{"id":18,"date":"2014-03-14T21:19:50","date_gmt":"2014-03-14T21:19:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stonetelling.com\/blog\/?p=18"},"modified":"2014-03-23T21:02:41","modified_gmt":"2014-03-23T21:02:41","slug":"st-body-interviews-sandi-leibowitz-talks-about-the-city-inside-her","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stonetelling.com\/blog\/?p=18","title":{"rendered":"ST Body interviews: Sandi Leibowitz, “The City Inside Her”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s interviewee is Sandi Leibowitz<\/a>, who contributed to the Body issue with “The City Inside Her<\/a>.” This is Sandi’s first appearance in the magazine.<\/p>\n

Sandi Leibowitz<\/b>\u00a0is a native New Yorker who haunts carousels, dusty antique shops and bridges.\u00a0She loves idyllic countryside\u00a0but is most at home in cities.\u00a0Her poems and stories appear in\u00a0Goblin Fruit,\u00a0Mythic Delirium,\u00a0Luna Station Quarterly,\u00a0Strange Horizons\u00a0and other magazines.\u00a0 One of her poems is included in Ellen Datlow’s\u00a0The Best Horror of the Year Volume 5.\u00a0She welcomes you to visit her online at\u00a0sandileibowitz.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

At first it was little things,
\npoppy seeds she rolled on her tongue
\nthat caught a while in her teeth,
\nthe scent rising from the morning bakeries…<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0from The City Inside Her<\/a><\/div>\n<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n

ST: What inspired this particular poem? What would you like readers to\u00a0know about your context, and how it relates to your poem?<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
SL:<\/strong> I was inspired to write the poem when the phrase \u201cthe city inside her\u201d floated into my head.\u00a0\u00a0What was it about?\u00a0\u00a0A woman who consumed a city.\u00a0\u00a0I didn\u2019t know what that meant so I decided to explore it.\u00a0\u00a0So many of my poems are dark, but this one is joyous.\u00a0\u00a0For a while I toyed with there being some ominous explanation for the devouring, or a negative outcome (as someone who struggles with my weight, I usually try to avoid overindulging), but a happier, even exultant, outcome seemed more right.<\/div>\n
\n

A while after I\u2019d finished and stepped back from the poem, I pondered what it was about, where it came from, and I think I know.\u00a0\u00a0About a year before I wrote it, I experienced something that led me to a truly dark place, where my very sense of identity (which has never before come into question) felt threatened.\u00a0\u00a0My image of my interior landscape then was of a razed city.\u00a0\u00a0A person sitting amongst the rubble of an obliterated Dresden.\u00a0\u00a0I walked around feeling this way for a number of weeks, the inner Dresden threatening to swallow me up.<\/p>\n

\"sandileibowitz-photo\"<\/a>While I was doing the very mundane task of grocery shopping, a song came on the Muzak\u2014wish I could really identify it now\u2014a pop song from the 70s, I think, that had a line in it that went something like \u201cI\u2019m a man of the city\u2026.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0I smiled.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI know who I am.\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m a New Yorker.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0That was the first brick of rebuilding my sense of self.\u00a0\u00a0The restoration of my emotional health came by building back my inner city by identifying the bricks of my self.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m a writer.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m a musician.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0It took\u00a0a few bricks and there she was: me.<\/p>\n

I think \u201cThe City Inside Her\u201d is at its heart an homage to the city that nourished me, and an exploration of consuming as metaphor for love of life.<\/p>\n

ST: Is the Body a central theme in your work? If so, what other works\u00a0of yours deal with it? If not, what called you to it this time?<\/strong><\/p>\n

SL:<\/strong> I don\u2019t think I write about the body any more than other themes.\u00a0\u00a0I do have a poem in\u00a0Strange Horizons<\/i>\u00a0called \u201cFat Women<\/a>,\u201d which is about people\u2019s attitudes towards overweight women.\u00a0\u00a0My writings often concern sexuality, and many of my myth-based poems use the body, especially in transformation images, to explore various aspects of the inner life.\u00a0“My story “Scylla in Blue Light<\/a>,” now up on Luna Station Quarterly, deals to a degree with the mind-body dichotomy.<\/p>\n

ST: Do you have any upcoming projects you might like to talk about?<\/strong><\/p>\n

SL:<\/strong> I have a story out in\u00a0<\/span>Metastasis<\/i>, an anthology of speculative fiction and poetry about cancer, edited by\u00a0<\/span>Niteblade<\/i>‘s Rhonda Parrish.\u00a0\u00a0Of course cancer is a body issue.\u00a0\u00a0When Rhonda put out the call, I didn\u2019t think it was a subject I could write about, even though, like everyone, I\u2019ve known many people whose lives have been touched or even terminated by cancer.<\/span><\/div>\n

But when my good friend Karen Spencer was undergoing her third chemotherapy treatment for leukemia and things were looking very grim, she said, \u201cMake me a dragon to kill the cancer.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0That encouraged me to try to write a story for the anthology.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cAlchemical Warfare\u201d s about a witch who attempts to cure her friend\u2019s cancer by way of a dragon.\u00a0\u00a0I encourage\u00a0Stone Telling<\/i>\u00a0readers to buy copies of\u00a0Metastasis<\/i><\/a>, since over 60% of proceeds are being donated to the American Cancer Society.<\/p>\n

ST: Thank you very much, Sandi!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s interviewee is Sandi Leibowitz, who contributed to the Body issue with “The City Inside Her.” This is Sandi’s first appearance in the magazine. Sandi Leibowitz\u00a0is a native New Yorker who haunts carousels, dusty antique shops and bridges.\u00a0She loves idyllic … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contributor-interviews","category-stone-telling-10"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stonetelling.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stonetelling.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stonetelling.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stonetelling.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stonetelling.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/stonetelling.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70,"href":"http:\/\/stonetelling.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/70"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stonetelling.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stonetelling.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stonetelling.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}