Back Draft: Corey Van Landingham
Poet Corey Van Landingham’s latest collection, Love Letter to Who Owns the Heavens, takes direct aim at the powers that be. Her poems are especially pointed when examining the crumbling state of the American democratic project, particularly the moral outrage of drone warfare, as well as violence against women. The collection makes for a captivating read, one charged with transgressive interactions (“In Segovia you pushed my cheek against the aqueduct / until it bled”). It also underscores how the use of force, in all its forms, puts bodies at risk.
Van Landingham initially hesitated when I invited her for this interview. Her poem drafts can be rather long, so wouldn’t it be tough to talk through all the revisions? Then she proposed that, instead, we compare her published book’s first poem with what had been the manuscript’s first poem – but which she’d finally cut altogether. She wasn’t proud of it. Her email: “I’m attaching the original poem (oof) here…”
– Ben Purkert for Guernica
Guernica: You originally intended “Technologies of Distance: For Future Girls” as your book’s first poem, but then you scrapped it entirely. Why?
: When I look back at that poem now, I think: . It’s just not the sort of poem I’d write today, and
