Matt Muth’s poems Crossing the Alps and Chronic 2001 appeared in Issue 16 of Sundog Lit. His poems have appeared in Cleaver, Gravel, Heavy Feather Review, Nashville Review, Rattle, and RHINO. He teaches English at a technical college for video game designers in Redmond, WA, lives in Seattle, and is a solid beer league hockey player.

Tell us a little about your writing process (from the first word to the last edit).
The first word is a feeling, and the last edit is revealing that feeling to be love, which it always was. In between those points there’s a lot of bargaining, depression, anger, acceptance, and wanting a dog

What is something you’re fascinated with at the moment?
The intersections of tenderness and violence

Describe the last thing you read in five words.
Jericho Brown is a god

Is there a place that has inspired your writing? If so, where is it and what about it made for good material?
Ann Arbor MI: the feeling of being nurtured and discarded simultaneously, the sense of a scale balancing itself, pride and shame. Washington DC: the energy of a furnace consuming its people, hot-blooded, manic and constant hunger. Seattle WA: isolation and impossibility. All together: some kind of home

Coffee, tea, or neither?
Coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon

Physical books or e-books?
Physical

What are you working on now?
A first collection! Fingers crossed I’ll pull it off

Any recommendations for readers, i.e. books, movies, television, art, anything under the sun?
Jericho Brown, Fleabag, laying in the sun, C.P. Cavafy, Orhan Pamuk, Kazuo Ishiguro, Anne Sexton, Anne Carson, sleeping in, having a dog, Phil Levine, taking whatever time you need

Anything else that you’d like to plug or let our readers know about?
I founded and run a lit mag named Pacifica Literary Review. Check us out! We’re very good at what we do: www.pacificareview.com

You can read more great work from Issue 16 by clicking here. Until next time!