Clicking Our Heels Three Times with Dr. Taylor Byas

Dr. Taylor Byas (00:00):
Looking back to some extent and being like, oh, I would probably write that differently, or I'd probably make different edits today. That's a good thing. But just like pure shame and embarrassment? <laugh>

Laura Maylene Walter (00:11):
We're trying to avoid pure shame and embarrassment as much as possible.

Dr. Taylor Byas (00:15):
Yeah, try to avoid that.

Laura Maylene Walter (00:19):
Welcome to Page Count, presented by the Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. This podcast celebrates authors, illustrators, librarians, booksellers, literary advocates and readers in and from the state of Ohio. I'm your host, Laura Maylene Walter, the Ohio Center for the Book Fellow and author of the novel BODY OF STARS. I'm joined today by Dr. Taylor Byas, a poet and editor whose debut full-length poetry collection is I DONE CLICKED MY HEELS THREE TIMES, winner of the Maya Angelou Book Award, the Chicago Review of Books Award in Poetry and the Ohio Book Award. Taylor, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here with us and sharing your poetry with us.

Dr. Taylor Byas (01:03):
Thank you so much for having me. I will start by reading the poem "Mother" from my collection I DONE CLICKED MY HEELS THREE TIMES. Mother, noun. One, a female parent. Two, maternal tenderness or affection. Three, short for motherf*cker, sometimes vulgar. Merriam Webster. One. I have not yet been split by motherhood, have not yet felt my body become sick with itself, relinquished of its own parts, the lips that have latched onto me. I need it in a different way, yet I hurt the way a mother hurts. Stretch marks like tendons, like ribbons, piecing me together. Heavy breasts like water, balloons that never burst on contact. Gifts I refuse to open. Two. My body knows something I don't, like how to take up space, how to fill a hole. I slip into the hands that call for me at desk when the hour knows no difference from mother or sister or daughter. Hips can bear the sins of others too. Perhaps this is what tips the scale. Those morsels of sorry, and hold me I collect from bathroom floors and bedsides. Three. The first time motherf*cker felt like anything it was my father calling my mother the name thrown over his shoulder like salt after he spilled it in restaurants. An exit wound. My mother bore it painfully at first, then quietly, sort of like giving birth. Once you tear all the way through, everything feels like nothing and nothing hurts.

Laura Maylene Walter (02:56):
Thank you for sharing that poem with us and thanks again for being here. I felt really lucky to be at the Ohio Book Awards last fall, which is put on by the Ohioana Library Association. And as this book was a prize winner, you were there and it was lovely to hear you speak at that event. So here at Page Count we focus on Ohio authors or writers or literary professionals who have a connection to Ohio in some way. But this book is very much, it is very much of Chicago. It's sort of a love letter in a lot of ways to Chicago. But if you could tell us a little about your journey, you know, how you ended up from Chicago to being an Ohio author winning Ohio book awards. Tell us how you ended up here and what your path has been like so far.

Dr. Taylor Byas (03:40):
Yeah, absolutely. I think I'm a Midwestern girl at heart for sure. Whether it's Chicago or here, you know, of course I grew up in Chicago and then, you know, we slowly kind of moved out to the south suburbs and my family still lives in very south suburbs, suburb of that area. But I sort of first left when I went to undergrad. I went to University of Alabama, Birmingham, so pretty far away. And I went there for both my undergrad and my Master's in English as well. And it was there that I, well first it was there that I switched over to poetry because I was originally a fiction writer. And then at the end of undergrad I actually made the switch because I took an ekphrastic poetry class and it changed my life, <laugh>. And so then for my Master's I switched over to the poetry focused and poetry has been sort of my main genre ever since.

Dr. Taylor Byas (04:32):
But it was also in Birmingham that I started to think about place really, you know, one, I was away from home and I got the opportunity to really start thinking about Chicago in a way that the distance allowed me to. And then I was also thinking about the role that, you know, location played when it came to just how I experienced the world as a Black woman who was also living in Birmingham, the history there. And also being there, you know, when the 2016 election happened. Also thinking about, you know, how location plays into how we experience historical events such as that. And then coming to Cincinnati, which was really interesting when I first visited here, it felt like if, you know Chicago and Birmingham kind of crashed together and then you shrunk it down <laugh>. And so it's really interesting that being here feels kind of like a mix of both of these places that I've lived before.

Dr. Taylor Byas (05:22):
And I think, you know, there's history here as well that I am considering, you know, we have the, the Underground Museum here that's really important and has this really important history that's tied to place. And so I feel like all these places that I've been or that I've lived, the location of them has been very much I think essential to identity, essential to who I am, essential to how I am interacting with the place. And so I think a lot of my work is thinking about place and, and I think this book about Chicago is just sort of one example or one iteration of how that sort of happens.

