Tiny Talks is an interview series with Tiny Spoon’s talented contributors. This week we spoke with A. N. King from our tenth issue.
Tiny Spoon: What kindles your creativity?
A. N. King: I like to collect inspiration. A half-remembered dream. A random thought. A bit of a conversation overheard. A page in a book someone turned into a second-hand shop. I like to play with small ideas and try to see which ones I can get to grow into something that’s new and exciting to me.
Tiny Spoon: Are there any artists/ heroines/ idols/ friends that you look up to?
A. N. King: I have a small but mighty network of writing friends I admire greatly. They’re ability to make cool art and then put that art out there has inspired me time and time again to keep making cool art of my own.
Tiny Spoon: Are there any natural entities that move your work?
A. N. King: As someone who lives in the Southwest USA, I often find myself writing about the deserts and monsoon storms. They don’t appear in all of my work, but I find them weaseling their way into my imagery again and again.
Tiny Spoon: We love insight into the creative process. Could you share what it is like for you, either with your work that appears in Tiny Spoon or in general?
A. N. King: With all my poetry I tend to start with a focus on a couple of words. If I’m writing black out poetry, I find a word on the page or a short phrase that stands out to me, and if I’m writing free-verse I’ll start with whatever word has popped into my head. I jot that word down or circle it with a pencil and start mind mapping. What does that single word or phrase mean to me? What else does it make me think of? I try to treat that word or phrase as a symbol something small that stands in for something too large to put into words: a memory, a feeling, a hope, or even a fear. Whatever that larger thing is, is what I consider to be the theme of my poem. I’ll take that theme and that original phrase and just start drafting. Black-out I’ll start scanning over the page until I see other bits that follow that theme, and free-verse I write down whatever lines pop into my head that fit with what I have so far. I always work in pencil so I don’t have to be afraid to explore every direction the poem can go in from here!
Once I’ve said everything, I think I can I switch to revision and form. I always want my poems to have a certain flow when read out loud (even the tiny poems) so I spend a lot of time refining the word choice and structure of the poems before I put them in ink.
For the The Confusion of Death and a few other works I added the additional element of digital collage in part because I couldn’t play around with the structure as easily as I could have in a free-verse poem. When I finish a poem, I really do want it to look like a symbol so the end goal is something that shows as much as it tells and means even more under the surface.
Tiny Spoon: Do you have any current or future projects that you are working on that you would like to share?
A. N. King: Nothing officially in the works just yet! I am always writing poetry, and always inspired to try new things, so hopefully there will be more soon. I have a few collections I’m trying to work on and find just the right home for as well.
Tiny Spoon: What book, artwork, music, etc., would you recommend to others?
A. N. King: My Top 3 favorite books to recommend to people are Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, How to be a Heroine by Samantha Ellis, and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Seriously if you haven’t read one of these, I would highly recommend picking it up!
For music I absolutely love any playlist put together by AlexRainbirdMusic (on Youtube). I get to discover great music by independent artists and they have so many different types of playlists so I can always find something to inspire me.
Tiny Spoon: Is there anything else you would like others to know about you, your creations, or beyond?
A. N. King: I absolutely love writing and explore a variety in styles of poetry, fiction and more all under the name A. N. King. This is also the name I use on social media where I often post micropoems and glimpses into other creative things I may be working on, and on NaNoWriMo where I participate every year. If you liked my poem, I hope you’ll follow me around one of these places and explore some more of my work!
I have one other poem that has been published recently as well “How to Tell if Your Apple’s Gone Sour” which is published by They Call Us in their Eve edition.
Tiny Spoon: Where can people learn more about what you do?
A. N. King: You can find me on most of the social medias as @ankingwrites and can keep track of what I have actively going on on linktr.ee/anking_writes.