with history.'" from the publishers
Excerpts from the The Tree of No appear in bird dog, /nor, Tarpaulin Sky, Gulf Coast, Upstairs at Duroc, Octopus, A_Handsome Journal, and Fairy Tale Review.
A new review by Kelly Lydick in Gently Read Literature.
A review by Jay Thompson in Kenyon Review blog.
One by Ross Brighton on his blog.
One by Robert Savino Oventile in Jacket Magazine.
And viewable reviews at The Home Video Review of Books and delirious hem.
TELESCOPE
Reviews of the book can be found in The Latino Poetry Review, diagram, reviews reviews reviews, no no yes no yes, and coldfront.
An interview by Francisco Aragón for the Institute of Latino Studies.
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