Laura Maylene Walter (05:58):
It comes through right from the beginning, even in the dedication, the dedication reads, "To the south side of Chicago and to every place and person that has been home to me since I left you," which I thought was really beautiful. When you were working on these poems, did you have a certain audience in mind or do you just tend to write for yourself as you worked on them?

Dr. Taylor Byas (06:18):
I think all poems are for me first, I'm sure. The span of these poems. I think the earliest, the oldest poem in this book is probably written in my Master's program. So I would say the span of the poems that came out in, oh goodness, what year is it? 2025?

Laura Maylene Walter (06:38):
Wish it was a different year but <laugh>

Dr. Taylor Byas (06:40):
Right, the book comes out in 2023, which really means that it was probably like finished sometime in 2021 and I would say the earliest poem was probably written in '17? 2017. So probably a span of about four years that the poems and the books were written. And so I don't know if there was an audience in mind when I was writing these poems. I didn't know that it was a book until almost all the poems were written. You know, I have my chapbook in part to think because the chapbook BLOODWARM was very heavily about Birmingham and sort of that place. And I think as I was sort of working through Birmingham, I sort of gradually started to think about, well what about Chicago? And I think those poems started to get written after I finished that project or even alongside that project even. And now, you know, these days I'm definitely writing about Ohio <laugh>. It's a common thread I just can't seem to let go of place.

Laura Maylene Walter (07:43):
There's some good lessons there for writers who are working on their own poetry and their own collections that it takes a span of years. You might not know it's a book or the poems that you're writing, how they will fit together. You need some time and space to figure that out. And it sounds relatively fast to me about four years of writing it, but for writers to know it can take, you know, years to put together a book and develop it. And so I'm interested in how this did come together into the rather cohesive feeling collection. It is and I really enjoyed the structure of how the poems are organized based on song titles from the movie THE WIZ. So can you talk a bit about that? When did that organizing structure, how did you come to that and how did you start to see these as not individual poems necessarily, but as part of a bigger whole?

Dr. Taylor Byas (08:33):
Yeah, the terrible part about having to put a book together is that it requires you being like told no <laugh> along the way. What requires you someone kind of coming in and and maybe showing you something that you didn't see about the book and you know, our work can be so precious to us and it can be hard sometimes for others to come in and move things around and make changes and suggest things. But you know, when we sold the book to Soft Skull, it was not this version at all. It was in I think three big sections. There were maybe a few poems in that version that maybe didn't make it into this version. It wasn't until we really got deep into the editing process. My editor at the time was Sarah Lyn Rogers. It wasn't until we really started to think about how we wanted the movie to come through the collection, if there are ways that we could sort of play up the connection.

Dr. Taylor Byas (09:26):
We started to think about the sort of structure of the movie and how the structure of the movie kind of maybe ran parallel to a story that I was also trying to tell. And we thought about, okay, well there's these songs, the movie that sort of serve as kind of chapters, you know, if we're thinking about like a book, they're sort of marked different chapters of this journey that these characters go along. So we were like, can we map some of these songs onto the narrative of the book? And it ended up working really beautifully. And luckily I had already had the South Side Sonnet crown, which of course originally was written with all of the sonnets together. But because we felt like that sonnet crown was so central to the story and that it itself kind of told a story, we decided to break the sonic sequence up throughout the book. And those became kind of the anchors in each of the sections. And we built the book around the broken up sonnet crown. So a lot of the organizing happened at the end <laugh> at the very end. The poems are kind of written in and they were in one order. And then as we sort of started to think about the relationship between the book and the movie and how we could better align those, then the sort of organizing structure that you see in the final version kind of came in the last last hours.

Laura Maylene Walter (10:44):
Yeah, that's really fascinating because it feels like such an inherent part of the book and so it's fascinating to know that it came together closer to the end of the process. That's really cool. And I was also curious about the structure of some of your individual poems. You mentioned the sonnets. And I really loved, for example, "Jeopardy," which maybe you wanna talk about that poem a bit, about "the category is birthright" and the sections it's divided into. I thought that was really creative. What can you tell us about that poem?

Dr. Taylor Byas (11:12):
I think, and you'll see this for quite a few of the poems, you know "Mother," one of the ones that I read, it sort of follows this dictionary <laugh> format. There's another poem, the big sestina in the book, which is the “Drunken Monologue from an Alcoholic Father’s Daughter." Right. And then you have poems like "Jeopardy." I guess what I'm highlighting is maybe a trend of like some of the most difficult poems I think are maybe in the most creative forms because I think the form was required to sort of balance out the heaviness of the content. I know with the "Drunken Monologue," for example, that was a poem that was really, really difficult for me to write. I got stuck and anytime I tried to come to the page and write that poem, and it wasn't until I just said, okay, we're gonna put it in this form and it's not coming out of the sestina, like it's going to be a sestina.

