Moheb Soliman, author of Homes
Poetry Category, sponsored by Wellington Management, Inc.
Each week leading up to the 34th annual Minnesota Book Awards Ceremony, we are featuring exclusive interviews with our 36 finalists. You can also watch the authors in conversation with their fellow category finalists here.
Would you tell us one or two things about your finalist book that you are particularly proud of, and why?
The poems in this book have been accumulating for a very long time–some older than a decade, from my first real encounters with the Great Lakes region. It means so much to me to have carried them all through into a coherent, permanent collection like this. I’m also proud of the cover because I was able to play a central part in conceiving and creating it using two photos of mine and hand-made line drawings, which all come out of other related interdisciplinary work I do, so it’s significant to me to have that tied in as well. And it was so faithfully and skillfully realized in collaboration with Coffee House Press.
What do you hope that your audience learns or takes away from your book?
I sort of hope these poems just make people want to put the book down and go have their own insider-outsider experience of the wild populous Great Lakes, or even simply of any natural-cultural sprawl close to home. I hope the book affirms and nurtures a capacity to embrace the complexity and sublimity of this region’s spaces.
What advice would you give to an aspiring writer with an interest in your category?
I would say to aspiring poets, use all of your language and all manner of thought and address and meaning, and use other forms of expression as guides and inspiration, beyond just poetry and books. Write whatever you want, write a lot however scrappy, but more importantly, write out in the world, all over.
Tell us something about yourself that is not widely known.
… I’ve got this now long-running oddly-evolving collaboration with one of my oldest friends, writing country songs. It started with an interdisciplinary project called We’re Back! but continues in a sort of experimental yet earnest fashion.
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 conducive place for writers?
Honestly, not a romantic answer, but I think it’s the infrastructure– the funding and platforms–the diverse support for artists coming from governmental, non-profit, and community organizations that allow for an abundant and progressive arts landscape.
Since the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, virtually everything about our lives has changed in some way. Has COVID-19 (and its fallout) impacted your writing habits and preferences? Has the unique zeitgeist of the past two years influenced your writing output in any other ways that you can pinpoint?
It’s been hard to write and prioritize a writing practice during Covid fallout, for sure. In one sense, it’s being isolated and homebound and having no structure to the days and weeks and months–which is also to say, I’ve been incredibly lucky to be able to be home or wherever I like and still manage to make a living this whole time. In another, related sense, then, living this silver-lined life has been a happy time in many ways, satisfaction as much as complacency, which for me doesn’t easily lead to a hungry, creative mindset.
Moheb Soliman is an interdisciplinary artist from Egypt and the Midwest who has presented art of all kinds around the U.S. and Canada. He was the program director for the Arab American literary journal and arts organization, Mizna.