Gabriella Klein’s first book of poems, the just-published Land Sparing, is winner of the 2013 Nightboat Poetry Prize. Klein earned her undergraduate degree at Wesleyan University and her MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives with her husband and daughter in Santa Barbara.
Can you tell me a little about the title of your book and how it might help readers orient themselves toward the poems? Land Sparing is an agricultural practice that attempts to balance conservation with production. This system, in theory, accounts for the preservation of biodiversity as well as the directive to feed over seven billion people on the planet. One increases yield on the land in one place while sparing the land in another; it’s a necessary ecological compromise. Conceptually, we enact this in relationship, as well — to take from each other only what we truly need. Through this lens, one can read the book as a collection of love poems to the Earth — with all the sadness and longing that may imply. Linguistically, as well, it is my proclivity to be spare with language on the landscape of the page. I’m forever stripping my poems down.
Your work is very experimental, yet I think of most of your contemporaries here in Santa Barbara as being fairly traditional in their approach to poetry. How do you see yourself fitting into the local poetry scene, if there is such a thing? I have found the local poetry scene to be quite welcoming and generous. As a whole, they are a high-minded group and not prone to exclusion. I imagine if they were going to grumble, it would be about something imperative, like oil spills or affordable housing, not aesthetic hierarchy. Besides, I believe all poets are experimental and every poem a grand laboratory in which to experiment.