Dr. Taylor Byas (12:02):
It wasn't until I put into this container that I was able to really sort through what it was that I wanted to say. And I think the same is true of "Jeopardy," a really difficult poem to write. And I think the sort of form the container of the game show brought some levity to some otherwise pretty heavy hitting lines, you know, so I, I think for me the forms and a lot of instances gave me the space to really sort through some content that was really difficult emotionally. But that also, you know, I just got stuck on a page quite a bit and the form helped to propel me through.

Laura Maylene Walter (12:38):
That's really useful and helpful information, I think, that you can sometimes use form to balance out some other, like the subject matter or the tone. I think that's really smart. Another one I took note of was "Men Really Be Menning" <laugh> about archetypes of people you might find on dating apps. It's very different. I know, but it made me think a little bit of Roxane Gay's "Difficult Women" story just because that goes through archetypes of women. But this is basically dudes on dating apps. <Laugh> Would you like to share anything about the process of writing that one?

Dr. Taylor Byas (13:13):
I think that was another one that was born out of a combination of frustrating material and fun. Part of it was there was a time where this was like also pretty a funny thing to do on Twitter where people were sharing dating app bios and profiles that were just absolutely ridiculous. This was something that I also talked about with friends and it was just hilarious that although thousands and hundreds of different men that a lot of these things said the same things or you know, sort of had the same vibe to them. And in that sort of fun spirit I wrote the Sonic Crown kind of thinking about the ridiculousness of these apps. But then also on the other end of that, what's behind the Ridiculous dating app is, is oftentimes very manipulative, toxic and dangerous men. So there's like two sides to the coin. It's like on the one hand we can laugh at some aspect of this, but on the other hand there is the reality of like, this is who is out there, this is who we are choosing from to be partnered with. And unfortunately for some of us, you know, that story doesn't end happily, right? And so I think the sonnet crown, as long as it is with all seven of the sonnets, just gave me the space to kind of think about the complexity of that or or both sides of that coin.

Laura Maylene Walter (14:31):
Yeah, that's really well said that the structure of it, breaking it down by these different kinds of men and their failings, it can on the small level seem funny, is almost, it's not too strong a word, but it can seem funny. But when you really step back and you're seeing the overarching patriarchal structures and the imbalances in the dating world and you see those on a larger level and it's actually quite chilling. Yeah. But that was another one that I really enjoyed a lot. And a lot of these poems, you get a sense of some of your influences because you've either referenced or cited or quoted through epigraphs other writers like Claudia Rankine, Sylvia Plath, torrin a. Greathouse, and also people like Beyonce <laugh>. Can you talk a bit about your influences, whether writers or otherwise, and how maybe they have found their way either into your poems or just kind of infusing your own work?

Dr. Taylor Byas (15:25):
Yeah, I think two probably important Chicago influences were definitely Gwendolyn Brooks and Patricia Smith who of course the book's epigraph is from. Those are two poets who write about the city with like a tenderness that I also wanted to write about Chicago with. I feel like in many places I've talked about Chicago as a character, as a sort of complex character. And my attempt to portray it as this complex character in an attempt to go against these ideas about Chicago that I encountered when I was in Birmingham, which were very monolithic, very Chicago was just this dangerous place. Chicago is this sort of killing field. That's kind of the idea that people have Chicago and I feel like, you know, poets like Patricia Smith and Gwendolyn Brooks were who I looked to when it came to how do I write about Chicago in a way that's tender, in a way that portrays that complexity that I want to demonstrate. I think Nate Marshall is another one who I look to. I think those are three that were very, very much in my mind kind of in the process of writing this book for sure.

Laura Maylene Walter (16:34):
At the Ohio Book Awards ceremony you said, this isn't a direct quote, but you said something along the lines of, before this book came out, you had maybe friends or people in your life who told you to have zero expectations and that things went, you know, pleasantly well for you. And this book has gathered so many, you know, prizes and accolades. So what would you like to say about that in terms of your expectations before the book came out and now that it's been out for a couple years, how you're feeling about everything now and and has that impacted your current work?

Dr. Taylor Byas (17:05):
Yeah, oh man. In the age that we're in, you know, we're, we're so online, social media is so necessary right to this kind of career of being a writer. You have to kind of market yourself in these ways and you have to let people know what's going on and where you'll be and and what they can buy. But also in the midst of that you are just constantly bombarded with all of everyone else's accomplishments and what everyone else is winning and doing and getting. And it's so easy to get lost in comparison. What we don't see and what people don't post is all the blood, sweat and tears that it took to get there. All the rejection that it took to finally get that one acceptance and, you know, all the times they didn't get the award before they got the award. So I had to remind myself that we don't really have any idea what people's journeys look like based on what were presented online, what's presented on social media.

