Wallace Ludel will be reading at Difficult to Name on Saturday, November 11
You create great art in addition to writing great poetry (which is also art). You've also started teaching. How do you like it so far?
Hey, thanks. Teaching has been great. I’m teaching Creative Writing at NYU and yes, it’s my first-time teaching. I’m slowly molding my students into little empathy machines which has been a lot of work and has also been really lovely. The best advice I got going into it was from the inimitable Alex Jovanovich who said something to me like (sorry, Alex, if I butcher this,) ‘Show them what you love and tell them why you love it.’
What have you worked on in 2017 that you're most proud of?
I’ve got a few bigger poems that are sweeping and cover a lot of ground that I’m excited about and chipping away at – but I’ve also been writing these little popcorn poems (not to say they don’t have substance;) they’re mostly in prose blocks and they’re shorter than my usual work and I like having them to return to. I can trick myself into thinking the stakes are lower and take some pressure off of myself, even though the stakes are always low. Or maybe the stakes are always high. Either way, it’s just a different point of entrance. I’m proud to be mixing it up and developing a range.
What can people expect from your reading?
I think I will use you all as my sweet sweet guinea pigs and read some stuff I haven’t shown anyone yet.