Mik Grantham: On Saying It Like It Is, Not Apologizing, Starting a Small Press, and Her Debut Poetry Collection, “Hardcore”
Mik Grantham just wants to make you laugh, even when she’s writing about depressing shit. In her debut poetry collection, Hardcore (Short Flight/Long Drive), her dark-humored poems compel the kind of laughter that makes you stop mid-inhale and say oh shit, is it ok to laugh at that? Many of the poems in this collection have a colloquial feel to them, as if they are stories being told after a long-day over drinks in a dimly lit bar. It is this inviting tone, Grantham’s easy way of revealing bleak narratives about an abortion and the demise of a relationship as simply as she might tell you what she had for breakfast, that gets your guard down before the poetry hits you with its sharp, straightforward rendering of reality ⸺ for better or worse. Grantham practices a lot of restraint in these poems, avoiding flowered language or extraneous metaphor, which makes them simultaneously accessible and hard-hitting. What I loved most about Hardcore was the way it never let me settle in a single emotion. Each poem was a new insight, often contradicting the narrative of an earlier poem, and isn’t that just like life ⸺ to feel a particular way about something (a relationship, an event, a death, a love,etc.) one day, and then the opposite some days later? In that way, Grantham’s poetry collection embodies the lived experience of grief and loss over a sustained period of time.
I spoke with Mik via Zoom about her debut collection Hardcore, what it was like to start her own small press (Disorder Press), and how she avoids burnout with creative projects while managing the rest of her life (hint: it is really clever and you should totally try it!).
Shelby Hinte: Congrats on the publication of Hardcore. It is such a cool collection of poetry.
Mik Grantham: Thank you. I am so excited it is out in the world now.
SH: So it’s published by Short Flight/Long Drive which is an awesome small press. How did you get involved with that press?
MG: I’ve just loved their books. Have you read Women by Chloe Caldwell?
SH: Yeah, I love that book.
MG: I read it years ago when it first came out and so I have just been following the press ever since. It is kind of like a dream small press to work with. I had published some work with their small press Hobart before and I just love them.
I also used to host this reading series in New Orleans and Elizabeth Ellen [Editor of Short Flight/Long Drive] came and read down here. It was kind of a funny one because it ended up being this night we were cancelling the reading series at this hotel because some douchebag bartender guy called me and told that one of the female poets that I published, Laura Theobald, read a poem that said the word cunt in it and he was really offended by it. So he called me the night before Elizabeth Ellen was going to read and told me I needed to start censoring the writers and all this other crazy sexist stuff. So, I wrote this speech and Elizabeth Ellen read part of it with me.
SH: (laughs) It is hard to imagine Elizabeth Ellen’s work being censored.
MG: (laughs) It was actually a really fun reading because Elizabeth Ellen, Kevin Maloney, and his wife Aubrey read and then at the very end we all went up and read this speech about why we weren’t going to censor our writers.
You know, this hotel had hosted this Bukowski event called Booze, Broads, and Bukowski a few months before and so Elizabeth Ellen read a Bukowski poem that had the word cunt in it. So that’s how I officially met her and then eventually I asked her to read my manuscript and give me some suggestions and she was like let me publish it.
SH: That’s great. How did Hardcore begin?
MG: Some of those poems are 5 years old and I feel like it didn’t really start to come together until 2 years ago, but I do feel like [Hardcore] has a narrative.
The beginning of the book are poems about this experience I had getting an abortion in New Orleans and the fallout of a relationship. Then at the end of the book there are some love poems and hope, so all the poems between the two are the things that occurred with healing.
SH: It is so interesting to hear that they were written over two very different periods of times because I feel like as the poems progress they begin to contradict earlier poems which sort of mirrors how memory works in such an authentic way. What was your experience writing poems that close to you and your experience?
MG: It was really healing. Writing poems is cathartic and you do confront your trauma, but I also want to be able to laugh at myself. That’s just how I get through life, so that’s what I tried to do with the poems. They’re not all funny, but pairing them [the abortion poems] with something funny, is how I try to make that experience meaningful to me.