Dr. Taylor Byas (18:03):
And also as an editor, someone who is sometimes on the other side of making those decisions, a lot of the times those rejections and not getting these things doesn't have anything to do with the quality of the work if there are so many other factors that go into these decisions and who gets these awards and and what wins. And so I also think I've been fortunate to be on the other side and to have that insight and to know that, you know, the book can be a fantastic book and still maybe not win anything, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the book isn't good. Right. I think it was easier for me to let the book go into the world and say, I'm proud of this and even if it doesn't win anything that doesn't change the fact that I'm proud of the work that I've done.

Dr. Taylor Byas (18:49):
Now on the other side of having won things, book two is a little more stressful, <laugh> because you know, you sort of become your own competition, right? This earlier version of you becomes your competition and you feel like you have to one up that is it true, not necessarily are people expecting me to, you know, win another award? No one's expecting anything of me. No one's thinking about <laugh> me and my book as much as I'm thinking about me in my book. But you know, these are the things that we tell ourselves. And so as I gear up for book two to come out in August, I wanted to do well. I wanted to do, you know, just as well if not better than the first. And it's harder not to have expectations this time around <laugh>, but I mean, has it affected my work. I think it's just made me more diligent. I think it's just made me more dedicated to the craft. If anything then I don't think those are bad things.

Laura Maylene Walter (19:44):
Tell us the title of your book coming out in August.

Dr. Taylor Byas (19:49):
She is named RESTING BITCH FACE and I'm very excited for the amount of times I'll be able to get to say that <laugh>. It's a really different book. I DONE CLICKED MY HEELS is really formal and RESTING BITCH FACE is very formal but in a different way. It's a lot of prose poetry. There are still some traditional forms there for sure. But most of the book is in prose poems and it's this book that thinks about art, it thinks about film and, and all the ways that those mediums kind of contribute to the objectification of women and how women are constantly watched. And the book is kind of an attempt to flip that around and for women to become watchers, right by the end of the book. The female speaker kind of becomes the watcher over the course of the book and has this agency, it's a feistier book <laugh> I think, than I DONE CLICKED MY HEELS THREE TIMES, which I'm really excited about. I mean I think it's also a more sophisticated book. My dissertation chair when we were talking about the book, because the earliest version of RESTING BITCH FACE was my dissertation. And I remember her saying, this isn't necessarily a better book. It's a more sophisticated book. And I was like, yes, <laugh>, that is right. Yes.

Laura Maylene Walter (21:03):
That's really exciting. And am I correct that it is a Roxane Gay book club selection?

Dr. Taylor Byas (21:09):
It is, yes.

Laura Maylene Walter (21:10):
That's great. Well congratulations. So you already have big things happening for that book.

Dr. Taylor Byas (21:15):
Which was crazy and exciting and so grateful to Roxane.

Laura Maylene Walter (21:19):
Yeah. Well so you had published two chapbooks previously. Can you tell us a bit about, as a poet, how is the experience different or maybe not different publishing a full-length collection versus a chapbook?

Dr. Taylor Byas (21:35):
Yeah, the experience is different and the experience is different mainly because of the way that I think the industry kind of views and treats chapbooks. And I think the sort of general consensus is that chapbooks are not as right, like serious and I'm holding up air quotes for those you not see me, <laugh>, this idea that chapbooks are not as serious of full-length projects, which I don't think is true. I think chapbooks are exceptional. I think they can be these really focused projects and really kind of allow you to whittle away at an obsession in a really focused way that is very different from a full length. But there are also other sort of reasons, right? Like the size of them there are smaller. So you're thinking about like shelf space, how they appear on the shelf in a bookstore for example. There are these also like logistical reasons that I think they're treated differently than full lengths.

Dr. Taylor Byas (22:30):
But I would say that you typically will have like more control over the entire search process with a chapbook because it's not going to be distributed as widely. And so chapbooks I feel like are more artistic. I feel like my second one Shutter was definitely more of an art piece, <laugh> for sure, which I loved about it. But what you can do, because the print run was, you know, a hundred and so you could really take the time to make those covers in a way that, you know, something widely distributed you wouldn't be able to do. So there are definitely pros and cons, but I think the biggest thing is you're gonna have a smaller print run. Obviously advances are gonna be much smaller if you have one. But on the other end of things, you do typically get more sort of artistic control. The editorial process typically isn't as intense. So you have more control of your vision. Not that I lost any control of my vision with my full lengths, but there was definitely more editorial intervention which you know, I think made the books better <laugh>.

