Luke Rolfes: Meg Pokrass, author of eight flash fiction collections, two award-winning collections of hybrid prose, and two novellas-in-flash, is out with a new and selected collection from Dzanc Books called First Law of Holes. Thanks for taking the time to talk with us, Meg!
LR: I always like to start my discussion broadly. Can you tell us how First Law of Holes came into existence. How long has this project been in the works?
Meg Pokrass: In 2023, I was in New England visiting Pamela Painter, who suggested I put together a New and Selected manuscript. I loved the idea of this and when I got back to Scotland, set about putting together a collection of my favorite stories curated from older collections, some out of print. I was incredibly lucky to find an enthusiastic and brilliant publisher such as Dzanc Books within the first few weeks I sent it out.
LR: When putting together a “new and selected,” how difficult is it to make selections? I’m curious about the process. This is probably not the right way to describe it, but does one, for instance, think of it more as a “greatest hits” volume, or is it easier to identify selections that fit together thematically? Or does one try to emphasize range?
MP: Good question. I had no idea how to go about it, so I pretty much thought of it as a ‘greatest hits’ collection and included stories that people have loved as well as my own favorites from collections published before 2019. I didn’t include work from the most recent books as I felt those pieces had been recently read. Offering this collection range was a natural part of the assembly as my writing has changed over the years and therefore, the books are quite different in form and tone.
LR: First Law of Holes contains a wonderful variety of flash fiction, microfiction, and prose poetry. I’m interested in the lines between each genre. I’ve known some writers who are very definitive on what type of writing falls into what category—X is a flash; Y is a prose poem. Other writers I know don’t worry so much about differentiation and see the lines as ambiguous. When crafting a piece, do you consciously think “I am writing a microfiction” or “I am writing a prose poem”? Is your process different? When do you decide what the piece is?
MP: I have never been successful at purposefully directing my writing. In fact when I try to do so, a piece inevitably rebels. For instance, when I sit down to write something funny it usually ends up being serious and vice versa. For better or worse, I find this part of the writing process mysterious—how each story or poem decides for itself what it wants to be.
LR: Forgive me—I ask this question to all flash writers! It has to do with conceptualizing flash fiction. When you are first imagining a story, do you imagine a more extended narrative, and the flash is a slice of that? Or is a flash fiction more like a squished story? A small story? Let me put it this way: If you have a picture frame you are trying to fill with an image (flash fiction), and the frame is 2X2, does that mean that the image is a 2X2 cropping of a 10X10, a 2X2 resizing of a 10X10, or simply a 2X2 image. Is there even a difference in your mind?
MP: A wonderful question so I hope my answer isn’t frustrating. I wrote poetry before I wrote flash fiction and before I wrote poetry, I studied acting. I don’t come to writing from an MFA program.
This may be one reason I don’t have anything ‘in mind’ when I write flash. In general, I don’t sit down to write a flash specifically unless I’m giving myself the challenge of a specific word-count constraint, such as “write a story about a new animal and make it exactly 80-words”. Working without any plan is the only way I can write. Reading too much about craft does my head in. I’m much better coming to the blank page with the heart of a novice writer each time.
About brevity. My brain sees life in “bursts”, as in “scenes”, and always has. This probably has something to do with growing up as an actor. Sure, I’d love to also write longer stories and novels but if it doesn’t happen naturally, I don’t see any point in forcing it. I don’t see flash as “mini-short stories” or “squished stories”. To me, flash fiction is its own unique form—and often has little in common with the short story and more in common with poetry. My many years writing poetry (I was mentored by 2 great poets, Molly Peacock and Ellery Akers) helped create a bridge between my acting training and writing fiction.
LR: You write subtext incredibly well. The stories in First Law of Holes give us a glimpse of ice floating atop the water while hinting at a larger iceberg underneath the surface. I’m thinking of some of my favorites in here like “Round Women” or “Widower.” My question: Is the story underneath the story mapped out in your mind? Do you know what exactly is “under the water,” or do you like to keep yourself in the dark along with the reader?
MP: Thank you so much for the kind words about those stories. Again, I hate to say it, but when I intellectualize my process, I become self-conscious, so I try not to do it. In the acting conservatory I went to we were trained like hounds on subtext, motivation, and intention. We learned that characters hardly ever say what they really mean. When I sit down to write, I start with some vague image and a few random words. Both of these stories came about in this way.
LR: Some of these flash fictions (which are already small) are built from even smaller fragments/vignettes/building blocks—especially in the opening section of First Law of Holes. Some appear in the form of numerical lists. Some do not. How do you differentiate between what is a building block and what is a standalone narrative?
MP: I thrive on time and word constraints. I often write stories in timed-sessions to random word lists, each session approaching an idea for a narrative in a different way. Each time I sit down to write my goal is to coax a shy and unknowable story out of hiding. Everything I come up with happens somewhere beyond my conscious awareness level. Sometimes a story will arrive on the page with no section breaks (as one unbroken piece) and it is only later in revision that I see where breaks might be helpful for the feel and flow of the piece, and can add them. And will agonize for weeks on where those breaks should occur and what kind of breaks a story is asking for. Flash fiction is like song writing in that rhythm, timing and movement are as important to the whole as words.
