An Interview with Karyna McGlynn

Bronwen West

Poet Karyna McGlynn grew up in Austin, Texas, and earned an MFA at the University of Michigan and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. McGlynn is the author of three books of poetry: 50 Things Kate Bush Taught Me About the Multiverse (Sarabande, 2022); Hothouse (Sarabande, 2017); and I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl (Sarabande, 2009), which won the Kathryn A. Morton Prize. She is also the author of three chapbooks: The 9-Day Queen Gets Lost on Her Way to the Execution (2016), Alabama Steve (2014), and Scorpionica (2007). Her work has been featured in the anthology Best American Nonrequired Reading (2010).

McGlynn uses psychological ephemera, pop culture, and improvisational plots to investigate danger and human longing. “Part film noir, part horror flick, these innovative poems dwell in the cul-de-sac badlands where crimes and heinous misdeeds are recurring,” noted Karla Huston in Library Journal. “McGlynn. . .offers poems in alternating views while tangling reality, time, and space.” In an interview for SHARKFORUM, McGlynn noted the importance of temporality to her work: “The past is always present in my writing. . .We are not purely products of our own time—we are a decoupage of memories, both individual and shared.”

A member of five former National Poetry Slam teams, McGlynn has served as the organizer of the Houston Indie Book Fest and as managing editor of Gulf Coast. McGlynn is the Director of Creative Writing at Interlochen Center for the Arts.

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This is a book of tragicomic gurlesque word-witchery inspired by the Kate Bush cosmos. Campily glamorous, darkly funny, obsessively ekphrastic, boozily baroque, psychedelically girly & musically ecstatic, 50 Things Kate Bush Taught Me About the Multiverse dazzles as Karyna McGlynn’s third collection.

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Purchase 50 Things Kate Bush Taught Me About the Multiverse here.

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Bronwen West: 50 Things Kate Bush Taught Me About the Multiverse, your latest collection which has received critical acclaim, seems like a love letter to Kate Bush. Could you share some insights into the themes and inspiration behind your work and why Kate Bush is an interesting figure to you?

Karyna McGlynn: I've been a Kate Bush fan for many years and, until recently, felt very alone in that obsession here in the States. She's more of a household name across the pond. The way that the book ended up working out with the timeline of the Kate Bush resurgence was just wild to me and it tickles me to no end. It just felt like such a perfect treat. I started listening to a ton of Bush around the time of the 2016 election. That was such a dark time. I didn't know how to process all of the blatant bigotry, misinformation, meanness, crudeness, misogyny, and racism. The extremity of all of it made me have to flee to a place that was the opposite of that: Bush's world of music. My collection explores themes of girlhood, the occult, and gender performativity, and includes references to different pop culture genres as wide as theater or stand-up comedy.

I didn't know how to process all of the blatant bigotry, misinformation, meanness, crudeness, misogyny, and racism. The extremity of all of it made me have to flee to a place that was the opposite of that: Bush's world of music. My collection explores themes of girlhood, the occult, and gender performativity, and includes references to different pop culture genres as wide as theater or stand-up comedy.

I’m trying to channel Bush’s thundering darkness and depth under the playful surfaces of my poems. I love that she countraseasons her art so well. Her songs can have moments of silliness while still managing to be profound. Those dualities come together to have a nuanced effect. The collection tends to be a little angrier than I wanted it to be. I was trying to use Bush's inspiration to alchemically transform some of that collective trauma through my quirky artistic lens.

BW: It sounds like Bush was not only inspirational for this collection but the alchemy that you’ve noted illuminated something larger. Would you say that this is true in any way?

KM: One goal I have moving forward is to be a little more affable on the page. Affability is something I struggle with—I do care about the reader/writer relationship very much. Poetry is one of the most intimate and personal art forms. When you read a poem that speaks to you—that makes your hair stand on end—it's as if a new best friend is whispering their biggest secret in your ear in this delightful way that seldom happens in adult life. 

BW: The poem “The Girls I Grew Up with Were Hard” reads like a page from your diary, but it still describes a universal experience of trying to make friends. How do you navigate the vulnerability and authenticity while maintaining a level of privacy or distance? 

KM: I'm not sure I have a level of privacy or distance from my work since it is highly charged with the autobiographical. I also write nonfiction which is much scarier because you don't have the plausible deniability of the poem’s speaker acting as a guise. In poetry, people have been trained that they have to, even in a poem that seems confessional, say the speaker of the poem. And so that's my guise. That’s the distance right there.

