An interview with the author of
MATH CLASS
Kelly Krumrie
MATH CLASS (Calamari Archive,ink. 2022)
Math Class
by Kelly Krumrie
ISBN 978-1-940853-15-4
92 pgs / $16
or get it from SPD
or get digital book (PDF) for $5:
Kelly Krumrie is a writer and teacher. Math Class is her first book.
[1]
Kelly Krumrie is the author of Math Class (Calamari Archive, 2022). Her creative and critical writing is forthcoming from or appears in journals such as Harp & Altar, DIAGRAM, Annulet, Full Stop, and Black Warrior Review. She also writes a column on math and science in art and literature for Tarpaulin Sky Magazine called figuring. She holds a PhD in English & Literary Arts from the University of Denver and lives in Denver.I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to have a conversation with this wonderful author. Please do check out the links to her new book MATHCLASS HERE: MATH CLASS (Calamari Archive,ink. 2022) and a shout out to the wonderful publishing house of her debut CALAMARI ARCHIVE, INK go check ou the work they are doing, (and have been for some time) in publishing underground works of literature and music.
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░Fin░Sorrel░ : Thank you, Kelly, for agreeing to do this interview. I am so excited to get to talk with you. I was reading some amazing work that Derek white presents on CALAMARI PRESS and stumbled onto your name. I like your work and am interested in some of your writing habits.After you’ve created a piece of text, where (in your opinion) are the most interesting platforms to share work?░Fin░: Is writing a constant in your life? Do you find yourself thinking over it more, or less after your first book?
🅺elly: I’d say it’s a constant, but it wasn’t always. A curious question, “more or less”—I’m trying to think if I have an answer other than “it’s the same,” but it’s the same!
[1.2]
░Fin░: Are there any noticeable cycles in your creative patterns? How do you harness the chaos that comes with manifesting creativity, in the work of crafting writing?
🅺elly: I do think I work in cycles. I find myself more in tune with creative work for a period of time, like over a couple of months, like all I’ll want to work on is a creative thing, and it’s kind of always clicking around in my brain. The other pieces of art I take in during that time—like books, movies, art, music, even travels or goings’ out—might be in service of that work, like a form of research. Then other times I shift into a critical mode, which operates similarly. Sometimes these happen at the same time, but now that I think about it, I do move in and out. I think that’s because I like to focus. But there’s always a toggling between the two, creative and critical. They inform one another. I’m kind of always working, not many cycles completely out—it’s hard for me to turn off. Regarding your second question: I don’t think my manifestation of creative work is especially chaotic, though. I’d say it’s pretty calm, a little zen, if I’m honest.
░Fin░: How is it that you juggle your work and find time to create?
🅺elly: I’m always curious how other people do this. A writing teacher once recommended having a boring job, but I’ve never had a boring job. I taught middle school for a long time, and I didn’t write at all then because I was exhausted. But it ended up being useful, and good, it’s good, important work, I just wasn’t able to do it and write at the same time. Once I shifted to PhD school and to teaching at universities, I've found that I’m able to do both things, work and write, because I have a bit more time, it’s not so tiring, especially emotionally, and they’re related, often, the things I’m teaching and the things I’m writing, or a least more so than when I was teaching, like, the three branches of government.
I have learned, though, that I do best when I schedule / set aside time for myself to get into creative work, especially mornings, so I try to be a little protective of my mornings, and I keep little calendars and to do lists with little check boxes, and I check things off in a very nerdy, very tidy way.
░Fin░: Are there any noticeable cycles in your creative patterns? How do you harness the chaos that comes with manifesting creativity, in the work of crafting writing?
🅺elly: I do think I work in cycles. I find myself more in tune with creative work for a period of time, like over a couple of months, like all I’ll want to work on is a creative thing, and it’s kind of always clicking around in my brain. The other pieces of art I take in during that time—like books, movies, art, music, even travels or goings’ out—might be in service of that work, like a form of research. Then other times I shift into a critical mode, which operates similarly. Sometimes these happen at the same time, but now that I think about it, I do move in and out. I think that’s because I like to focus. But there’s always a toggling between the two, creative and critical. They inform one another. I’m kind of always working, not many cycles completely out—it’s hard for me to turn off. Regarding your second question: I don’t think my manifestation of creative work is especially chaotic, though. I’d say it’s pretty calm, a little zen, if I’m honest.
░Fin░: How is it that you juggle your work and find time to create?
🅺elly: I’m always curious how other people do this. A writing teacher once recommended having a boring job, but I’ve never had a boring job. I taught middle school for a long time, and I didn’t write at all then because I was exhausted. But it ended up being useful, and good, it’s good, important work, I just wasn’t able to do it and write at the same time. Once I shifted to PhD school and to teaching at universities, I've found that I’m able to do both things, work and write, because I have a bit more time, it’s not so tiring, especially emotionally, and they’re related, often, the things I’m teaching and the things I’m writing, or a least more so than when I was teaching, like, the three branches of government.
