Elijah: Hello, this is Elijah and I am here with Charlotte Ungar, another member of the Long River Review.
Charlotte: Hi, I’m Charlotte. I’m really happy to be here.
Elijah: So, Charlotte’s serving as the Poetry Editor and Consulting Translations Editor for the magazine. She also managed to tie for first place this year for UConn’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize contest and managed to win the Connecticut Poetry Circuit contest, where she is one of five undergraduate students in the state that is touring her poetry around the state, which is really impressive. So congratulations.
Charlotte: Thank you, Elijah.
Elijah: So what’s your experience been reading for the poetry circuit and also just winning the Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize award?
Charlotte: So I would say first with the poetry circuit, I think that I’m becoming much more adjusted to my poetry is not something that I create for myself to read to myself or to read in a workshop, but something that people actually are associating with like me, reading to them. I have to be a speaker or, you know, maybe like what I what I was trying to convey in the poem might come out a little bit differently if I’m up in a crowd. I think it forces you to be confident in what you wrote, even if maybe you aren’t.
Elijah: Yeah, the performance aspect is so different, especially because in prose that’s not as much of a thing. But poetry is also spoken medium, like that’s kind of half of it.
Charlotte: Absolutely. I think that you’re totally right in that. I think there are certain poems that when you read it aloud, it’s a completely different experience or maybe you read it on the page and you think, wow, this is going to, you know, read so well aloud. So I’ve never really thought about that with my own work because I have such an internal experience. I spent hours, maybe, writing it and then I think maybe I’ll have to read it, maybe. So it’s definitely different and I think I think it does complement the experience of working for the Long River Review. Reading so many submissions because I don’t have to think about them being read aloud, but I still have to consider how they might be. So I think I’m using the experience with the circuit as being a better reader of other people’s poetry and my poetry. And just like applying that as a lens to when I was thinking about what would be, you know, the best fit for the Long River Review, even if even if they’re not going to be spoken, you know people are still going to read them, maybe aloud.
Elijah: Yeah, that’s really interesting to hear. I’m glad that that experience has helped you become a better editor for the Long River Review. Could you tell me a little bit about your writing process or how you find time to write as a busy college student?
Charlotte: That is a really great question. I think that that’s a question that whenever I talk about this with other people who also like to write, especially creatively, we seem to all have this similar habit of if you really enjoy creative writing and you try to do it yourself, you just like, lose all time when you do try to do it. I don’t know if that’s maybe just me, I don’t know if you relate, but when I try and sit down and write a poem, I feel like an hour will go by and it’ll be one line. Or in comparison, maybe I didn’t even think I was going to write a poem and I just had this idea in my mind that I was trying to get down on a page. And maybe it takes an hour and I write a full poem in an hour. But, you know, and other times it might take way longer than that. And I think I do still struggle with that, feeling like I need to prioritize the poem, because I’m so loyal to what it can be and what it’s not at the moment, maybe. I feel very aware of its potential, I think, or I try to be.
In terms of my routine with school, I think that after I come back from a writing workshop, I like to think about what happened in the writing workshop and try and write down ideas when I’m inspired as soon as possible. I try and write down things in my notes app or even just sort of put down good lines on the page, create multiple documents. Because I think having everything on one document is probably a disservice to yourself, because you’re like, limiting how a line can turn into two poems, you know. So I really try and do that. I’ll have like 3 tabs open for Google Docs. I’ll just keep trying to put things down and then take the other things that maybe I wrote down in my notes app and see how I can sort of, put it in in certain points. Sort of like collaging if you have physical paper and try and think how I can do that digitally. But I think especially realizing what time might work for you. So I’m definitely a night writer. I think for sure, I’m just a night person in general. I’ve heard of people who will wake up early and they’ll have an hour of free time in the morning before they have things to do and they like to write then.
Elijah: Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me, especially as someone who’s also tends to stay up later than waking up early to carve out time. Charlotte also has a poem prepared that she submitted that helped her win the Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. Would you care to introduce it and read it for us?
