Interviews
Interview from Barnes & Noble.com, May 5, 2010: Unabashedly Bookish, with Jill Dearman (READ IT)
Interview from PANK, Thursday, February 13, 2010: A Conversation with Nicelle Davis. (READ IT)
Interview from Pitt News, Thursday, February 21, 2008.
Is it boring to write about/talk about your work? Or is it sort of a nice closure after working on it for a long time?
Definitely not boring -- though touring and talking about the work in many ways forestalls the closure you speak of. The book won't lie down and die quietly, as we say.
1. I know that writing doesn't generally spark from just one influence or impetus, but what was the impetus for this collection?
This collection was written -- unbelievably, even to me -- over the course of 20 years, so it's hard to talk about an initiating event or events, or a spur of any kind. I did notice, I guess, at some point that the stories in Paradise Road seemed to need to belong together. To a degree I tailored the stories after the fact so that they might mutually reflect on each other.
2. What informed your decision not to use quotation marks?
I fell away from quotation marks years ago, and for some reason haven't been able to return to them. It's a stylistic choice -- which is to say an emotional one. If pressed to the wall, I might say -- well, that characters like mine in this book aren't stable enough identity-wise to warrant the stability that such demarcation implies. But that's awfully philosophical sounding. I like the way dialogue and narration tend to bleed together -- in anybody's work -- when one reads down the page.
3. How do you navigate between different styles, non-fiction, poetry, fiction? Or, is there an easy relationship between the three?
One navigates between them with great difficulty. I do, at least. It's kind of alarming to find that the poem you began has morphed to a story, or vice versa -- or to find at some point that you can't distinguish the fictional web you wove, the lies you told, from the "truth."
4. Pushcart mentioned that "Until recently, [you] sang and played guitar in a post-punk, postindustrial, neo-goth band called Cousin Stanley." What instrument do you play? Do you write song lyrics? If so, does that make its way into more formal writing?
I'm part of a Grateful Dead cover act now called Unkle John's Band -- I play lead guitar and am one of the vocalists. I haven't written original tunes in a while, given time constraints. During the Cousin Stanley days, though, I did find lots of crossover. Between songwriting and poetry writing, that is. We'd come up with a tune as a band in rehearsal, and I'd take the tape home and knock one of my poems apart -- a published poem, often -- and see how it came over sung. Going for rhymes, I should say, in revision. In transposition. Striving to rhyme, I suppose, where before I'd avoided it.
5. I also read that you DJ an FM radio show. What do you like about radio?
I do a weekly gothic and electro-industrial show in Meadville called Black Planet. I broadcast as a persona. As Dr. Death -- a fellow both like and unlike me. He's a character, basically. Another of my creations. I enjoy being somebody I'm not, and in public no less -- heard but not seen. But unlike the figures you find on the page, this guy's alive. I'll admit he scares me sometimes.
6. If you could write/do anything, what would you do?
Visit the Philippines, and write a long travel piece documenting my journey there, island to island, and my impressions. And sell the piece, of course, to The New Yorker, or GQ, or Harper's. For many thousands of dollars.
More
“Nesset Captures National Award,” Interview in the Meadville Tribune (November, 2006)