Laura Maylene Walter (23:34):
Yeah, it seems to me, and I'm not a poet at all, I am definitely a fiction writer, a prose writer. But it seems that a lot of poets follow that trajectory of publishing at least one if not a few chapbooks before a full length. Not that it's a requirement or mm-hmm or anything like that. But it seems that that provides a way for poets to either focus tightly on something smaller, gain some experience, understand what it's like to put together a collection, even if it's a shorter version. Do you have any other, any advice for writers, young poets, maybe not necessarily in age, just in their publishing journey, if they're considering putting together their first either chapbook or collection, what words of advice would you have for them?

Dr. Taylor Byas (24:18):
I would say like take your time <laugh>.

Laura Maylene Walter (24:22):
Yeah, that's good advice.

Dr. Taylor Byas (24:24):
I think the industry, it's so easy to start to feel like you're behind and to feel like you need to rush and to sort of make your mark and oh I need to put something out there so people know who I am. I think I've fallen prey to that. I'm fortunate that the chapbooks that I did put out were well received. And I do think that they're really strong chapbooks. But I also think I went into my PhD program and I didn't have anything out there published <laugh>. And I felt so behind with my peers who was in my cohort, Marianne Chan who's incredible, had already had a book out at that point. I was like, oh my gosh <laugh>, what am I doing right? What am I doing wrong? Which I wasn't doing anything wrong, but I think that pressure that we put on ourselves to then, you know, produce, produce, produce, flip things out there, I maybe published like 50 poems in my first school year of publication, which was kind of insane. <Laugh>

Laura Maylene Walter (25:20):
Five zero?

Dr. Taylor Byas (25:21):
Five zero. Yeah.

Laura Maylene Walter (25:22):
Oh my goodness.

Dr. Taylor Byas (25:23):
Thinking back, I would never do that again. Like ever. I think I went last year and maybe published less than five if anything. Like I just wouldn't do anything like that now. But that's sort of what happens when you get into the industry and, and you feel like you have catching up to do. But that's not true. I think people should really take their time, really figure out what it is that matters to you and really put together a project that feels complete, that feels like something that you will look back and be proud of. Because I, you know, I think there are some of us who look back on our early projects and maybe wanna go crawl under a rock <laugh>.

Laura Maylene Walter (26:02):
Yes. Same <laugh>.

Dr. Taylor Byas (26:03):
You know, we look at some of those things we publish early on and we go, who wrote that and and who let me do it? Right. I'm sure it happens to the best of us, but I think taking your time will help you kind of avoid that as much as possible.

Laura Maylene Walter (26:17):
I agree, definitely. I'm always advising people to take their time, too. I mean with that said, I think just based on the kind of writer I am, I think for my entire life as years pass, I will regret everything I publish <laugh>. Well, not regret,, but I will look back on it and see like this isn't, yeah, this isn't matching what my vision would be now. And I don't think that's a bad thing. I think that means we're growing as writers and as people probably, too. Right? And so that's fine. But

Dr. Taylor Byas (26:44):
Yeah, absolutely. Looking back to some extent and being like, oh I would probably write that differently or I'd probably make different edits today. That's a good thing. But just like pure shame and embarrassment...

Laura Maylene Walter (26:56):
We're trying to avoid pure shame and embarrassment as much as possible.

Dr. Taylor Byas (27:00):
Yeah. Try to avoid that.

Laura Maylene Walter (27:01):
I don't know, being a writer though, sometimes it feels like that comes with the territory <laugh>.

Dr. Taylor Byas (27:05):
Oh for sure.

Laura Maylene Walter (27:06):
Um speaking of making changes, I noticed if I can bring this up, that when you read the poem "Mother" that I was reading along in the book with you, and you numbered the sections. And in the book there is an asterisk between them. I mean that's just a minor change, but do you change things when you're reading them after a work comes out and is published? What's your relationship to the text after it's out and you're now out there in the world kind of performing it?

Dr. Taylor Byas (27:31):
I don't do it often. There are times where, you know, there's a thing that I have printed in my hand and as I'm reading I do self-correct. I think it happens more when there's an unpublished thing that I've printed out and it's like a new poem and I'm like, I'm still trying this thing out and then as I'm reading I hear something or I, I see something up ahead and I make changes kind of as I go. It doesn't happen very often unless there's a change to be made that I feel it benefits the performance of it. Yeah. So in that case, you know, the numbering, I feel like hearing it out loud allows the reader to kind of call back to the definitions they hear at the beginning. Whereas you know, when you're reading it, you have it right there. You can, you can sort of reference it in hand but hearing it, if you don't have the text then that kind of helps them follow along. So I'll make a change that maybe benefits the performance of it, the reading of it that might differ from the experience on the page, but it doesn't happen often.

