The Bat Test

Interview with Tad Richards

Where do you write? I can’t stay in 0ne place. I move around, sometimes within the space of a single peom.

Describe your writing process: I start in longhand in 6x9 sketchbook. Every time I come to a halt (this is poetry – fiction a little different), I start again, copying everything I’ve already written onto a new page.

What do you when you begin to revise? What's the first thing you do during that process? My revision process begins when I turn that first page in my sketchbook and begin recopying – and revising what I’ve written.

When revising, how many drafts do you go through before you feel comfortable with the final product? – All of which adds up to “no way to count the number of drafts.” I’m revising all the way through the first draft. After I get to the end of the poem, it probably doesn’t go through more than a couple more drafts.

As a poet, whose music, or voice, sometimes do you hear as you write or revise? My two great mentors were Donald Finkel and Donald Justice, and I still hear their voices.

How would you classify your poetry? Are you a lyric poet? A Romantic? A Surrealist? I’m a storyteller. Even if I’m writing something as counter-narrative as a villanelle, I’m still a storyteller.

Where does your inspiration come from (music, film, other books)? Words. Combinations of words that strike me. They can come from anywhere. One example – a character said this in a Tarzan movie I was watching on Saturday morning. I wrote it down, lived with it for a while, and it became the first stanza of a poem: “They used to practice cannibalism, until they went away from the river when the colonists came. It’s said they have some power over the crocodiles.”

"Sylvia," "All Purpose Snack Crackers" and part of "The Tragic Polka"

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