I have learned, though, that I do best when I schedule / set aside time for myself to get into creative work, especially mornings, so I try to be a little protective of my mornings, and I keep little calendars and to do lists with little check boxes, and I check things off in a very nerdy, very tidy way.
[1.3]
░Fin░: Do you think artists of our modern world mimic each other, as if zooming out you could see all of the finer details of repeated shapes, like a mirroring effect, or a fractal pattern endlessly repeating the same shapes?
🅺elly: Oh, I don’t know? No? I don’t think I’m interested, really, in thinking about artistic mimicry or uniqueness or novelty. I don’t think it’s a good use of my thinking to worry about or noodle over, as an artist. Things echo and refract, tangle, come out new—it’s all fine. As an editor or critic, I might be interested in patterns, traces, seeing how a piece might situate itself, but that’s probably the extent of it.
░Fin░:How is it that you prepare a text? What does your writing process look like?
🅺elly: It varies a little depending on what I’m working on, but for the most part, I work best by hand. I use a gridded notebook that’s like maybe 7x9”? (this) gives me a little room to move. I read a lot and take notes, ideas and phrases that I like, and then I often riff a little from those, in the notebook, and I start making some arrangements. I’ll likely already have an idea, a scene or concept, it’s more a matter of starting to make the thing that I’m in the notebook. Some of it may have formed already in my mind. Once I feel a stop, the end if something short or a pausing point for something long, or if I need to go do something else soon, I’ll type it in a document on my computer, and as I type, I’ll rearrange a little, and revise a tad, but for the most part I type it how it is. Sometimes I type it the next day. Then I look back at it and see, or work a bit more in the notebook then add that. But that’s about it. Most of my published work is what’s in the notebook, or pretty close to it. A few years ago, I discovered that I work much better this way, hand first.
░Fin░: Do you think artists of our modern world mimic each other, as if zooming out you could see all of the finer details of repeated shapes, like a mirroring effect, or a fractal pattern endlessly repeating the same shapes?
🅺elly: Oh, I don’t know? No? I don’t think I’m interested, really, in thinking about artistic mimicry or uniqueness or novelty. I don’t think it’s a good use of my thinking to worry about or noodle over, as an artist. Things echo and refract, tangle, come out new—it’s all fine. As an editor or critic, I might be interested in patterns, traces, seeing how a piece might situate itself, but that’s probably the extent of it.
░Fin░:How is it that you prepare a text? What does your writing process look like?
🅺elly: It varies a little depending on what I’m working on, but for the most part, I work best by hand. I use a gridded notebook that’s like maybe 7x9”? (this) gives me a little room to move. I read a lot and take notes, ideas and phrases that I like, and then I often riff a little from those, in the notebook, and I start making some arrangements. I’ll likely already have an idea, a scene or concept, it’s more a matter of starting to make the thing that I’m in the notebook. Some of it may have formed already in my mind. Once I feel a stop, the end if something short or a pausing point for something long, or if I need to go do something else soon, I’ll type it in a document on my computer, and as I type, I’ll rearrange a little, and revise a tad, but for the most part I type it how it is. Sometimes I type it the next day. Then I look back at it and see, or work a bit more in the notebook then add that. But that’s about it. Most of my published work is what’s in the notebook, or pretty close to it. A few years ago, I discovered that I work much better this way, hand first.
[1.4]
░Fin░:Being a teacher, what is it that you like to inform your students about? What is it that you have main concerns about in your students, and possibly in the world in general, too?
🅺elly:Oh, hmm, well, I’d say I’m kind of anti-“inform.” I’m more of a constructivist educator, so I focus on offering texts and questions that might elicit thinking about or toying with something new, or just thinking about something in a different way. In that, of course, there’s some kind of curricular center, like a genre or theme or literary period or whatever. Students do their own learning. I make arrangements, provide guidance, give them support, and I respond to them; what I build in the class is in response to their questions, interests, and work, so my concerns are what are their concerns, and how can I help them better articulate their concerns and maybe make something to show it.This term, I’m teaching a class on how to teach creative writing to children, and then the students will go teach creative writing to children, and we’ve begun by working through the questions what is creative writing for? like, as a subject in school, a class you can take—why? and then what is the teacher for?
░Fin░:Thank you for taking the time to talk with us.Do you have any last remarks, favorite quotes, authors that you think are a must read, or any other comments?
🅺elly : I’m pretty much always hungry or eating, so I guess that’s part of my process, my living and working, so I’ll recommend my go-to apple variety: the versatile and dependable Pink Lady. #
Fin Sorrel is the Editor-in-chief at mannequin haus / Neon Garden and is the author of Caramel Floods (Pski’s Porch, 2017) and Transversal (Pski’s Porch, 2020) The teacup of Infinity (Mannequin haus, 2018) + Sand Library (alien buddha press, 2018) His work has appeared online and in print from: Squawk Back, OCCULUM, Gammm, Gobbet, Tentacular magazine (as Ocean Vash). URSUS AMERICANUS, Ctrl+ v, Half Mystic 3: Nocturne, Talking about Strawberries all of the time, the stray branch And Burning House Press