Laura Maylene Walter (28:28):
Yeah. I would think now that I'm thinking about it for poetry, that would happen a lot less since a poem is such a tightly contained polished form. Like I know I do a lot of edits in my book if I'm giving a reading, but that's prose and also you're reading an excerpt from something bigger and so how the audience can understand it, you know, taking things out might benefit the reading. Yeah, I was just curious 'cause I was like, ooh, I'm noticing a difference because, and now that I think about it, you're right, like hearing the numbers out loud, if you don't see it on the page, that does make a big difference. Since we're starting to talk about editing a bit, I know you edited a young adult anthology that just came out recently, POEMHOOD: OUR BLACK REVIVAL. Can you tell us about that and what was the experience like working on that book?

Dr. Taylor Byas (29:11):
Yeah, so I had two co-editors, Erica Martin and Amber McBride, and the three of us got together and you know, we're thinking about what kinds of texts do we feel like are missing for our young adult readers. You know, we think about like mythology and we think about like what we're taught in schools and there's all sorts of Roman and all these other mythologies that we're introduced to but not the sort of Black folklore aspect. We thought well this is definitely a gap that we wanna feel but we wanna fill it of course creatively. So we got together and we solicited some really incredible poets, some who are already sort of in the YA space and some who are mainly in the adult space to write some young adult poems for the anthology. And honestly it was a much smoother process <laugh> than we anticipated probably because we got three of us kind of working together.

Dr. Taylor Byas (30:04):
But yeah, it was really just us kind of putting our brains together and figuring out what sort of space we wanted to build and kind of going after it. It came together really quickly. You know, Harper was, they were fantastic. The cover was gorgeous. I think that putting together anthologies maybe isn't typically that simple. I think we got really lucky and to not sort of have any bumps in the road but we just kind of came together and addressed what we saw was a need in the YA space and it kind of came together really beautifully.

Laura Maylene Walter (30:34):
And you also are an editor at THE RUMPUS, which I love THE RUMPUS. I've read it off and on for years now, really. I'm like how long has it been around? It's been years. But tell us for our listeners who maybe don't know yet, tell us what THE RUMPUS is and your role working there as an editor.

Dr. Taylor Byas (30:53):
THE RUMPUS is a really fantastic literary publication. We do essays, poetry, fiction, all the good stuff. I am a features editor so that means I'm editing in the nonfiction area over there. So I am both reading submissions that sort of comes through our readers and also we accept submissions. You know, sometimes we indicate in our comments like I would love to, you know, work on this essay with the author. And then we get assigned to work individually with, with authors on sort of, you know, final edits and polishing things up. And I've been at THE RUMPUS I think for over two years now. It's way longer than that I think actually I think I've been editing for two years and I think I've been been there actually longer. But it's been really helpful I think for me to also edit in a genre that's not my main genre, I learn a lot, I just learn how to see a piece differently.

Dr. Taylor Byas (31:47):
I think you know, when you're so used to just reading poetry all the time, whether that's just in, you know, you're reading poetry books or if you're just reading poetry submissions as a reader or an editor, it can be so easy to just be insulated in that one genre, in that one world. But I think encountering other things, other genres, things that are drastically different from what you mainly write can really crack open the way that you think about a piece and the way that it can exist in the world. I love editing at the THE RUMPUS. I love getting to work individually with authors, which is something that you just don't also get to do often. Like as an editor at a literary publication you don't always get to like work one-on-one with an author, talk about, you know, what is your vision for this piece and how do we get there? So it's also just a lesson in just working with other authors, collaborating, right, compromise, how do we both kind of get what we're seeing in this piece? How do we both accomplish what we might see as possible? So it's just been like this incredible learning experience honestly. And also just another really cool way that I get to serve the writing community.

Laura Maylene Walter (32:53):
For our listeners who might be interested in trying to submit or pitch a feature to you, and first of all listeners, obviously if you're going to do that, you need to read the publications guidelines, see when they're open and read pieces. THE RUMPUS is online so yes you can read it all. There's no excuses. Those are the basics. Aside from that, how do you usually take submissions? So you take full submissions, you take pitches, and most of all, what are you looking for in pieces? Like what would make a pitch stand out to you?

Dr. Taylor Byas (33:22):
Yeah, so for the features we were actually typically looking at personal essays. So we typically will take submissions just how you would take for you know, poetry or fiction submissions. We take them in Submittable and yeah, we typically look for personal essays. Obviously all of our editors are different and we all have different tastes but I think overall we we're always kind of looking for something that has a pretty solid balance between the personal and the universal, right? Something that is sort of born from that personal experience that also manages to kind of reach out and touch the reader in some way. I think we are all probably could agree on that even though we have our different tastes. So yeah, you have a personal essay that you're feeling really strong about and you know, you catch one of our open submission periods, you should, you should send it out.

