Interview with Katie Manning, Author of Hereverent
Katie Manning is the founding editor-in-chief of Whale Road Review and a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego.
She’s the author of Tasty Other, which won the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award, and her most recent collections are How to Play (Louisiana Literature Press, 2022) and 28,065 Nights (River Glass Books, 2020). Her poem “What to Expect” was featured on season 3 of the Poetry Unbound podcast, and her poems have appeared in American Journal of Nursing, december, The Lascaux Review, New Letters, Poet Lore, Verse Daily, and many other venues. Find her online at katiemanningpoet.com.
Katie Manning’s poetry collection, Hereverent, is out now from Agape Editions. She sat down to answer questions on her collection, line breaks in poetry, and what’d she’d be if she wasn’t a rhinoceros.
Jacquelyn Scott: Congratulations on your release, Hereverent! What is the significance of the title?
Katie Manning: The title is a portmanteau of “heretical” and “reverent.” It came about because I kept saying that this project was either the most heretical or the most reverent thing I'd ever written.
Scott: In Hereverent, you've taken Bible verses to make a piece of art. How did you decide which verses to use?
Manning: I used the last chapter of each book of the Bible. When I began the project, it seemed obvious to me that I needed to use the endings; I was dealing with the end of these texts as they were, and I wanted this to be the end of their use as weapons. When each poem stood alone, I used an epigraph that said “All that remains of [book title].”
Scott: You once said in an interview that Hereverent was created as a protest against Bible verses being taken out of context and used as weapons. Could Hereverent be a weapon against certain forms of religion it protests against?
Manning: I'm not really into weapons. I hope it’s something more like a shield, or to make a biblical allusion, I hope it’s something that turns swords into ploughshares, making weapons into tools of peace.
Scott: What message do you hope to convey to readers in terms of selfhood, belonging, and spiritual acceptance?
Manning: I think the book itself invites exploration and is open to interpretation, but I hope that’s also a message: all are welcome.
Scott: Which poem from Hereverent tells your story the loudest?
Manning: I love this question because I could've listed some favorites, but I hadn’t yet considered which poem might tell my story the loudest. I'm going to say “The Book of Class.”
Scott: You once said, “Upon first seeing a rhinoceros at the zoo at age 2, I said to my mom, ‘I want to be one of those when I grow up!’ I have settled for being a poet.” If not a rhinoceros or a poet, what would you be?
Manning: Well, I am also a professor and a literary journal editor and a mom and...but if I were going to be something that I’m not, I would definitely be a librarian. I worked in my college library and was a youth information specialist at the county library during grad school, and I was tempted to swerve off in that direction for my career. It’s especially delightful to help kids connect with books. I think I’d also enjoy being a bookstore cat.
Scott: What is your favorite literary device?
Manning: I adore alliteration (maybe too much).
Scott: How do you use line breaks to have the most impact in your poetry?
Manning: I use line breaks in different ways depending on the poem. Sometimes I use them for pacing, sometimes to create tension, sometimes to create multiplicity of meaning, sometimes for visual effect on the page...and sometimes more than one of these things at once!
Scott: What are you currently reading or working on?
Manning: I've been reading my way through all of Ada Limon’s books, and I just started Padraig O’Tuama’s new collection, Feed the Beast. I'm also reading Legends and Lattes, which is a charming fantasy novel. As for what I'm working on, I'm writing poems that use science as a foundation/lens to work through trauma and grief. The poems are sometimes more fun than that sounds...I have a dark sense of humor and tend toward playfulness in my writing style.
Scott: What is the best piece of writing advice you've received?
Manning: Write from your obsessions. It's better to let them work for you than to try to fight against them.
From Agape Editions:
Hereverent by Katie Manning
The title of Katie Manning’s Hereverent offers readers a first glimpse into the fierce but gentle heart that propels life through this collection. An author-created neologism, the portmanteau of “heretical” and “reverent” describes these poems born out of Manning’s frustration with watching people take language from the Bible and weaponize it against other people. At times barbed and challenging, and at other times playful and joyous, this work is a portal into another universe for any reader who understands that love and kindness are truly sacred.
Get your copy from Agape Editions.
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