Contributor Spotlight: John Blair

John Blair’s poem “The Art of Forgetting” was the 2017 recipient of the 49th Parallel Award for Poetry and is part of Issue 76 of Bellingham Review. Subscribe or purchase a single issue through our Submittable page here.

What would you like to share with our readers about the work you contributed to the Bellingham Review?

“The Art of Forgetting” is part of a new collection of poems that I’m calling ZED. The poems in ZED are about the ends of things; the end of life, of course, as in this poem, but also dead-ends and roadblocks, borders and cusps, epiphanies and surrenders—the places where something becomes either something else or nothing at all.

Tell us about your writing life.

I’ve been writing poetry for about 30 years. The poems I write tend to begin and end in a place of faith, though the faith involved is a particularly fluid and changeful sort that borrows from both Eastern and Western traditions.

Which non-writing aspect(s) of your life most influences your writing?

I most often find inspiration in the philosophies and practices of Buddhism and Taoism, as well as in a lifelong fascination with scientific and historical arcana.

What writing advice has stayed with you?

My father was very fond of something Calvin Coolidge once said that I think is great advice for writers: “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

What is your favorite book (or essay, poem, short story)? Favorite writer(s)?

I always seem to come back to the great southern poet James Dickey, most especially the poems in the early collections Drowning with Others and Buckdancer’s Choice.

What are you reading right now?

Madness by Sam Sax and Kathleen Peirce’s new book Vault.

What project(s) are you working on now, or next?

A new collection tentatively titled SIX, which uses syllabically metered lines (each six syllables long, natch) to poetically play around with various mathematics and physics concepts.

Where can our readers connect with you online?

www.johnblairwriter.com & www.english.txstate.edu

JOHN BLAIR has published six books, including three poetry collections, Playful Song Called Beautiful (University of Iowa Press, 2016), The Occasions of Paradise (U. Tampa Press, 2012) and The Green Girls (Pleiades Press, 2003), as well as poems and stories in Poetry, The Georgia Review, The Sewanee Review, The Antioch Review, New Letters, and elsewhere.

Featured Image: “Prayer Candles” by Rachel Knickmeyer