I’ve Got Questions for Terri McCord

Editor’s Note: This exchange is part of a series of brief interviews with emerging writers of recent or forthcoming books. If you enjoyed it, please visit other interviews in the I’ve Got Questions feature.

The Beauts by Terri McCord
  • What’s the title of your book? Fiction? Nonfiction? Poetry? Who is the publisher and what’s the publication date?

The Beauts; poetry – Finishing Line Press, 12/2020

  • In a couple of sentences, what’s the book about?

Much of the poetry is imagistic, several poems are ekphrastic, and some poems center on animals and science. The common bond is the act of seeing, trying to truly see.

  • What’s the book’s genre (for fiction and nonfiction) or primary style (for poetry)? 

Again, very metaphorical or imagistic, frequently employing the natural world, and looking to describe in unusual ways.

  • What’s the nicest thing anyone has said about the book so far?

That the poems have remarkable imagery, visual imagination.

  • What book or books is yours comparable to or a cross between? [Is your book like Moby Dick or maybe it’s more like Frankenstein meets Peter Pan?]

Louise Glück, Jorie Graham perhaps in a small way. I like to think of the poems as interludes wandering through museums, an artist studio, a planetarium, a church, natural settings and taking note of what makes up those scenes. Imagining the under-stories, historical, scientific, inter-disciplinary.

  • Why this book? Why now?

This book should have come out two years ago, but I delayed it until it really felt like it had a will of its own and was insistent. I had lived with this particular grouping of poems for a while, and the title The Beauts finally came to me because the book really is about not only beauty in terms of objects or scenery, but also the patterns and story. Each poem had inspired me to write it, and I thought they should be shared and offered as a grouping.

  • Other than writing this book, what’s the best job you’ve ever had?

Anytime I have actually genuinely connected with or understood another human being. Communication. Perhaps teaching. Demonstrating. Writing. Knowing that other person is going “yes, I see.”

  • What do you want readers to take away from the book?

Beauty. In the everyday, in a hidden corner. To take joy in language and the lovely way the imagination can work.

  • What food and/or music do you associate with the book?

Pudding and light jazz.

  • What book(s) are you reading currently?

How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency by Akiko Busch

Terri McCord

Learn more about Terri on her Poets & Writers page.

Follow her on Facebook.

Buy the book from Finishing Line Press or Amazon.com

About the author

I am the author of three novels--THE LAST BIRD OF PARADISE, OLIVER'S TRAVELS, and THE SHAMAN OF TURTLE VALLEY--and three story collections--IN AN UNCHARTED COUNTRY, HOUSE OF THE ANCIENTS AND OTHER STORIES, and WHAT THE ZHANG BOYS KNOW, winner of the Library of Virginia Literary Award for Fiction. I am also the co-founder and former editor of Prime Number Magazine and the editor of the award-winning anthology series EVERYWHERE STORIES: SHORT FICTION FROM A SMALL PLANET.

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