The Unclutterer Workspaces pool on Flickr depicts many lovely spartan work areas. It’s not limited to writers, or even creative types in general, but I needed something to tide me over while I send out more requests for entries in our Where the Magic Happens series.

LIFE’s newly launched photo archive contains images of major poets from the 19th and 20th centuries, including Robert Frost, W.H. Auden, and Carl Sandburg. The photos, many of which were never published, go back as far as 1750. In the above picture, Frost entertains guests at a White House party for Nobel Prize winners.

When Johnathon said, and I quote, “Ashley, I take back everything I’ve ever said about your space being messy”, the sentiment didn’t quite seem heartfelt, but–moreover–he was not joking around. My workspace is always an enormous pile of disarray. Proof:

Since the picture cannot possibly do justice to the filth in which I write, I have attempted to draw this eyesore into some semblance of order with arrows and labels. Useful? I hope so. 

To begin: The “desk” is actually two end tables pushed together, which requires the low chair. I like to be hunched over my poems as I’m working. The reasoning behind this is unclear. 

The empty packs of cigarettes are a sure sign that things are going well. Although I’ve recently begun rolling my own cigarettes in an attempt to hurry my death by nicotine, the overflowing ashtray continues to be a signal of significant progress.  I like to think it means that I’ve been too busy writing to empty the ashtray or clean up.

On the other hand, I might just be lazy. It is impossible to tell. Assuming it is the latter, I’ll justify myself with Virginia Woolf: “It is in our idleness…that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.” That’s it.

The excuse regarding the empty Coke can, many of which typically litter the desk I treat with such derision, falls into a similar line of thought. I am pleased to say, however, that my Coke addiction is fading fast: I’m on to sweet tea now. 

Perhaps surprisingly, I can’t write anything even remotely worthwhile when I’m drunk, which isn’t to say I can do so sober, but I think I edge a little closer without the whiskey. As my alcoholism becomes more fully developed, I’m hoping the liquor will become a regular part of my writing process, since writing drunk seems like a positive thing in theory. 

Books are stacked helter-skelter and set askew around the general vicinity. When I’m stuck, it occasionally helps to pick up someone else, to do a quick imitation. Also: this sometimes leads to a poem worth following up on, or reveals a structure that might be useful to my current pet project. Hardy is of great use when it comes to this, which is why he’s right next to the laptop. 

Also: Because I’m stuck more often than not, I’ll have up multiple versions of the same poem while I’m working. For me, a line from a previous failure can generate new ideas in the current take–even if it’s just a rhyme or a juxtaposition of words. 

I’ll leave the rest to you to justify, as I seem to be at a loss. While I would like my workspace to be clean and shiny, chaos is absolutely  necessary to my writing, in which I typically seek order–especially given my control issues. It seems I am a bundle of contradictions, right down to the lipstick prints on my rolled cigarettes. 

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Previous entries in this series:

Where the Magic Happens: Karen Rigby

Where the Magic Happens: Deborah Ager

Where the Magic Happens: Sandra Beasley

UBUWEB offers a handful of Erica Baum’s photo collections, including her series of library card catalogues.

These photographs from the opening reading at the Frank Stanford Festival aren’t doing any good sitting on my hard drive, so here they are in all their glory. The reading offered a fantastic introduction to sixteen or seventeen different small press poets, most of whom were unfamiliar to me. Being exposed to so many new voices in a single night was both overwhelming and exhilarating. Congrats and thanks to Matt and Katy at Cannibal Books, who put the festival together.

Oh, and a special thanks to Abraham Smith, Maureen Alsop, Tony Tost, Adam Clay, and Ralph Adamo for recording poems for future updates of Linebreak. Abraham’s reading of Emma Bolden’s Testimony was posted on Tuesday.

Any omissions or inaccuracies in the photo captions should be posted to editors@linebreak.org.

Our fascination with the spaces where poets create continues with this entry from Deborah Ager, publisher of 32 Poems and a blogger in her own right. Deborah’s first book, Midnight Voices, will be published in March 2009 by WordTech/Cherry Grove Collection. Her work has appeared in Best New Poets 2006, Best of the Tigertail Anthologies, The Bloomsbury Review, The Georgia Review, New Letters, and Quarterly West. She likes peach cobbler, Joan Didion and post-WWII modernist furniture.

Here’s Deborah:

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This desk isn’t just my desk. It’s a desk that belonged a doctor in Annapolis, MD for 50 years. I often wonder how he kept it in such near perfect condition for so long. It’s a desk that’s also known as the M 320W kneehole desk with steam bent drawers. This lingo is used by Heyword-Wakefield collectors — ahem! — geeks to describe this piece of furniture. One of my friends said I am a ‘furniture person’ and that is true. Furniture is art, and I buy it with that in mind. I spent three years looking for the “right” desk. The desk had to be old. The desk had to modern. The desk had to last me until I die, and so far it has.

My second desk belonged to my great-great grandfather. I’ve not yet drafted a poem at it, but I’m thrilled to have it and love its unusual look. I keep writing notebooks in it for now.

