Contributor Confab: Han VanderHart
"How you look at someone or something when you are in love with them is the truest way of looking."
The poems that Han VanderHart shared with us for the premiere issue of slips slips - “Writers in Love” and the impeccably titled “‘It Is Better to Say “I Am Suffering” Than “This Landscape Is Ugly”’–Simone Weil” - are like freshly picked wild blueberries: small packages that harbor rich bursts of flavorful sensation. Their latest collection, Larks, was published by Ohio University Press earlier this year.
ss: Is there any special background/context to your slips slips contribution “Writers in Love” that you'd like to share?
HV: How you look at someone or something when you are in love with them is the truest way of looking - like the poets Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon, looking at each other's hair.
ss: Name three writers or artists, and tell us why you named them.
HV: Audre Lorde, Diane di Prima, and N. K. Jemisin - these two poets and novelist powerfully write into how communities live and survive seasons of disaster (and revolution) together.
ss: If you could unilaterally add one amendment to the U.S. Constitution, what would it be?
HV: Well, this is easy - no life terms for Supreme Court justices.
ss: What's the book everyone seeing this should read if they haven't already?
HV: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (and The Serviceberry by Kimmerer, after!)
ss: What geography has had the biggest impact on your life and work?
HV: The scrub-cedar, U.S. South.
See more of Han’s work at HanVanderhart.com
Learn more about slips slips (including how to get a copy) at slipsslips.net
Stay tuned for slips slips #2: Dialogues, coming in December!