In the Spotlight: Kimberly Gomes
Shelby Hinte interviews Kim Gomes as these wonderful writers discuss shame, body-related trauma, poetry vs prose and Gomes' chapbook, Love Notes to the Body.
Shelby Hinte: Your collection "Love Notes to the Body" feels so intimate and reading it feels like getting a glimpse into a private, complex world. Part of this reading experience, I think, stems from it being a chapbook rather than a full-length collection. How did you know that these poems were meant to exist in a chapbook? Did you plan it or was it serendipitous?
Kimberly Gomes: It all started with one piece – “Almost Clean” – the narrative poem that serves as the spine of the book. I wrote that about four years ago and at that time I couldn’t avoid writing about women and their bodies, the things they’re trying to flee, or stories they’re trying to break away from. Even when I tried to stop writing about it, it was always seemed to be at the edge of every piece and, to be honest, I was tired of it. But I realized there were things coming up that needed to be addressed or released, so I started diving into them instead of dodging them. I signed up for Barbara Tomash’s “Imagining the Book” that following semester of my MFA program and told myself I’d keep letting those feelings come up and would turn them into a book-length collection, if for nothing else, to help me process and release the stories I was tired of carrying. I spent that whole semester writing that book, which would eventually be edited down into this chapbook. It was an incredibly cathartic process and thankfully I had some amazing colleagues in that class who encouraged me to keep going.
SH: How did thinking of the poems as part of a book affect your writing?
KG: Having the idea of a collection in mind helped bridge the pieces as I wrote them. Nearly everything I read I’d use as a prompt to work on something that was related to women’s bodies, sexuality, agency or lack there of. Once I started leaning into it, the collection started to string together rather quickly.
SH: You also write prose, and this collection definitely feels like it has a sort of narrative arc. How is writing poetry different from writing prose?
KG: For me, poetry is a giant exhale. It’s where I can experiment with sound and flow and follow riffs into a more raw space without worrying about if I’m taking the reader too far off course. It has less boundaries for me, and it complements my prose process in that sense. My prose writing feels much more structured. When I’m working on my novel, there’s only a certain degree of experimentation I feel I can do. It feels a bit more formulaic. Prose is also more of a long game for me. I write poetry in short bursts, but my prose writing, particularly my novel, feels like an incredibly long marathon. I’ve been working on that book for five years, and thankfully it’s finally in its last round of editing before I send it out this winter. But I think the biggest difference between the two is how long that my prose projects thread through my life. I’ve written my novel during so many different periods and iterations of self. So, I feel like I’ve had to learn how to be in wildly different emotional spaces but still write from that same character’s perspective. It’s taught me how to be pretty patient, but persistent with my process. These days I’m also trying to bring more poetry into my prose, play with sound and rhythm, blend them where I can.
SH: So what is your writing process like? I know you have a full-time job, how do you make time to write? Do you have a routine?
KG: I’m pretty big on writing routines, especially because my writing time has generally always been sparse. So, I’m pretty intentional about it. For nearly all of my adult life, I’ve worked 9 to 5’s and I prefer to write in the morning. I’ve learned to consistently create time for writing during the week but not be too ambitious for what gets done then. On a good week, that means sitting down for at least 30 minutes to an hour 3-4 times before work. I know those windows aren’t enough to fully sink in, so I use that time to edit, start a new chapter knowing I won’t finish, or continue something I didn’t finish from the previous day. Sometimes it’s just reading yesterday’s chapter just to stay connected to the story. On weekends, I usually block out 3 to 4 hours where I dive in and really get to be in a flow. But, you know, sometimes other things in life take priority. I’m not always sitting down to write that often, so during those times I try to remind myself to look at the world as inspiration. I’ll carry a little notebook, try to take public transit or walk more – anything that requires me to slow down a bit even if it’s just for 30 minutes – just remind myself to look at the little things a bit longer. Those things often turn into the first lines that will grow into something when I do have time to sit down and write.
KG: One thing I have always admired about you is your ability to put yourself out into the world as an artist. I think when we are just getting started as writers it can be a little intimidating to call ourselves writers. You know, imposter syndrome and all. How did you get over this?
