Poetic Justice: Interviewing Trista Mateer

I don’t know about you, but I am so happy it’s the weekend. I’m off of work and I have the next lovely interview here for Poetic Justice featuring Trista Mateer. I began reading The Dogs I Have Kissed and really enjoyed what I have read of it.I won an ARC of Honeybee whichI can’t wait to jump into!

Poetic Justice is a month long event, beginning April 1st to April 30th in honor of National Poetry Month. Throughout April there will be interviews, guest posts, excerpts and other poetic posts. I hope you will follow along. To read the introductory post, read about my poetic background as well as the schedule for the month, you can find out more here.

What do you think about this sudden height that poetry has become as far as social media and publishing?
Poetry has always been around. When it wasn’t wildly popular with publishing, it was still being performed at slams and spoken word events and open mics. Sometimes the platform just shifts. People are always interested. What social media has done is just allow poetry to be more accessible.

What advice would you give to someone trying to build up their platform on social media?
Don’t cross post. Every platform has different aesthetics and topics and stuff that does best there. What gets notes on tumblr won’t get the same attention on Instagram or on Twitter. Understand what your audience on each platform enjoys and post accordingly. Also you have to dedicate a lot of time to it. You have to be around posting things and interacting with people in the community. Social media only words if you do something long enough and loud enough for people to start paying attention.

Do you have any advice for someone struggling to write poetry?
Let go. People have so many expectations about what poetry should be about or what it should look like or who should be writing it. None of those things matter. It’s just you and the page. There’s no right or wrong way to put the words down.

Some writers have to write with complete silence, others with music, some need a special beverage or go to their favorite spot to write. What is your writing process like?
I have to be alone and it has to be totally silent. I can’t even have a fan on. I just need to be able to sit somewhere and say the words out loud to myself until I’m sure they sound good on paper.

What has been your proudest writing related moment yet?
I know it seems like such a small thing but winning the Goodreads Choice Award in 2015 for my book The Dogs I Have Kissed is still something that doesn’t totally feel real. I never expected it to happen and it’s opened up so many doors for me.

Is there a writing topic that you will not write about?
Aside from like, not telling other people’s stories, nothing is really off limit for me yet. I’m sure there will be things I’ll choose not to write about. I just haven’t run into them yet.

What poets would you recommend? (Feel free to leave social media links or books)
Andrea Gibson, Pansy
Natalie Wee, Our Bodies and Other Fine Machines
Richard Siken, Crush
Lora Mathis, Instinct to Ruin
Salma Deera, Letters From Medea
Yena Sharma Purmasir, When I’m Not There

and so, so many others. New amazing poets are popping up every day. It’s hard to keep up with all of them.

You have suddenly lost all writing you have ever done, what do you do now?
Write something new. I already write so much that I don’t always recognize my own work when I see it. Even without losing what I’ve previously written, it’s still always the same answer. Write something new. Keep moving forward. Keep digging deeper.

Trista Mateer is a poet from outside of Baltimore, who could be living anywhere by the time you read this. She moves too much to remember to update her bios!

Mateer is known for her eponymous blog, started in 2013, which primarily chronicles her romantic endeavors in the form of free-verse poetry. This has seen her branded as an “aggressively personal poet,” but her confessional style has also made her writing relatable to thousands of readers worldwide.

In 2014 she won the Where Are You Poet manuscript contest hosted annually by Clementine von Radics’ Where Are You Press. In 2015 she won the Goodreads Choice Award for poetry with her self-published edition of The Dogs I Have Kissed.

She is currently working as a freelance editor but still manages to spend most of her time Googling cheap air fare and writing poetry about things that don’t matter anymore. ( Via Website)

Website / Twitter / Tumblr / Facebook / Instagram / Goodreads

Having been previously described as an “aggressively personal poet”, Trista Mateer takes this to heart and then to paper in her first collection. Presented more or less in the order it was written, the poetry in Honeybee is in turns bitter, tender, and messy. Following the course of a little more than a year, the poems showcased in Honeybee chronicle the on-again off-again process of letting go. – Goodreads

Thank you Trista for answering my questions! I hope you have all enjoyed this interview. Please give Trista some love in the comment section below! You can also enter the giveaway to win a poetry book of your choice, including one of Trista’s.