Laura Maylene Walter (34:12):
And you've mentioned your PhD program a few times at the University of Cincinnati, a PhD in creative writing, poetry. I get asked about PhD programs and creative writing a lot. I don't have one, I have an MFA but not a PhD, and especially for poetry, I'm curious what your experience was like and what kind of writer or poet do you think could be best served by doing a PhD?

Dr. Taylor Byas (34:36):
I think the PhD is for the writer that not just wants more time to write but I think also wants more time to be a student of literature, right? You don't go into the PhD and get out of <laugh> literature classes, unfortunately you still have to continue to do that and you still have to, you know, write seminar papers for the first two years. The first two years you're still in coursework so you are taking creative writing workshop every semester, but you're also in literature or theory classes or whatever the case may be. I think it's for the writer who is really ready to also be very deep into like scholarship who is really interested in how their scholarship might also intersect with their creative process and who wants the opportunity to study something really intensely. So a big aspect of the PhD program is your exam year.

Dr. Taylor Byas (35:33):
So you get an opportunity to basically build an exam list. And I know that's not how all PhD programs are. Sometimes you have an exam list that's kind of already built for you, but at UC you get to build your own exam list of about a hundred books and you get to really like intensely study this topic of your choosing for that entire year and at the end of the year you take these exams on the topic that you picked. I learned so much during that process. I evolved so much as a writer during that process. I think that process is part of how RESTING BITCH FACE sort of came to life as well. I think it's that it's the writer that is not just looking for that time to write, but it's also looking for that time of intense deep study and how that time will affect the writing process and help them kind of evolve into maybe a new project or a new sort of era in their writing.

Laura Maylene Walter (36:26):
This next question can connect to the PhD but it could also go beyond it, which is your experience with community as a writer. I know your acknowledgements, you mentioned people who were in your classes or your workshops who helped with the poems. So whether in the program or outside of it, how have you experienced community with other writers, other poets and how has that impacted your work?

Dr. Taylor Byas (36:48):
Oh man, I was really, really fortunate to have some incredible people in my program, in my workshop classes who just saw my work in really generous ways and and were very generous in their feedback. But I think the maybe biggest and hardest thing is once we come out of these writing programs, a lot of us are so used to being in those classrooms. I'm so used to being in those workshops for a lot of our, a big chunk of our writing lives and we get all these programs and it's like, okay, what does it look like? I have been writing poems because I had to for class and now I could just not write poems at all and no one holds me accountable. And so I, I think coming out of programs that's really important to be very intentional in building your own communities and you get to decide what that looks like.

Dr. Taylor Byas (37:35):
I'm someone who's very online <laugh>, which which you know, can be a bad thing sometimes can be stressful, but I think in other ways it allows me to stay connected. It allows me to do things like national poetry month poem day calendar which you know, me and my dear friend Séamus have done for two years now. We didn't do workshops last year but the first year that we did it, we put together this form calendar. We like, you know, gathered some of our writer friends and had some friends come in and teach, you know, some free / pay what you can workshops on form and it was like so fun and people like got poems written <laugh> and we, you know, we just had people coming together and learning about poems and forms and it was just like this really big deal big and we just kind of wanted to do something fun but it ended up being this kind of more organized being in the community that people are now looking for, you know, looking forward to us doing.

Dr. Taylor Byas (38:33):
And so just finding ways to be involved, finding ways you know, that work for you that also can kind of help you stay accountable and help you generate work if that's something you're looking to do. I know poem a day for me, I'm like, okay, me and my friends are doing this thing, I'm gonna feel shame <laugh>, I don't write my poems so you know, it kind of helps me write my poems or being in a writing group or or whatever that looks like. But I think there are so many ways now that you can be involved and you can find those things. We have virtual workshops and all sorts of things. Yeah, it's just about seeking out those opportunities and if there isn't a space then you also can make a space.

Laura Maylene Walter (39:11):
Yeah, absolutely. And you've mentioned being online and social media a few times and I am curious, and I'm probably asking this for my own information as I think about my social media use, because it feels like such a weird time in the social media landscape right now. There are a lot of shifts, a lot of changes. So where, and this might be outdated by the time this airs, but where are you most active or do you have a recommended platform that you like that you would suggest to other poets or other writers if they're interested in, you know, becoming more active on social media?

Dr. Taylor Byas (39:42):
I think Twitter was the big thing for a while and yeah, I still call it Twitter.

Laura Maylene Walter (39:46):
I still call it Twitter too.

