Home / Creative/Critical Graduate Student Spotlight / Kristen Nelson

3 Questions with Creative/Critical PhD Student Kristen Nelson

3. Tell us 1) the most fragrant location (the fragrance can be lovely or putrid, of course) that you’ve ever had the chance to write in, 2) the noisiest site you’ve ever written in, and 3) the softest place you’ve ever written in (can be metaphorical or literal). 1) I don't have a sense of smell and haven't for about 7 years. Even my memories of smells are starting to fade. However, I think Haiku, Hawaii is the most fragrant place I've ever written. Many years ago, my friend Vincent flew me out to Hawaii for a month to help edit his book. I would wake up every morning around 6 before the rest of the house was awake and write on his porch for a few hours. His wooden house sits on the edge of a gulch filled with flowers and fruit trees. I remember the sweet smell of gardenia and tuberose above the musk of decomposing leaves. 2) For about 15 years, I lived on 4th Avenue in downtown Tucson right across the street from a dance club and an Irish pub. On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights the bass would rattle my windows until 3 am. One summer the city installed new streetcar tracks on 4th Avenue and the jackhammering began around 4 am to beat the desert heat. That summer my home was the noisiest place and so also the noisiest place I've ever written in. 3) I have spent a lot of time writing on sandy beaches at the edge of the ocean. Most of my 2018 book The Length of this Gap was written on beaches in San Diego and Puerto Peñasco, Mexico. The poems and hybrid texts in that book are trying to measure grief chasms. I sought out the softest, kindest places to write the kind of work deeply infused with loss. The ocean is always a creatively generative place for me--the softness of the sand juxtaposed with the drama of the sea.

2. Share your favorite line from your work. This was a tough one! I'm not sure if this is my favorite, but I wrote a line that I liked so much I used it as the title of my second chapbook, (Dancing Girl Press, 2017): sometimes I gets lost and is grateful for noises in the dark It imagines "I" as separate from me, or the written perspective of "I" rather than I, Kristen, the author of the divinations in the book. a brief statement about your most exciting recent news (forthcoming or recent publications, classes you’re taking/teaching, research trips, books you’re reading, prizes, whatever is happening, etc.)? The most exciting thing to happen to me recently is that I moved to Santa Cruz six months ago, and started a PhD program in Creative/Critical Writing at UCSC! I'm on a non-traditional educational journey and am starting my program at 43 years old. It has been 10-years since I earned my MFA. I've been writing, publishing, teaching, and running a non-profit during that time, all of which were important and beautiful ways to spend a decade. Now I'm thrilled to be a student again on the receiving side of mentorship and with curating reading lists provided by experts in my field. It is difficult, but also feels decadent to spend my days reading, writing, and thinking. I'm focused on critical writing for the first time in my career and have been incredibly grateful for the introduction to research provided by Juan Poblete's Topics in Theory. Last quarter, I had major breakthroughs in my creative writing in Micah Perk's fiction writing class. I am also TAing this quarter for Ronaldo Wilson's Hip Hop High Art class. I am learning so much under Ronaldo Wilson's guidance, and am having so much fun talking to my students about the artists from The Golden Age of hip hop, who were some of the first poets I truly loved. Also, after living in the desert for 20 years, I am so very happy to be by the sea again. I spend as much time as possible looking at the ocean, thinking, and dreaming. The seashore is a sacred place for me and feeds my writing like nowhere else.