SH: I definitely laughed out loud reading some of the poems and in a way that had me stop and go oh shit, should I be laughing right now? Which is an experience I love having while reading, but I don’t often get while reading poetry. A reviewer for Pank Magazine recently wrote that “Hardcore is full of that weirdness that makes real life look scripted.” I have to say, I totally agree. The poems have a true to life texture ⸺ like there are no filters or bullshit, just a sort of sharp contrast reality. Your poems are accessible in a way not all poetry is. What sort of dialogue do you imagine your poetry being in with other poets and poetry?
MG: Yeah, that reviewer said something that made me go like I feel fucking seen. Thank you because he said something like this isn’t a beautiful collection about perfect moments.
Some of my favorite poets write these gorgeous poems about really hard things and make grief look romantic and beautiful. I think for me, I just want to say it. Say the thing. Say exactly the thing. Like talk about how you felt when you were getting an abortion. Just say it. Just say they put lube on a wand and shoved it up your vagina. That’s not pretty sounding at all and I am sure these poems are not for everyone and probably won’t be respected by everyone because I am not trying to use fluffy, beautiful language. I am just trying to tell a story and be real. I want to connect with people and make them feel like we’re friends and like I am just telling them something while we’re sitting and having a cup of coffee. I am just always trying to tell a story, even if it is with poetry.
SH: I think that is such a refreshing quality about the collection and I think that is why there are those moments where I laughed out loud in a way I haven’t with other poetry. With that in mind, are there some poets or other writers that inspired this style of writing for you?
MG: I feel like there are so many 16-year-old girls that fall in love with Dorothy Parker and I was definitely that 16-year-old girl that fell in love with Dorothy Parker. I had a Dorothy Parker haircut at one point and started dressing like I was in the 20s, but she was so funny and talked about such dark things. It felt like she didn’t really give a fuck. She is a beautiful writer and she was one of the first poets I read that made me laugh about really dark, fucked up things.
Now, I feel lucky to be surrounded and connected with so many writers that are breaking genre boundaries. One of these writers is Bud Smith. He is a huge influence on me and a really good friend. I keep calling him my mentor, but he doesn’t respond to that (laughs), but he just does whatever he wants. He helped me edit Hardcore and pushed me to be vulnerable.
Also, Ed Smith and Joe Brainard.
SH: So I have to mention the cover of the book, which is this really cool tooth and teeth actually appear a lot in the collection. How did that come up?
MG: Well I lost a tooth a few years ago (laughs) and that just freaked me out. Also, I couldn’t stop writing about teeth after I lost a tooth and I couldn’t stop talking to people about teeth. So I started writing these poems. The first poem I wrote about my teeth was called Poem for my Tooth and it’s just about the day the tooth fell out of my mouth, but it is also kind of about letting go of someone. I feel like it means that too – like, you left me. Are you happier now that you left me, tooth, and like, person that left me?
So I just became really obsessed with writing about teeth and at the beginning of quarantine I was freaking out that I never got a tooth put back in where I lost this tooth and so I started to freak out that the teeth were moving inside my mouth. I would smile at my partner all the time and ask are they moving? Have you noticed them move?
So I kept writing poems about that. As I was adding all these poems together I was like this makes sense because the tooth to me is like the aborted baby, the dead grandma, the relationship gone sour. The hole is like what you’re left with after you lose all these things. The hole is like drinking too much and doing drugs. Then falling in love again is like filling that space in a way.
SH: (laughs) I love all these metaphors and connections. Some of these are more obvious than others, but I think it is great that this central image threads all the poems together.
Another thing I enjoyed about your collection, and I always wish there were more of this in published work, was that you wrote so much about working, specifically waitressing. As someone who funded most of my education and life with bartending and waitressing, I am always grateful to see it appear in text.
How have you managed to balance the work/writing work/life over the years?
