Q&A with poet Greg Pardlo

Greg Pardlo is a successful poet by anyone’s standards. In 2015, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection of poems, “Digest,”, which was also shortlisted for the NAACP Image Award and was a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award.

The Department of English and Comparative Literature will host him for the Armfield Poetry Reading in Wilson Library tonight to read from his poetry collections.

Staff writer Madeline Rael spoke to Pardlo about his writing process, his Pulitzer and his main influences.

The Daily Tar Heel: What will your reading at Wilson Library entail?

Greg Pardlo: I’ll be reading poems from both of my poetry collections, but mostly from “Digest,” the last book.

DTH: What was/were your greatest inspiration or influences for your poems in “Totem” and “Digest”?

GP: I get a lot of inspiration from my peers. I like to surround myself with hard working people, and I have many very talented friends. It takes a lot just to keep up with them.

DTH: What inspired you to begin writing poetry?

GP: I wanted to be a visual artist, but I didn’t have the hand-eye coordination I needed to draw the things I saw in my mind, so I tried photography. But having first to buy the film, and then get it developed proved to be incredibly expensive for me when I was a kid. Out of necessity, I think I turned to writing — at least at the beginning.

DTH: Are there any specific writers or poets who have influenced your own writing?

GP: The influence of my teachers, Galway Kinnell and Sharon Olds, continues to show up in my poems. But I studied Walt Whitman and Gerard Manley Hopkins most deeply in graduate school.

DTH: How would you describe your writing process?

GP: Time is critical in my process. I need to forget about a poem so I can rediscover it later in the drafts file on my desktop.

To trick myself into forgetting, I keep many poems circulating over months, if not years. I also keep notebooks full of bad writing and writing about how I distinguish between good and bad writing. Every now and then I’ll discover something decent as I’m rereading the notebook, and I’ll transfer it to the laptop where I can forget it again for another few weeks. Needless to say, I’m a slow writer.

DTH: Did you ever anticipate winning a Pulitzer Prize? How did that feel for you?

GP: I was picking up my kids from school when a former student of mine texted me saying, “Congratulations on your Pulitzer.” I was sure she was confused. Then I was confused.

Most days I am still just confused. My calendar is so crowded — I have little sense of what’s moving me forward and what’s just keeping me from falling behind.

DTH: What advice would you give to aspiring writers or poets?

GP: The most important thing is to refuse the comfortable emotion. Young poets often want to write what they think a poem is supposed to be instead of taking risks and trying new things. I know this sounds counterintuitive, but if it feels wrong, go for it. You can always figure it out or fix it later.

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