SH: Time – and gradual, consistent attempts to put my writing out there. Since I’ve pretty much always written for my day job, I didn’t have much trouble saying I was a writer by trade because I was getting paid to do it. But my personal writing – that was a totally different story. I was incredibly insecure about that up until the 2nd year of my MFA. At that point I had been dedicating so much of my free time to my writing and was starting to find my voice and the topics I circled. What moved the needle the most though was sharing my work, particularly when I started to do public readings. I often read pretty intimate stuff, so those moments would render me super vulnerable. I’d force myself to linger after the reading to connect with people and through that I saw how my words sometimes affected people. Women would come up to me and I’d see it in their eyes. That helped grow my confidence. It also helped affirm that I had something to say and people were willing to listen. Since then it’s become such a big part of my identity and daily life. I think we can often put a lot of weight on the word ‘writer’ and what we think people see that as. For me, it came down to the fact that a good chunk of my free time is spent writing. It fills me and releases in ways nothing else does.
SH: So much of your collection feels urgent, particularly lines like "hoping someone hears her murmurs for witness / silence hangs." What compelled you to write about silence and being heard?
KG: I was an incredibly quiet kid. There were a couple years there in junior high where I barely spoke. So, self-silencing is something I’ve been acutely aware of. On the other side of that, I experienced an instance of sexual abuse and when I spoke up about it I felt silenced. I think that was a pretty formative experience. Later, when I was in college and got involved with the women’s studies community, I started learning how to speak up about body-related trauma. I heard countless ‘me too’s’. Friends I’d known for years had also been silently dealing with these same, heavy emotional things like abuse, eating disorders, and shame around sexuality. All these things touch so many women’s lives and yet we’re all just moving through life trying to push it down, because society has told us this is taboo. This is uncomfortable. Don’t go there. I personally needed to go there to finally process it fully and I had a feeling there was a good chunk of people out there who needed to go there too.
SH: Another theme in "Love Notes to the Body" is cleanliness and sterility. Why did you want to explore this topic?
KG: I think when we feel shame, it’s natural to want to wash it away. Shame, particularly when it comes to matters of the body, for me, felt like a cloak I could never quite shake. I had grown to identify with it but simultaneously wanted to extract the memory, the feelings, anything it touched so I would just feel “normal” like I imagined everyone else did. The more I started talking to other women dealing with similar things, the more I saw that when we talk about the shame and what’s beneath it, it slowly lightens. When we name the feeling we don’t want to feel, it has less of a hold on us. So, writing about cleanliness and sterility was a way for me to unpack some of that.
SH: What do you think it is that motivates you to write?
KG: Since I was a teenager writing has always been a cathartic release. I think when you hold things in they can expand in ways they don’t necessarily need to. So, for me, writing is like many other forms of movement. It’s a way to direct mental and emotional energy into something productive that also helps me understand myself more, preserve a beautiful moment, or create something that keeps me in this trance-like state. A good writing session puts me inflow. I’m totally in the present, immersed in whatever I’m creating and I love that feeling.
SH: If you had to give one piece of advice to aspiring writers, what would it be?
KG: Write for you. Writing gets difficult when you imagine someone on the other end of the page. That’s where the critic, the self-editor, the problem arises. So, get to know the reason you write and keep that at the top of your mind every time you look at an empty page. When you sit down, tell yourself, ‘no one has to see this.’ And write as if that’s true, because it is. Then when you’re done, decide what you want to do with it. That’s what works for me. Every time I have a deadline for a reading or something, I give myself plenty of lead time because I know I need to be able to say, ‘I’m not sharing this’ and then, I’ll write another – something a bit safer that I feel more comfortable with. Even though I generally end up choosing the vulnerable one that process helps the real stuff rise up. Everything else ripples from that.
Kimberly Gomes is an Oakland-based writer and visual storyteller. She received her MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University, where she wrote her first women's adventure novel, A Road of Her Own and a chapbook of poetry, Love Notes to the Body (Dancing Girl Press, 2019). Her writing has been featured in publications such as, Rogue Agent, sparkle + blink, Sunset Magazine and The San Francisco Chronicle. When she’s not creating, you can find her roaming California beauty or plotting her next adventure. Learn more about her at www.kimberly-gomes.com.
About Shelby Hinte
Shelby Hinte is a writer and educator living in the Bay Area. She received her MFA in Fiction from San Francisco State University where she was the recipient of the 2019 Distinguished Graduate award. She has been a contributing food and beverage writer for Edible Santa Fe. Her fiction has appeared in Vagabond Lit, Witness Magazine, Hobart, Quiet Lightning's Sparkle + Blink, decomP magazinE, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a novel about women and vortexes in the desert.