MG: I feel like you live two different lives almost. I have worked at one amazing restaurant where I loved everyone there and they saw me as this whole person with dreams and passions that weren’t about the restaurant, but most of the restaurants I’ve worked at it was a pretty degrading experience and it sucked! But I don’t want to write about it sucking so much. I just want to be funny about it. Personally, I don’t want to read a bunch of pages about why someone hates their job, but I’m down to read about why you hate your job if it’s really funny and you can laugh at it which is what I tried to do with the book.
With those jobs I just turned it off and I was like ⸺ here I am, your server. You don’t know anything about my outside life. You don’t care about me and you don’t respect me at all so I am just going to have a thick skin about that. It did kind of suck. Emotionally it can be draining. Like, you know, you waited tables, how many times has a chef just screamed at you and called you names and degraded you because of a small mistake you made? They just want to make you feel so stupid and they totally can in that moment.
It felt like my writing life and everything I do with Disorder Press was my secret in those moments and I was like ⸺ you think I’m so stupid because I brought food to the wrong table, but the reality is I am just really tired because I’m working all the time and when I’m not here I’m devoting my time to writing or to Disorder Press.
SH: Yeah, it is so tiring to do all the things. How do you keep yourself engaged in creative projects while also having to do the work that sustains your creative projects?
MG: I just feel like I can’t turn that part of myself off. The great thing about waiting tables is you usually have the mornings off until like 4pm when you go in for the dinner shift. So you have this stretch of time for you to do whatever you want versus a 9-5 job which is pretty much getting up, getting ready for work, going to work, coming home, making dinner, and being tired.
Even when I’m at work, when I was waiting tables – I haven’t waited tables in a few months – I feel creative – just noticing human interactions, keeping notes in my cellphone about funny things that happened that I want to write about later because there are so many great things that come up when you’re working with the public.
I try to make time for writing every day. There’s this weird process thing I do, but it works for me, and maybe it will work for other people too. It’s 45 days of writing straight. So you block out at least 1 hour every day to devote to your project, whatever you’re working on. For that hour it might just mean you’re sitting at your computer staring at a page, which is fine, but you are still devoting that hour of your day to your creative project. Some days you might go over an hour because you might be feeling juiced and like you want to keep writing more. Usually you will go over that hour. Also, in those 45 days you have to read ⸺ (laughs), these are just rules I made up for myself ⸺ you have to read 50 pages a day of a book. You will end up reading about a book a week depending on how big the book is.
After the 45 days are up you take a break and you don’t worry about your project. You go on vacation basically from your creative project. And then I just start the 45 days over like 2 weeks later and that keeps me really engaged and excited.
Another thing about staying engaged is leaving when you’re on a roll. Stepping away when you’re feeling really inspired [after you’ve already done your hour] because then the next day you’re excited to get back to it. Also, sit when you don’t want to be doing it. Just for one hour.
SH: I love that! I feel like it is a totally genius practice with such a nice light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a vacation after the 45 days because creative work can be so physically and emotionally draining.
MG: Yes!
SH: So what is your routine like when you are doing your 45 days?
MG: It doesn’t usually matter what time I start [writing], but it usually ends up being in the afternoon. I usually want to go on a long walk before I sit down at my desk. I have two dogs who need a lot of exercise and they’re really wild so that is the routine ⸺ just make sure you go for a walk with the dogs before you write.
I’m not really someone that likes to write at night though. I just want to hang out at night. Before the pandemic I would go see live music almost every night of the week. Partner dancing is really big in New Orleans where I live and my partner Max is a musician so we would go out partner dancing a lot. I like to have the nights off (laughs).
SH: So you’ve mentioned your press Disorder Press a couple times. You guys publish such cool books, including a Bud Smith book. Can you talk a little bit about what it was like to start a small press and what it has been like running it?