Charlotte: Yeah, absolutely. So, this sort of goes back to our little discussion about routines with writing. This was a piece that I wrote really quickly compared to other things. I think it took me an hour, which for poetry for me is kind of unheard of. I feel like I tend to just work on things for so long. But this was something that was inspired by some time in, mainly with my mother, in in Italy. We were visiting my great grandparents home. And walking around in the area, I just, I felt this like, sense of normalcy that I just wasn’t used to in the surrounding environment. You had these really old, beautiful churches that you know, they weren’t tourist destinations. It was just, you know, it was just the town over. Or, you know, there were empty, empty places, empty pews. And I just started thinking about the empty spaces there. And I started thinking about how so much of the artwork in the churches were like, still beautiful, but they were fading. And I didn’t really know how to describe that change that I was observing. So I tried to sit down and write and write this poem about it. This poem is called “Collision.”
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“Collision”
Women are chipped off the walls here.
Only the stone itself did it.
Etched Mary’s gold hair into a daffodil.
Do you think the children know?
Little moon faces playing tag
under the passion of Christ.
I must confess,
I sat in the pews all afternoon
and did not pray.
Watched your back curl beside me.
Took note of the outreach brochures
tossed beneath my feet.
I must confess again,
I don’t think I’ve ever prayed,
though I enjoy the suffering
of a fair woman cloaked in blue.
When you begged me to stay living,
I turned to the alphabet.
But there is no word for a face
formed from every face it meets.
Instead, I swear,
I saw two sleepless statues
try to hold each other’s faces.
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Charlotte: So this poem was the most recent of the poems that I submitted for Wallace Stevens, and it was just a prose poem that I sort of worked around into something that had a form. And I think for me it was important to leave something that I spent so little time on and feel like it was worthwhile enough.
Elijah: Yeah. Do you often revise your poems, like extensively? Always trying to make them better, even when they might be good enough?
Charlotte: I am, like, an obsessive revisor, I feel like you would understand.
Elijah: Definitely.
Charlotte: I think that there is so much opportunity in revisions and in editing. I love editing other people’s work. My favorite thing to do is when someone brings in a poem to a workshop and you can just see the little rearrangements that might generate a new meaning. And even if they don’t want to keep that, and even if they don’t want to, you know, do that, they still are aware of it. And I think it’s really cool to give people options for what you can do. And then you use your artistic judgment to, like, look at your different options. So I think I definitely do do that to myself. However, I think I struggle to sort of be the editor that I need. I think that it’s a lot easier to overedit. I think it’s easier to look at other people’s work.
Elijah: Yeah, I definitely agree there. Especially for an hour, I think it’s a very impressive poem. It’s such a, almost dream-like sequence, I think, with how the thoughts connect. And then the imagery feels really solemn, especially like the first few lines. Like, there’s such a, maybe severity is a better word, but it’s such an interesting read, especially hearing you read it instead of me just reading it, you know, in my head, or even out loud the way I would imagine it. But it’s so different when the actual creator then gives their own voice to it.
Charlotte: I think so too. I think that the first time I read this aloud was on the Connecticut Poetry Circuit. It was our first stop, and it was at Trinity College. So that was really weird for me because this wasn’t something I brought into a workshop. This was something I wrote a few nights before I think a final portfolio was due. I was just feeling a little bit unhappy with the work I had done in the semester, and I was like, “Let’s see if I can do something new.” And I think in those moments the best stuff can happen, or maybe not the best, but you know, stuff that you weren’t used to. I think there are things in the poem that I like more than others. But I also think that that’s okay.
Elijah: Yeah, definitely. As you said, best to leave it as is sometimes, especially as a creative person where you always can think you can do better and sometimes you don’t have to.
Charlotte: There is one thing that I think I will add about the poem. So, I didn’t workshop it exactly, but I changed the ending. So with the sleepless statues thing, that wasn’t near the end. I rearranged it and I put it near the end and there’s that, like repetition of the faces. Which I think for me was like the biggest part of the poem, and I didn’t like realize how it might change by putting it at the end again or like bringing it up again. But I think I feel pretty happy I did.
Elijah: Yeah, I think it’s such an interesting image to end on. And I guess one more thing, I think “Collision” is such an almost, I don’t know if abrasive is the right word. It’s a powerful noun as a title, when the piece doesn’t feel as, aggressive, maybe. So could you just expand on how you titled it that way?