LR: The majority of these pieces are written in first person. Could you discuss that craft choice? Do you think first person provides readers the quickest access to character in short form?
MP: First person offers the most immediacy and is a creative tool for getting the story down. I’ll often start with first person and in revision, will sometimes rework a story into a different POV, but only when a piece feels like it calls for a more detached narration.
LR: Let’s look at a few specific pieces. One of my favorites is “If you want to be loved, love.” In it, a mother turns her father’s advice on her own son. She tells him “if you want to be a horse, be a horse.” And this follows with one of my favorite lines from the book: “’How can I be a horse?’ the child said. ‘Stand there like this,’ she said, ‘as if you are stuck in the middle of a field, but it doesn’t worry you.’” Can you talk about this piece and your inspiration for it?
MP: This one came from an art and writing zoom workshop with artist and writer Lorette C. Luzajic. It was inspired by the images from a few different modernist paintings Lorette shared with participants that night. What I love about ekphrastic writing is how trying to make sense of what one sees and feels through the hand of the artist involves something that I think of as “associative logic”. Associative logic, once called into action, can wind and weave a story together in ways the logical brain has no access to. “If You Want to be Loved, Love” is one of the most mysterious writing experiences I’ve ever had and is one of my personal favorites. I’m so happy to know you enjoyed it.. The story still makes me cry.
LR: I noticed a few recurrent themes in your work, one of which is bare skin—which leads to two levels of vulnerability. The nakedness and the lack of protection against the sun. You make readers aware of how characters are exposed (to the sun and outside world). I’m thinking of pieces like “Wouldn’t You Like Some Sun,” “Here We Are on Planet Earth,” “Big Dipper,” “Skin,” and “Freckles.” Can you talk about the idea of bare skin and how it functions in your fiction?
MP: I grew up in Santa Barbara in the 1970s, home of the blonde, tan, athletic “beautiful people”. As a dark haired, light skinned, awkward child with freckles, a transplant from Pennsylvania growing up with a single mother, I never felt I belonged. There was a kind of physical emphasis that was focused around being tan and beachy, and as a painfully self-conscious teenager, I wanted to feel like everyone else, and therefore, spent way too much time in the sun trying to change the way I looked. I regret every minute of that now, but at the time, those hard-earned tans were a great source of pride. I guess you could say I became fascinated with how vulnerability can easily lead to a dangerous way of being in the world.
LR: Another favorite of mine is “Geode.” In it, a woman hosts a man from her husband’s past. The man gives her a geode, which doesn’t look like much on the outside but glows with crystalline brilliance if cracked open. Can you tell us about the creation of this flash? I’m curious: Did you know you were writing about a geode first, or did you begin this piece with the character Paula?
MP: My process involves assigning myself a “set of directions” and seeing what happens. When I wrote this piece, I assigned myself orders like these: “Write a story about a visit”, “write a story about a sketch”, “write a story about a gift”, “write a story about something cracked”, etc. I had no idea what the bigger story would be about, and I did not have the object in mind or the character “Paula” in mind when I wrote it. When one allows oneself to be curious and open when sitting down to write stories it is very much like cracking open a geode. It’s also like cold water swimming (not for the faint-of-heart).
LR: The title story features a mother and a daughter who both marry clowns (who turn out to be bad husbands). It ends with the poignant line, “The first law of holes is to stop digging.” This story is unique in its plot, yet it seems to capture so much of the book in that one line. Can you talk a bit about this one and when you knew it would serve as the title piece to this collection?
MP: Being in a hole, or “filling a hole”, can be looked at in several ways. The idea of digging (or not digging) is an existential question. In the title story, the main character keeps trying to dig herself out of familial and romantic holes and we see how she is landing in new ones. How deep and restrictive vs. cozy and familiar are ones’ inevitable holes? Some conditions, such as being born to an unreliable father, are not fixable—and yet we’re minted by our realities. When falling in love with a contortionist, and dumping ones’ clown husband, one might be helping oneself out of a hole, and yet there are going to be “knots”. The fiction I love to read is all about trouble and I hope my characters are given a solid dose of it. We learn about people by how the ways in which they cope with pesky conditions and situations life can throw at them. That’s what I mean by “holes”. The wisdom is to stop digging, and yet as humans, our tendency is to dig until we feel we are back in control. A more conventional way of saying it is “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade”. When looked at this way, my characters are busy making lemonade with varying degrees of sweetness and bitterness.
LR: What’s next for you and your writing? Any new projects on the horizon?
MP: I’m working on a new collaborative story collection with Jeff Friedman. Friedman and I co-wrote and published a fabulist story collection, The House of Grana Padano, in 2022. Our writing process, conducted in live documents and over zoom, is addictively fun and very much like improvisational theater. I’m also collaborating with illustrator Cooper Renner on a chapbook about two old friends who reconnect and become roommates as much older people.
LR: Thanks so much for taking the time, Meg! First Law of Holes is a wonderful collection.