Fork Burke is a poet and visual & sound artist living in Switzerland. Fork  studied at the New School. She loves Tom Waits. Her writing and her energy compel me to continue to seek her out. We have been working together on a mysterious poetry project via email for over a year now. She sends me excerpts of other works and I respond with an original poem. This is supposed to be an immediate response. No editing. All I know is more than one of those poems ended up in my book . So did a poem I wrote from a list form she introduced to me called “Checklist.”

I think it’s safe to say Fork Burke is one of my muses. I wanted to know more about her, so I tossed the My Monomania questions of WHO WHAT WHY WHEN WHERE and HOW at her. She threw this back. She’s the boss of the toss.

Who —— Who am I not ——————-

What ————poetic resistance – having escaped and knowing that escape has layers one must continue to escape – live escape

Words being the what closes and opens I thought it best to hang around words – construct poems and keep my eyes on words

as they also desire escape – what can happen when you sit with a word – like you – would sit with a silence is escape itself – it moves free of

translation and I don’t know where I am – I have escaped

Why—– Because I never wanted to live my whole life walking the same way and pretending all this life wasn`t what would later be called art – because I need to be alone a great deal and being a poet is a perfect cover

When ——first thing every morning before the forgetting kicks in

Where  —-I`m doing it right now

How ——-When I think that I am the poet – me – I find it difficult to carve out space to write in the way I want to – which is an extreme way – it requires the house to be empty – furniture to be moved – books paper music – silence and sitting –   walking around the space with pen and paper or putting the computer high enough so I can stand and write – this kind of writing is painful and vital – I need it like season change even now to write about the process brings on a flirtation with a kind of madness – But this is something else – all the way

When I do the work this if far less dramatic this is breathing all day all the time and not alone – not the poet – I reject the distraction that I have anything to do with the work except that I have taken on a responsibility – How I do it is by putting my whole self in it and what is included in my whole self is our community our lives and how we live – every book I have read every film every witness  conversation and sound make something possible – if I believe the work comes through a person than I also believe it comes through to be here – our work is happening all the time – If my story is part of that well ok – I am not confused about my story being anything other than our story – How I write – I write with everything