BW: How do you achieve universality while avoiding cliché?

KM: Universality lies in the specific. You zoom in on some specific, little detail: somebody laughing with a blue retainer. The line goes, “When they laughed hard, you could sometimes see the whole firmament of sparkly blue plastic.” This is something I learned from cinema. It focuses the reader's eye and brings them deeper into the poem. And somehow deeper into the poet’s interiority. It's the opposite of what you think. By zooming in on some specific detail, the reader is brought into the writer's or the speaker's headspace. 

By zooming in on some specific detail, the reader is brought into the writer's or the speaker's headspace. 

BW: Can you talk a little bit about your poetic lineage? I feel like there might be some connection to Frank O’Hara in your work in terms of exuberance. Are there any other poets who you might think of as a poetic relative? 

KM: Yes, I would say that Frank O'Hara is one of them but also Sylvia Plath, Sharon Olds, Diane Seuss, and so many others who embody the same sort of exuberance, attention to detail, and balance between humor and drama. I love that Frank O’Hara’s poetry deals with all of the arts. He's also an art critic. While I'm not an art critic, I consider myself a visual artist: I act, dance, and perform my poetry. I’m also interested in photography. We share an excitability and a talkativeness that can make the reader feel right at home. There's no setup. It's in media res. You're just suddenly doing something with Frank O'Hara, and I love that! I'm a big believer in fun, and I want my audience to be having fun, no matter what I'm writing about. 

BW: Yes, your poems possess that same diving right-in feeling. Can you discuss how you choose an apt title?

KM: I'm obsessive about titles. If you don't know what your poem is called, you don't know what you're doing yet. The title is the first line of the poem. It helps the reader decide whether or not to engage with you; it intrigues and pulls them in. One of my professors once said, “Listen, your only job as a writer is just one thing.” He drew a big rectangle on the board and continued, “Okay, your only job is to get the reader from the top left-hand corner to the bottom right-hand corner. If you do that, you succeed. Now, do it again on the next page.” So whenever you read, consider what are the little things that keep the reader moving forward. Use every strategy at your disposal. 

The title is the first line of the poem. It helps the reader decide whether or not to engage with you; it intrigues and pulls them in.

George Saunders has an amazing essay about Donald Barthelme and about rising action called “Rise, Baby, Rise!” In it, Saunders discusses different literary moves as akin to metaphorical gas stations on a little toy car track. When the car runs over it, its spring mechanism shoots the car forward to make it keep going. He employs this childhood toy to discuss how good writing is full of these little gas stations that kind of refuel and re-energize the reader and keep them moving forward.

BW: In “If You Ask Peter Gabriel to Astral Project,” what is the connection between the poem and their song?

KM: That last line is based on the Peter Gabriel refrain from “Sledgehammer.” I was inspired by the lyric, “If you show for me, I will show for you.” I feel that “Don't Give Up” is doing a similar sort of thing. Kate and Peter are both showing for each other in that video, they're just holding each other, and we can experience the vulnerability and bravery that it takes to do that for that long. It's a statement against hate and for love. The Peter Gabriel poem is ultimately about getting past the bullshit and truly connecting with other humans on a profound and primal level. But I'm also naughty, and there's a little bit of the you-show-me-yours-and-I’ll-show-you-mine kind of thing going on with that ending as well. Overall, it's about permitting people to shine their weirdness and their true, true self. 

BW: Lastly, what are your upcoming projects?

KM: The working title is Epic Dance Scenes. It's a memoir of essays that all revolve around a type of dance, sometimes a specific dance scene I’ve participated in drill team, ballet, goth clubs, rave culture, tango, and swing dance. There's a whole bunch of dances that I've experienced across the course of my life.

You have to enjoy what you're doing because otherwise, you're not going to do it. It's not like anybody's waiting around for you to publish your weird poetry and memoirs about dance. In terms of the style, I still think it's very distinctly me; it's very pop cultural, voice-y, humorous, and there’s a lot of rich sensory detail and characterization. I can tell my life story through dance. If you're going to write nonfiction, there's a little more research involved than there is in poetry, and I wanted to make sure that it's something that I enjoy, something just for fun.

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BRONWEN WEST is a veteran educator with eighteen years of experience teaching middle school and high school English and Creative Writing. With a background in English Literature from the University of Central Florida, she worked in Orlando before relocating to Tallahassee. Currently pursuing a master's degree in English Education at Florida State University, her love for words, books, and authors like Poe and Shakespeare drives her mission to inspire students while actively shaping the field of English education.

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