KYD is excited to be one of the participating organisations in this year’s Virtual Writers in Residence program, run by the UNESCO Melbourne City of Literature office. The Virtual Writers in Residence program is an initiative connecting global City of Literature writers with ten Melbourne-based organisations. During November, writers will work with their host organisations to create residency outcomes, meet other writers and connect with Melbourne as a City of Literature.
KYD‘s virtual writer in residence is Michael Kaplan, an MFA candidate in fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has work published or forthcoming in Nature Magazine, the Michigan Quarterly Review Mixtape, the Beloit Fiction Journal, and the Florida Review Online, among others. He enjoys long walks in the woods and worrying about the future. Stay tuned for more from Michael across KYD over the coming weeks!
Writer intro:
Hello hello, my name is Michael Kaplan and I like to write things. I also like making videos, and watching movies, and marvelling at the miracles conducted by Steph Curry. I like ping pong. I like going for walks in the woods. Or in meadows. Or on hillsides. I worry too much. I often wonder if I’ve said something wrong. I fear I’m writing this bio incorrectly. I swear I have the best of intentions.
Where I write:
I write at my desk every morning for as long as I can stand. Or sit, rather. Then I do calisthenics, jazzercise, dance-yoga, dream-yoga, and intensive weight training, to coax my body into More Writing. Then I sit and write again for as long as possible. Then, jumping jacks, power squats, kickboxing classes, parkour. And then (hopefully) More Writing, though (admittedly) by this hour, I’m fairly exhausted, and often turn to movies or basketball to recharge for the following morning. When these various methods are not effective, I go to coffee shops. When coffee shops offer not another morsel of productivity, I lumber around the streets of Iowa City, despondent, praying for More Writing. When prayer has no effect, I sneak into the living rooms of my friends and lovers, collapse on their sofas, nestle into their chests, and complain.
My hidden Iowa City:
One thing you won’t find on Google Maps in Iowa City is a grasshopper. But worry not: there are plenty. I like to jog through City Park, dodging their leaping bodies as they arc across the concrete. By the Riverside Theatre, droves of grasshoppers wait for me to pass and spring into action, brushing against my leg hair, (presumably) enjoying the way I squeal in fear as their exoskeletons hit my skin. To me, the hidden Iowa City is an insect, or a black squirrel, or a rabbit leaping over a crushed can of Busch Light. Iowa City is Hickory Hill Park, too, with its strange sculptures and oversized chairs and picnic tables sloping in slanted meadows. Iowa City is a walk by the river at sunset, the cumulus clouds magnificently fluffy, magnificently pink. In the winter, these landscapes become snowscapes and are no less breathtaking. Maybe more. The only difference is the jackets and the leggings and the beanies and the ever-present ability to see your own breath. None of this hidden, I guess, but I do find myself constantly forgetting and remembering and forgetting again the beauty of it all.
What book I revisit the most:
I can’t decide between Blood Meridian and Mrs Dalloway. I would probably need more than 150 words to explain what I think of the character, The Judge, but I will say that he is still dancing. And that he never dies. Nor does Septimus from Mrs Dalloway, a book I first fell in love with because my best friend fell in love with it. In high school, he guided me through Woolf’s long sentences, weaving together the novel’s various conceits. The book was about death, he explained—or rather, about deathlessness, about the possibility of touching someone’s heart beyond the grave. He once wept reading aloud the words, ‘He made her feel the beauty; made her feel the fun.’ How ironic, I thought, that he’s making me feel it now.
How Iowa City fits into my story:
I’ve always wanted to write fiction, so when Sam Chang called to tell me I could do so here in Iowa, I felt no hesitation. I couldn’t have been happier. Some days I still feel like I’m dreaming.
A friend once said to me, places are just the people you know there. That’s what I find special about Iowa City: the people I know here. If I lived here alone, I admittedly wouldn’t be thrilled by the midwestern cuisine or the raucous frat parties or the undergrads sitting in circles on lawns next to signs that read, YOU HONK, WE DRINK. But at the moment I don’t consider any of this particularly pleasant or unpleasant. All of it simply acts as a backdrop for the various intersecting love stories I presently feel enmeshed in.
An excerpt from your favourite novel or other written work:
I have a love, and it never fades
From red garden sheds
To watching lads on steds knocking heads
From the two by two fuck you punk stage
To a warehouse rave, with a bloke we met on the way
Dancing til day
I have a love, and it never fades
You are God’s son across the belly
Rеmembered by picturеs on your telly
Your body laying in its glow
Surrounded by those you know
Crying for you words, and your soul
I have a love, and it never fades
Now a long way from school days
Sharing books at big break
With the two of us, and Barry and Craig
Talking tunes and poems with too much weight for our age
But the love that remains would shape the memory that stays
Even now I can see your face when those chords are replayed
Arm around me shoulder in teenage embrace
‘Tell All Your Friends,’ I’d say
No one quite captures the experience of friendship and of youth and of grief like David Balfe. As someone who lost my best mate, there’s nothing truer to me than the words, ‘I have a love, and it never fades.’
Visit the Melbourne City of Literature Facebook page to read profiles of the other 2022 Virtual Writers in Residence.
