Tomlinson on writing and writers workshop

Tim Tomlinson is a Professor of Writing at New York University’s Global Liberal Studies Program. He is a co-founder of New York Writers Workshop, and co-author of its popular text, The Portable MFA in Creative Writing. He is the author of the chapbook, Yolanda: An Oral History in Verse; the poetry collection, Requiem for the Tree Fort I Set on Fire; the collection of short fiction, This Is Not Happening to You; and, most recently, the hybrid collection of poetry and prose, Listening to Fish: Meditations from the Wet World. Tomlinson led New York Writers Workshop Kathmandu in May and June where 35 writers from five continents participated. Ken Subedi conversed with Tomlinson about the Kathmandu workshop, his experience in Nepal, his books and his works.

Was this your first time in Nepal? When did you learn about Nepal for the first time?

This is my first time in Nepal. Nepal has been in the background of my consciousness for decades. As a young kid, I knew that people were coming here. Hippies were coming here in the 60s and early 70s. You know well that Cat Stevens’ song “Katmandu” was also based in those times. These things made me wonder about Nepal. I also heard stories about the notorious serial killer, The Serpent.

You are the organizer of New York Writers Workshop Kathmandu and inaugurated Himalayan Literature Festival. Can you please share your experience of the workshop and festival?

The first day of the festival was densely packed. Many moving parts. And I was a bit frantic, putting out brush fires, but things settled a bit on the second day. We’ve been getting lots of positive feedback. I sat in on a couple of panels. The writers we brought here are brilliant and super talented. Hearing from them and knowing that audiences are absorbing all these experiences has been enormously gratifying.

How did you start New York Writers Workshop?

It has been around 24 years now. We started in 2000. We actually taught our first workshop in New York City. A bunch of my friends and colleagues got together and formed our organization. We’d been working for other organizations that did not really respect the life of the writer. We believed we could do better in different ways. We understand the nature of being a writer.

Do you agree that corporations don’t value poetic license?

Absolutely. They value the bottom line. We’re expendable items. I mean any organization you work for, as soon as they’re short of money, fire the writers. No more copies, no more paper clips, you know whatever. Universities exploit the instructors as much as they can. New York City is a smorgasbord of different ethnicities and nationalities. We make no distinction about who comes to our workshops. We offer things to everybody in the population of New York City, which is almost like saying everybody in the whole world. Eventually, we expanded. We went global.

Maybe you started with different places in the USA.  Then you started to move towards other countries.

I married a Filipina and I started travelling quite a bit in Asia. So, I first worked in The Philippines. And the name New York Writers Workshop, it’s kind of a passport to the world. “New York City” resonates all over the world. Within about three years I had been going back and forth between The Philippines, in the universities, in the writing organizations. And then we started the larger conferences, of which this is the largest, the most ambitious one.

You edited a book called The Portable MFA in Creative Writing in collaboration with New York Writers Workshop. You also contributed the “Introduction” and the chapter on fiction. Can you please share some insights about, like how you came up with that book? And why do you think the need to write such a book when there are so many MFAs going on like this? 

That was in 2006. We’d been a teaching organization for six years. And we’d all encountered what we call “recovering MFA’s,” very promising writers who, for one reason or another, couldn’t move from  one sentence to the next. Their MFA programs jammed them up. In my introduction, I say – I want to teach that kind of workshop that I never had. So my approach, our approach, is “how-to,” not “don’t do.” 

It can be an MFA supporting book. So, basically you wrote for MFA graduates when they can’t work on the practical side, and they have only theoretical knowledge.  So, who were your target audience when you started to write? 

Yeah, the target audience was anyone who wanted to write. I had been teaching workshops for probably ten years. So many of my students were saying—when will you get particular exercises in the book? So I brought together some of our instructors where six of us contributed. In my section I included many of the exercises I did in my class.

Do you think that Nepal is worth writing about? 

Absolutely. We’re experiencing dense concentration of a new culture. We’re planting the experience like a seed that, we expect, will grow when we get back to home.

Can you share about your latest book Listening to Fish?

It grew out of my decade’s long experience as a scuba diver. I began scuba diving in the 1970s when the reefs appeared inexhaustible. The places where I dove first, with their dazzling arrays of biodiversity, are now at a tipping point, or past the tipping point. It’s a tragedy, a highly dangerous tragedy.

Maybe it is due to the refineries?

Oh, yes.  There is always some level of natural stress, environmental stress. But the human hand has made natural stress unnaturally stressful to the point that it’s catastrophic. Can the health of the reefs ever be restored? This is an existential question.     

So, your title: Listening to Fish. Is it listening to the grievances or the hardships, sufferings of the fish?

Precisely. If we start to listen to what they can tell us, they will tell us their stresses. They speak in a universal language. Their eyes implore. They seem to say, we’ve welcomed you here, now help us.

And dolphins are also beaching, right?

Coral is bleaching, dolphins are beaching, the sea is going mad.

So you have organized such workshops in many parts of the world. How does it help the literary community? How does it contribute to the craft of a writer? 

There’s an enormous amount of cross-pollination and collaboration. The conferences we did in Greece and Italy led to translations, publications, and community. What we appreciate here is the ubiquity of spirituality. It’s woven into the fabric of everyday life. It’s tangible. I expect some of that sense will filter into the work we all do back home.

And even we will also be indoctrinated with some of the familiar Western tradition and American values also. 

I hesitate to use the word “indoctrinated.” I prefer being exposed to, because we’re here as much to listen and learn and share, as well as teach. Last night, Ravi Shankar read his poem Kathmandu.  He concludes by saying—there must be not power, but compassion. I think travel can induce that. It reveals how much you don’t know.

I know you like different genres at a time. You don’t fix yourself to one category. But what fascinates you the most? Which is more near to your heart?

I would like to write short stories that a reader remembers. Now and then, it gives me the biggest glow. Fiction is the most important, nearest to my heart.