Roy G. Guzmán, author of Catrachos
Poetry category, sponsored by Wellington Management, Inc.
Each week leading up to the 33rd annual Minnesota Book Awards announcement, we are featuring exclusive interviews with our 36 finalists. You can also watch the authors in conversation with their fellow category finalists here.
In a year defined by a pandemic and its fallout, virtually everything about our lives has changed in some way. How has COVID-19 impacted your writing habits and preferences? Has the unique zeitgeist of the past year influenced your writing output in any ways that you can pinpoint?
Writing functions differently during periods of crisis, and I have experienced moments in which I am feeling so much but am unable to find my way into language. Reading does help trigger ideas, but even reading has felt too much like a privilege. And so there’s nothing radical that has changed about my writing except that I now feel a greater weight that comes from whatever words I summon. Because this strange weight has come with a different sense of vulnerability, I have become more protective of my stories and how I choose to tell them. It’s as if I had a stronger duty to take care of the ghosts around me so as not to lose their confidence.
Would you tell us one or two things about your finalist book that you are particularly proud of, and why? (Sure, it may feel a bit un-Minnesotan to say so, but it’s not boasting if we ask!)
I am proud that, up until the point I sent in my last revision to Graywolf, I considered as much as possible what I was attempting to bring together in this book. That was a feat I had to find within myself to learn how to realize. On the other hand, this book has its attention towards so many different places, but it’s truly a Minnesotan book in the sense that I can remember most spaces here where I dreamt, started, and completed these poems. I am proud of that!
What do you hope that your audience learns or takes away from your book?
I don’t have any expectations for what I’d like my audience to take away from my book. Instead, I want them to see the collective fire I am burning here and to learn how to keep it growing.
Minnesota enjoys a reputation as a place that values literature and reading. If this sentiment rings true for you, what about our home state makes it such a welcoming and conductive place for writers?
To value literature and reading one must also value how writers are able to take care of themselves. In that regard, Minnesota has been a place where I haven’t gone hungry because I have found people and places that would never allow it. I can keep writing and feel loved enough that I can wake up tomorrow and continue working on these lines.
What advice would you give to an aspiring writer with an interest in your category?
Inspiration will come from anywhere. Learn how to make your body and mind become a site where inspiration can happily dwell.
Tell us something about yourself that is not widely known! (It doesn’t have to be about your writing.)
I am also a ballroom dancer! Which means that sometimes I dance to poems as well.
Roy G. Guzmán received a 2019 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. Their work has been included in Best New Poets of 2017 and Best of the Net 2017.