Dr. Taylor Byas (39:48):
Can't stop me <laugh>. I think Twitter was definitely the big thing for a while. It's, and it's definitely changed now. You know, a lot of people jump ship for understandable reasons and so I think it just looks different these days. There are a lot of people who are still there, but it's just not what it used to be. I think a lot of people are on BlueSky now, which is really wonderful and I think this really growing in some really awesome ways. I think what's becoming, I think my most used social media platform at this point is probably Instagram. I think that has probably stayed the most consistent maybe over the past few years while Twitter has experienced a lot of like crazy changes. So I think Instagram is kind of emerging as maybe the most stable at the moment while BlueSky is still really new. So I think that's what things kind of look like maybe for everyone, but definitely for me.

Laura Maylene Walter (40:41):
Yeah, that sounds about right, what I've been thinking about too. So we know about RESTING BITCH FACE coming out in August, which is really exciting. So I assume right now you're still in that kind of pre-publication, like last minute detail push. Is there anything you can tell us about what you're working on next? Are you writing new poems right now? Are you more wrapped up in the publication stuff? Tell us as much as you would like about how your work is going now.

Dr. Taylor Byas (41:06):
There's nothing else to be done for RESTING BITCH FACE except for, you know, like getting blurbs and permissions and things like she's done. She's, she's here <laugh>. Ooh,

Laura Maylene Walter (41:16):
It's beautiful. <Laugh>.

Dr. Taylor Byas (41:17):
Yes, she's done, like the galleys are sort of out in the world. There's nothing else to kind of add to her. I am writing new poems, you know, what the third book is going to be has not yet formed, which is totally fine. There's plenty of time, RESTING BITCH FACE is not even out yet. But poems aren't even my main focus right now, which feels crazy to say. I'm actually kind of rushing, not rushing, but in a sort of mad dash to finish a craft book on poetic form because you know, I haven't shut up about form for the past few years, so I'm like, you know, I might as well just write this book so then I can maybe shut up about it or maybe just have an excuse to talk more about it, trying to finish this chapbook on form. And then I'm also working on a nonfiction essay project, which is really dragging me through the, the trenches emotionally, which, you know, all of our non-fiction writers out there know what I'm talking about. So yeah, I'm actually not mainly focused on poetry right now in the writing sense, which is very strange and it's just such a different writing process. And it's so uncomfortable <laugh>, but I'm pushing through the discomfort and getting it done somehow. So. Yeah.

Laura Maylene Walter (42:36):
Well, you clearly have a lot going on, a lot of different projects, a lot of exciting things that we can be on the lookout from you in the future. So I appreciate you taking the time today to talk with me in the middle of all your work. Would you like to close us out with another poem?

Dr. Taylor Byas (42:52):
Yeah, I'll actually go ahead and read the titular poem for RESTING BITCH FACE.

Laura Maylene Walter (43:00):
Oh yes, exciting.

Dr. Taylor Byas (43:01):
That's one of my favorites. And again, another excuse to say RESTING BITCH FACE <laugh>. Okay, so this poem has an epigraph from Alexis Pauline Gumbs' collection SPILL that reads, "how did you get here? What trumped-up troupe of slave-ship sloop put you here on my doorstep in your nastiness?”

Dr. Taylor Byas (43:25):
"Resting Bitch Face." Something about the set of my face says slave, cracks sharp in its stank and slits you uncomfortable. And what do you make of me again—in that gas station parking lot, in the grocery aisle and its fluorescence—when you tell me to smile for you? You too pretty to be frowning makes a fugitive of me, shutters me closed for your business. You even smooth-talk yourself into a lie, say smile and mean relax, / mean open, / mean peel back, / mean lights, camera, / action, put on a show for me. Last time I smiled for a man my teeth sparked white in the dark of his bedroom, police lights in a rearview mirror. What could I afford with that currency besides his violence? Smiling has never bought me tenderness, never tendered me a love that let my face be bitch, and ain’t that what you gon’ call me anyways? Whether I thaw out for you or not, don’t this always end the same—the bright you coax from my mouth snuffed out as soon as I show it to you?

Laura Maylene Walter (44:42):
Oh, thank you so much. That was amazing. And I can see what you're saying about the sophistication and kind of the feistiness, sort of fierceness of it. I'm so excited to read the entire collection and I know our listeners will be too. So thank you. Taylor, thank you so much for joining us on Page Count, and congratulations on all your success. We'll look forward to reading a lot more by you in the future.

Dr. Taylor Byas (45:07):
Thank you so much, and thank you for having me.

Laura Maylene Walter (45:14):
Page Count is presented by the Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and leave a review for Page Count wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more online or find the edited transcript for this episode at cpl.org/podcast/pagecount. Follow us on Instagram @ohiocenterforthebook or find us on Facebook. If you'd like to get in touch, email ohiocenterforthebook@cpl.org and put "podcast" in the subject line. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back in two weeks for another chapter of Page Count.