WV: Is it advantageous for writers to live on the coasts, rather than in the Midwest? My parents’ house feels like home, because it’s where we go for the holidays and because of all the traditions that we play out there (reciting poems in front of the Christmas tree, etc.), but New York felt like home to me the first time I came here. MH: My parents live in Bayside and a large percentage of Rob’s immediate and extended family lives in Wisconsin. WV: Do you still have family in Wisconsin? What, if any place, feels like home to you? None of us wanted to move to Milwaukee particularly, so yes, it was hard. I’ve also recently noticed that my children’s books sound more English than my poems. All that doubling though may have affected my interest in hybrids, which really came out in Modern Life.
It’s really hard to know how my writing might be different if, for example, we had stayed in England, or moved back to Germany. MH: Is that a real term? If not, how lovely that you invented it.
What effect has that had on your poetry? Was it difficult to move from England to Milwaukee? WV: I love the idea of you being biaccental (English/American), as well as bilingual (German/English). You’ve made me realize that I haven’t really mined Milwaukee to the extent I might…stay tuned for poems including Winkie’s (a favorite dime store), rabbits dashing through sprinklers, and walking to school with wet hair and arriving with a headful of icicles. My husband, Rob (who is indeed from Fond du Lac) and I got married at Calatrava's Milwaukee Art Museum, and there really is a wonderful UFO feeling to that main hall space.
That may be the closest I’ve come to autobiography in a poem! One recent poem that has a distinct, if hidden, Milwaukee inspiration is the poem “You Never Seemed So Human,” a poem about two people getting married while they’re also being abducted by aliens. I think my childhood in England is more apparent in the landscapes that are in my poems, at least “In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden” is based on our house in England, and some of the characters in that poem actually lived in my village (Marnhull). MH: Yes, from age 8-18, I lived in Whitefish Bay, WI. What sticks with you, if anything, from your time in Wisconsin? WV: You spent much of your childhood in Wisconsin, and your husband is, I think, from Fond du Lac, but there’s a kind of placeless/everyplace feel to your writing-it’s nowhere & everywhere at the same time. Part of the Poetry Everywhere series, produced by the Poetry Foundation in association with docUWM at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
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