With the desk issue out of the way, the other details fell into place. We moved, got more space, had a child, gave up previous writing space, and I relocated into a roomy space upstairs. We painted the walls yellow so that the light from outside creates even more light. I have two windows that let light in but do not let me get distracted by allowing me to see outside. Clever, clever windows!

Above my desk are two black-and-white prints I enjoy. I purposely have no idea where the shots are taken. One looks like a deserted town out west. The other could be southern Spain or Italy or Morocco.

A notable missing element is my laptop, which floats around the house with me as I work and create. Sometimes I sit in a comfy chair, sometimes I sit in bed, and sometimes I sit outside. The other notable missing element is my printer. I decided to set up a printing station elsewhere in the house. Since I rarely use the printer, I did not want it to clutter up my desk. Now I have books in the place where the printer used to sit.

The books rotate. Right now, I have two Joan Didion books. Her writing is gorgeous. If I move to a desert island — which looks better and better these days — I’ll take *The Year of Magical Thinking* with me. I always have a copy of Elizabeth Bishop’s Complete Poems nearby. That book never leaves the rotation. I recently added a bird book after an accidental birding walk taken with a friend. The birding walk was accidental, because I don’t tend to notice a bird unless it happens to unleash its lunch on my head — which has happened unfortunately — but my friend noticed every single bird and could identify them by sound. Needless to say, I was impressed and thought it high time to learn more of the names of these little and important creatures.

To the left, you can see my filing system. 32 Poems mail goes into this right away. I’ve got four compartments with contracts, subscriptions, and the other odds and ends of running a magazine. The addition of this filing system has saved me countless hours.

For me, creating a space to write values the process — especially for a process that does not generate much in the way of revenue — for the sake of process. Having a space gives me permission, peace and a prosperous creative mindset.

As far as obsessions go, collecting photographs of writers’ workspaces is fairly benign. Regardless, it’s the subject of one of our many recurring features here at Unstressed. If you’re a publishing poet who wouldn’t mind sharing a photo (and an optional description) of your workspace, please drop us a line.

First up is Sandra Beasley, whose poems appeared on Linebreak on June 10 and Aug. 19.

Here’s Sandra:

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I don’t know if it’s truly where magic happens, but that’s how the Linebreak editors phrased it when they asked for a snapshot of my writing space. What does happen at my desk: drafting, cussing, sneezing, gesticulating, wikipedia-ing as an aid to drafting, wikipedia-ing as a distraction from drafting, reading lines aloud, tapping out ten syllable-lines out with my left hand, and drinking of scotch.

A rundown of some visible elements:

• A new-ish macbook (which replaced my beloved ibook). This laptop will sometimes move up with me to the balcony, or to a rocking chair in our bedroom.
• A hulk of a printer that bears a sticker proclaiming SCREW GUILT. I have gone through five printers since high school, and this sticker has been transferred to each and every one of them. I don’t particularly know why, but now it’s tradition.
• Two framed prints that are actually each half of the same image, a menagerie of animals depicted in styles ranging from the cartoonish to Audubon-exact. I clipped these from an issue of CABINET magazine, and find them a useful place to rest my eyes when I’m feeling stuck. Every time I look, there is an animal I hadn’t noticed before. This may have a role in the high frequency of giraffes, horses, turtles, capybaras, and platypi that appear in my recent poems.
• An exceptionally comfy chair that I bought at a second-hand store here in DC and then carried, balanced on top of my head, the eight blocks back to my old apartment building.

I really do keep my desk this clean. Don’t get me wrong, there are stacks of to-do paperwork elsewhere, but having a blank surface is key to giving myself permission to write. If I were trying to draft a sestina while also eyeing my incomplete 2008 tax return, the sestina would never happen. If the walls seem a little bare, I am trying to pace myself. We’ve only lived here since March, so I’m waiting until I have just the right things to hang up.

When we moved in, I worried that the lack of a window would keep this from working as my studio. But I get plenty of natural light (there’s a skylight above that staircase in the upper left of the photo). It never feels claustrophobic, and it is also the first space I see when I walk in the door–so naturally, the first place I sit. Much more organic than creeping off to an attic.

The books to the left of my desk are only a fraction of my poetry collection. I have far too many books, and since I can’t bear to get rid of anything signed to me, it is safe to say I will always have far too many books. They’re grouped according to the color of their spines. It is an indulgence, but as easily as I can remember the author’s last name, I’m able to picture how the book looks in my hands. You’d be surprised how quickly I find what I need. And when I can’t locate a title right away, the search causes me to stumble across three books I’d kind of forgotten about, but want to re-read. Who says any system having to do with poetry has to be efficient?

What I love best about this space is that it is, truly, a room of my own. It doesn’t double as a sewing room, or a guest bedroom; the boy has his own desk, on another floor entirely. It is a room for writing, and that is a rare and lucky thing.

Typewriter Ribbon Tin Collection – a set on Flickr

Posted because typewriters push my nostalgia button, and because one of my co-editors has been working on a villanelle that uses “tin” in the refrain.

(via Coudal)