Research and the Writing Life

I have a new essay about writers and spies (and poems and WWII code encryption/decryption) out at Socrates on the Beach. Preparing it for publication was an opportunity to reflect on the role that research plays in my writing (both poetry and nonfiction) and on the way that writing fuels my learning and learning fuels my writing. (No spoilers below, but you’re welcome to read “Trade/Craft”  first if you’d like.)

There’s a madness to my method. It goes something like this:

1. I start reading about a fascinating topic

2. I start writing (first notes in the margins, and then poems) as a way of deepening my understanding

3. As I write, I realize I have more questions and I do even more research, cycling through steps 1-3 for a few months

4. At some point, I stumble on what I call the overlap—the places where the history or science that I’m researching echoes/mirrors/parallels something in my own experience; this is where the creative serendipity really takes off

5. I write an essay exploring the overlap and also teasing out the gaps—the places where my experience and my research topic complicate or contradict one another (for example, I wrote “network” to explore the lives of 19th century women telegraph operators and contemporary internet users; and I wrote “Trade/Craft” to explore the methods and ethics of writers and spies)

6. I use what I’ve discovered about the overlap and the gaps to start putting together poems about my topic and my life (and ideally poems that blur the two together), weaving my way toward a portfolio or collection

7. The conversation I find between poems reveals gaps in my knowledge and I do a bit more research (sometimes stumbling on references that point me toward a new fascinating topic and a new step 1)

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