Charlotte: Yeah, totally. I think something I was thinking about was different, actually, you said it perfectly, like an abrasiveness. But a sort of quiet abrasiveness. When I think, of if you’ve ever heard of people talk about geologic time, you know, like humans are living in. You know the world on geologic time is like, so intense, it’s just like violent. Thinking about like the planet in Earth time, it’s like violent. And geologists will tell you human time is like the most peaceful. You’re experiencing things so slowly in comparison to the planet. And I don’t know, there’s like a way that you can apply that, I think to everyday life. Like I’m thinking about the building of the church and the statues and whatnot and being in my time, everything is so slow. And I take that for granted, almost. But it still is a sort of collision, it’s like a collision between you and like your environment. I think that I was also thinking about a sense of intimacy that we may not notice from things that we deem as forgotten or of the past. So I think that there’s like, this kind of resurfacing sense of like, connectivity that I think I was trying to emulate. And I think I was thinking about things that people just pass by and they might deem as being like an object, like a statue. But it, you know, it’s still resembling a person in some way, and hundreds of years after it’s still made, there’s still a collision going on.
Elijah: That’s really cool. I feel like that just added so many layers to all the lines that I did not see when I read it or when you read it before. So that’s really cool to hear. I think that’s all I have, but is there any upcoming readings you’re doing or places we might be able to see your work featured that you’d like listeners to know about?
Charlotte: Yeah, sure. I wish I could say that there were more places to like, look things up of mine. I have one reading coming up. This last reading on the Connecticut Poetry Circuit. I believe it is April 23rd. And that will be at Yale at the Robert Frost room, I believe. Those details will probably be posted on the Yale website, I think, but that’ll be the last tour.
Elijah: Exciting, I hope those go well. Thank you, Charlotte, for talking to me a bit about your poetry.
Charlotte: Thank you so much, Elijah. You had great questions; I really appreciated it.
Kiara: Hello everyone. Today I’m here with Jenna Ulizio, winner of the Edward R. and Frances Schreiber Collins Literary Prize. Jenna, can you introduce yourself?
Jenna: Yes, I’m really happy to be here. As you said, my name is Jenna Ulizio. I’m a junior here at UConn and I’m studying English and history and I’m doing a minor in digital public history and I’m from Durham Connecticut.
Kiara: Awesome. That’s a cool assortment of interests. And can I ask what is your writing background? I know you’re an English major, but have you done writing before that?
Jenna: Yes, I’ve been writing creatively since maybe the 6th grade, and it’s always just been something I’ve really enjoyed doing. I started off with poetry because it was shorter, so I was able to do like my daily writing assignments really quickly. But I started getting more and more story ideas and it’s just something I’ve been doing for a while now.
Kiara: That’s awesome. I would say I’m pretty similar. I also started getting into writing pretty early, like 6th grade middle school stuff, and really got into poetry and expanded from there. So what was your process like writing “Eleven Things You Don’t Do”, and maybe what inspired you?
Jenna: Yeah. So, I actually wrote this for a creative writing class here at UConn. It was with Professor Forbes and the prompt, one of the prompts that he gave us was “title a story eleven things you don’t,” and then it was left blank. So, I actually went back to the title last, that was one of the hardest things for me to figure out, but what I did is I had this idea for a while for a story, and I just had this like character living in my head. So, I thought using the short story would be a good excuse to kind of get more into the mind of that character and just figure out what makes her tick. So, I wrote a list of things that she reminds herself while she’s going about like the actions of the story. So I was trying to come up with different things that she would constantly be reminding herself each time she does this type of work, and ultimately I came back to the title at the end once I had the list in mind and it was all things that she wouldn’t do.
Kiara: Interesting, cause I was going to ask you about the format of the story, but understanding that it’s a prompt makes a lot of sense. And I feel like that’s kind of a tricky prompt, so kudos to you for navigating that. And could you give us a summary/explanation of your story?
Jenna: Sure. So, I like to tell people because I told a lot of family members like, oh, this is such exciting news that I had, and of course, they asked me what it was about. So, I always like to tell them that the story is about someone who does not really like their job but has to do their job anyway. And it’s following her as she goes about doing her job and the way she kind of rationalizes it to herself, why she’s doing this.
Kiara: Great explanation, I love that. And now Jenna is going to read us the first two paragraphs of this story to give you guys a feel of what it is.