MG: Yeah, I started the press with my best friend Michelle Nazzal. She is actually doing design work now for the press, but she is no longer a partner in the press. It started because I was writing these poems I would send her and she was like ⸺ I love them. Let’s make a little chapbook. I know how to design books. I’ll do it for you. We started it like that. It was small. I don’t think we were really going to do another book. It was just like cute I guess. But then this guy, Adam Soldofsky, who wrote Memory Foam, found us. We had created an email. I don’t really know what we were thinking or what the intention was, but yeah, Adam found us and he was like ⸺ are you guys accepting submissions? And I was like ⸺ woah, we just created a website a few days before. How did he find us? But I read his book and I loved it and thought we could be a press. We could be a small press. It’s not that hard. You just have to be willing to lose your own money (laughs).
So, we just kept doing it. Then Michelle had to step away for personal reasons and my brother Joey jumped in. Now my brother and I run it. It’s really fun. We don’t publish that many books a year. We only do 1, if that. We didn’t do one in 2020. It was just too hard.
I’ve gotten to meet so many amazing people. It’s helped me create a community of people online which is strange, but I have also gotten to meet so many great people in real life because of the press. That’s also how I met Bud Smith. He found us online and I am not even sure how he did, but I am so grateful he did.
SH: So what’s Disorder Press’ next project?
MG: Pretty soon, we’re hoping in June, we’ve partnered with a small non-profit out of Miami called Exchange for Change. They work with incarcerated writers and so we are publishing a collection of work from incarcerated writers and that is called Hear Us: Writing From Inside During the Time of COVID. It has writing from folks who have been incarcerated during the pandemic. There are also a few pieces from family members who have been touched by mass incarceration. It has been a really powerful experience. I am grateful to have partnered with Exchange for Change because I think we needed to do that with someone with experience working with the prison system.
SH: Yeah, I had seen a little bit about this project online and actually for the last 4 years I was teaching Creative Writing in the SF County jails and then in the Solano county probation departments, so when I saw the press’s social media post about the book I got really excited.
MG: Yeah! I’ll mail you a copy, and actually Michelle did the design for the book. It’s a really beautiful book. There is artwork and we’ve printed some of the original handwritten pages of the essays that were turned into us. I think it’s going to be really powerful. Edwidge Danticat is doing the forward.
SH: That’s so great. What about you? What are you working on personally right now?
MG: I’ve been writing short stories ever since I finished [Hardcore]. Bud Smith has really encouraged me to write short stories. I just thought I couldn’t do it, but I’ve been having a lot of fun writing them actually. I’ve also been working on a longer piece that’s kind of like a mystery novel idea that I’ve had in my head for awhile. I really love Unsolved Mysteries and I grew up on them, Judge Judy, Court TV, and true crime TV shows. So the main character wants to solve a mystery.
You know, I don’t really know how to talk about it yet.
SH: Yeah, honestly, it’s a terrible question. I’ll ask you an advice question instead, which is unique for you because you have such unique writing positions.
What advice do you have for aspiring writers and what advice do you have for people looking to start their own presses?
MG: OK, do the 45 days. I’m not even kidding (laughs). I don’t know if I’m really qualified to give advice, but the advice I’ve always been given and that I always keep in my mind when I am writing is always just try to get to the heart of things and don’t be afraid to look stupid. Basically, don’t be afraid to be yourself.
For starting a small press, just do it. Like I said, just be down to lose your money. I’m not the greatest at running a press or anything, but I do just really believe in all the authors that we publish. To me it’s about that and about the community of people. It takes time and money. I am not good at giving money advice. I think if you want to start a small press you should just start a small press. You don’t even have to make a physical book. You can do an online journal. If you’re excited about it you should just go for it.
Mik Grantham is the founder and co-editor of Disorder Press which she runs with her brother. Her work has appeared in New World Writing, Hobart, Maudlin House, The Nervous Breakdown, and Fanzine. She currently lives in New Orleans. HARDCORE is her first book.
About the interviewer
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. Her fiction has appeared inMaudlin House, Entropy, Witness Magazine, Hobart, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a novel about women and vortexes in the desert. You can follow her@shelbyhinte_and read her work atwww.shelbyhinte.com
