Mira Gonzalez: Poet

Mira Gonzalez

Mira Gonzalez [b. 1992] is from Los Angeles, California. She is the author of i will never be beautiful enough to make us beautiful together (Sorry House, 2013) and is widely published in print and online. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

RUSTY TALK WITH MIRA GONZALEZ

Sara Jane Strickland: What is your first memory of writing creatively?
Mira Gonzalez: when i was i think, 10 (?) i wrote a ~15 page story about aliens invading the world and like one girl stops them or something. i remember the girl had a boyfriend in the story, i remember at one point she cooks hot dogs. thats all i remember about it

SJS: What influences your writing the most?
MG: i think anything i enjoy reading will influence my writing, to some degree. some things more than others. 'big' life events, like relationships etc. also make me feel more inclined to write

SJS: What is your writing process like? (Do you write every day? Where? When? Etc.)
MG: i used to try to write every day but i work like 47 hours per week now so its difficult for me to find time. i would like to work less and write more. i would say my 'process' is like 10% writing and 90% editing. every time i write a poem i probably write 2-3 pages worth of stuff then spend a lot of time editing it down into something that, i feel, expresses what i want to express, and is something i would want to read

SJS: Your book, i will never be beautiful enough to make us beautiful together, sifts through many ideas that have to do with the sensation of touching, which seem to serve more as a source of isolation than for connection. A lot of the poems seem to overlap and connect. How did you approach the structure of the book? Did you intend for it to have a narrative?
MG: all the poems in the book are about events in my life, so i guess in that sense it has some sort of narrative maybe, if you would agree that 'life' in general has a narrative, which i dont think it does. all the poems were written during very different points in my life and sometimes there is a huge span of time between the poems where i wasn't writing at all, or didnt include poems from a big chunk of my life. spencer and willis and i spent a long time choosing the arrangement of poems in the book, but it wasnt so that we could create a narrative exactly ... it was more for aesthetic purposes or something

SJS: The book deals with a variety of gut-wrenching subjects, such as loneliness, drug-use and unfulfilling relationships. At the same time the tone is objective and unattached. What made you decide to write about these subjects in this way?
MG: i think i just wrote about how i felt when [whatever thing] was happening to me. there will always be some distance between the event and the reader i suppose, because its happening to me and not them, so i try to write about things in a way that is more easily understood by more people, which might make it sound 'objective' or 'unattached', i think. that seems good/fine to me

SJS: How do you approach revision?
MG: if i reread something i wrote and i don't feel satisfied with it i revise it. i revise things constantly

SJS: You are very active on Twitter and your tweets are often funny and quirky, but also insightful and compelling. How would you say that social media websites such as Twitter have influenced contemporary poetry?
MG: i think i have no idea how to answer this question. i dont know. i view twitter as another platform to express things through writing. the same way you would express something different with a story than with a poem etc. i cant speak for anyone but myself though

SJS: How long did it take you to write i will never be beautiful enough to make us beautiful together?
MG: i think the oldest poem i wrote in the book was like, 3-4 years ago, but most of the poems werent written with the intention of creating a manuscript. i cant remember how long it took from the beginning of compiling the manuscript to publishing it. maybe a little less than a year

 SJS: Are you working on anything right now?
MG: yes. i plan to write another book but its still really really in its beginning phases so please nobody hold me accountable

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MIRA GONZALEZ'S MOST RECENT BOOK
i will never be beautiful enough to make us beautiful together, Sorry House, 2013

Description from publisher:
Mira Gonzalez is a phenomenon of the same breed as Tao Lin: she might actually be the only literary social media presence more prolific and more intense–flitting between her two Twitter accounts, @miragonz and @miraunedited, is a kind of poetry in and of its self and fairly representative of her first collection. Either brutally honest to the point of appearing unhinged or wildly fantastic, but totally engrossing regardless.

Read an excerpt from her book here. 

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