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“Eleven Things You Don’t Do”
When you leave, don’t make a sound. Getting out of the Painted Lady is the test. How do you want to be seen in the city tonight? Or, how do you not want to be seen?
Slipping out into the rush of the parlor, I blend into the crowd. Going unseen is impossible. Everyone in this city wants to look at everything. The trick is to exist at their periphery, noticed just at the leaving. The nights when I get stopped by a stranger stumbling from the bar or with a hand curling too tightly around my wrist are the nights that turn my stomach.
The other girls around the room never make eye contact with me. The few that know what I’m doing don’t like it. The others just don’t like me. I wade through clouds of perfume and smoke as if I belong, and then leave out the front door before anyone thinks to stop me.
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Kiara: Thank you. And now, this piece won for fiction, and I wonder what genre you feel most connected to and why?
Jenna: With fiction, I always like a little bit of the strange and unusual, so I’m always drawn to some sort of fantasy or speculative element. We all live in the real world, and I like to imagine there’s more going on than what we see. Or I just like to imagine something different, because sometimes real life gets a little boring. So I like to make a different world for myself.
Kiara: Amen to that. Now I read your story, even though I’m a panelist for creative nonfiction, so unfortunately this wasn’t in my range. But I did have access to it. So some notes as a reader and panelist is I was really impressed how this story unfurled itself to the reader, and that sort of seamless transitions from the present moment to past reminiscing was done so well. And it was a really mysterious piece. As a reader, I had to piece together bits of information to figure out who this person is and why we’re following them. And I’m just a sucker for the theme of a crazy, passionate artist, and the hypothetical lengths that people will go to. And this story has a clear sort of climax, but at least for me, I think the climax was really assisted by the self-reflection and inside voice of the character afterwards that was quite scary and thrilling. And overall, you did an amazing job, obviously, and I’m really excited for people to get the chance to read it. And afterwards I had some questions. How long was your writing and editing process when you took this class?
Jenna: Yeah. Well, first, thank you so much for all of those kind words, I really appreciate that. But for writing this, that’s actually a really great question. I don’t remember. I know it was a few days, I know I took a few days at least to figure out the outline, and I started with the list of 11 things, and from there I was kind of able to figure out what plot beats would go along with them. And I think I took maybe a few days to first draft it out and then I sat with it for a lot longer. And because it was for a class, I maybe had about a month from when I wrote it for the first deadline, and then at the end of the semester I had to turn it in again. So, about a month.
Kiara: Cool. And what was your reaction to winning the Collins Literary Prize?
Jenna: Maybe I should not say this on air, but I was at work and I had submitted a lot of different creative writing pieces to different submission spots right before winter break and I had also sent a lot of internship applications at that same time. So I was sitting at work and just in my head, I was like, “I should check my e-mail, there’s something in my e-mail I have to check right now,” and I had kind of forgotten about this one in the rush of other deadlines, so this was not the e-mail I was expecting at all. And I read it, I stared at it, I turned my phone off, tried to do my work again, and it wasn’t happening. So I had to, like, read the e-mail again to make sure it was real. And I was just so excited. I work in the library basement so they can’t hear you scream down there. I did not scream, that was a joke. But I was just super thrilled, and I was like, I need to tell everyone that this just happened.
Kiara: That’s amazing, I love that. And lastly, to wrap this up, where do you see riding going for you and career wise?
Jenna: Yes, I’m hoping to write more and publish more. It’s a dream of mine to publish a novel someday. I’m a junior, so right now I’m eyeing my Honors senior thesis and I’m planning on writing like a queer, dark academia-ish, horror-ish novel for that, so I’m just hoping to keep writing more poetry, writing more short stories, and branching out and doing a bunch of different things.
Kiara: Thank you, Jenna, for coming on and congratulations on your writing award and good luck to you on your future endeavors.
Jenna: Thank you so much and thank you for having me.
Elijah: Thank you guys for listening to this episode of Long River Rewind. We’d like to give a special shout out to UConn’s radio station, WHUS Storrs, for letting us use their studio and equipment.
Kiara: You can listen to all our episodes on the Long River Rewind website, the WHUS website, Spotify, and other streaming services. Stay tuned for our next episode, interviewing the winner of the Aetna Prize for Translations. Bye.