Right before I moved away from Louisiana last summer, I had the pleasure of meeting a talented poet and tireless champion of poetry: Clare L. Martin. She had just started a new reading series at a gelato place in downtown Lafayette, which was a delicious and brilliant idea. Her debut poetry collection, Eating the Heart First, was just published this past October by Press 53. I highly recommend purchasing and reading it.
Last week, Clare tagged me for The Next Big Thing, a writer-to-writer interview series. I have no illusions that my forthcoming chapbook will be a “big thing” by most standards—I doubt that Sesame Street will ever parody it, and that’s one of my standards for a “big thing”—but I can’t resist talking about a poetry collection that I feel fond of and worked hard to create.
What is the working title of the book?
The working title for a few years was actually Gospels of the Bleeding Woman. I liked the way the plural use of “gospels” drew attention to the strangeness of collapsing three narrative versions of this woman’s story into one. Thanks to a thoughtful reading and suggestion by Mark Mann (Editor at Point Loma Press), I changed the title to The Gospel of the Bleeding Woman to connect this book to other non-canonical gospel accounts and to be more precise in using the word “gospel,” which means “good news.”
Where did the idea come from for the book?
I’ve always been fascinated by and curious about the unnamed bleeding woman who appears in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. I’m especially interested in the idea that reaching out in desperation can be an act of faith, and my poems explore the sometimes fuzzy line between faith and doubt.
What genre does your book fall under?
Poetry is the obvious answer here, but as a whole collection these poems form a unified narrative that might be called biblical/historical fiction in the first half and fantasy in the second half.
What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
I’ve never heard of a poetry chapbook being turned into a movie, but if such a crazy thing occurred, I would intentionally choose unknown actors to play the bleeding woman and Jesus. Mel Brooks could make a cameo as one of the doctors.
What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?
Blending history with fantasy, this poetry chapbook imagines a life for the unnamed bleeding woman who appears in three of the Bible’s gospel accounts, but this time she gets to have a name and tell her own story.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
I believe I had a complete draft written within a year. This sequence of poems was part of my master’s thesis.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
I’d been wanting to write a poem from the perspective of the bleeding woman for a while, so when Hadara Bar-Nadav challenged our workshop group to incorporate research into our poetry, I immediately knew that the bleeding woman would be my subject. The first poem I wrote was “Well,” and many more poems followed than I’d originally expected.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
After the bleeding woman touches Jesus and is healed, things get weird… if you want to see what the bleeding woman might do if she visited Wal-Mart and the Museum of Modern Art, searched on Wikipedia, and had lunch at a café in NYC with Jesus, then you should read this book.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
My book was just accepted a couple of weeks ago by Point Loma Press, and it should be published within the year.
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I’m tagging the writers below for The Next Big Thing interview series because they each have a recent or forthcoming book that I would love to hear about in detail next Wednesday.