A conversation about Exploding Head, how writers give each other permission, making the move from poems to essays, and how it feels to—after a good 25 years—NOT be writing a …
“Yet, once the space that had previously belonged to writing was filled with something else, it seemed never to have existed at all.” Cynthia talks to Erinn Batykefer about the …
On the Seawall: A Community Gallery of New Writing & Commentary July/August edition includes a stunning review of Exploding Head. Imogen Osborne interrogates Hoffman’s approach to writing about OCD, discusses …
Madison BookBeat’s Sarah Batkie talks to Cynthia about Exploding Head during National Poetry Month. Recorded April 15, 2024. Listen here: https://www.wortfm.org/madison-poet-cynthia-marie-hoffman-on-exploding-head/
For years, this Madison poet didn’t have the words for her Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. In her fourth collection, Exploding Head, she’s found exactly the right ones. Madison Magazine’s Maggie Ginsberg …
In this premier episode, podcast host Jason Gray talks with Cynthia Marie Hoffman, whose new book, Exploding Head, is on fire and lighting up the poetry world. A memoir-in-verse about growing …
Cynthia talks to Wisconsin Public Radio’s The Morning Show host Kate Archer Kent about her newly published collection, “Exploding Head.” She explores how her experience with obsessive-compulsive disorder is made …
What can Rilke and Eminem teach us about OCD? Cynthia talks about Exploding Head, taming your beasts, writing prose poems, and letting your child save you for John Sibley Williams’ …
On the process of writing and revising Exploding Head as a memoir in prose poems, how looking for the arc in the collection revealed how Hoffman’s relationship to her OCD …
Hoffman masterfully thins the veil between worlds, allowing the reader a glimpse into the workings of a distinctive mind. The result is a magnificently propulsive and evocative collection. Rebecca Morgan …
“Whether or not you have a diagnosis of OCD, these poems will make you feel seen at a deep level that’s rare in today’s world.” Cynthia talks to Megan Wildhood …
In the 104th episode of The HYBRID Author Podcast host Joanne Morrell chats to Cynthia about mental health in writers.Cynthia shares her experiences of living with OCD from a young …
Benjamin Landry reviews Exploding Head on this episode of VerseCurious. “It makes sense that Hoffman chose the prose poem as her medium. The anxiety and pressure engendered by the next …
The author and the designer discuss the process behind creating the book cover. “My Pinterest board filled up with surreal images of women whose heads were dissolving into blurs, streaks …
On writing Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones, project books, genealogy, mixed media, and, of course, tombstones. Hoffman did a deep dive into her family’s ancestry, …
On researching and writing Paper Doll Fetus, bad advice that’s actually good advice, and the problem with the “F” word (fetus!). Read the interview here.
“A fetus had something to say; I wrote it down.” Cynthia talks about writing Paper Doll Fetus, generating a series, and finding the voice for a persona poem for the …
Sarah Marcus interviews Cynthia Marie Hoffman and says her newest collection, Paper Doll Fetus, from Persea Books is “absolutely stunning, strange, and gorgeous in all of the right ways. You …
Our latest contributor interview focuses on obsessions, compulsions, and fabrications of the mind — not to mention deep secrets, hulking angels, and the small choices poetry is built upon. Who …
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club chats with Cynthia Marie Hoffman about her new book, Paper Doll Fetus, twilight sleep, and the importance of giving voice to the voiceless. Read the transcript …
On writing the chapbook Her Human Costume, why poetry doesn’t have to be such hard work, and a narrow escape from “project tunnel vision.” Cynthia talks about how the chapbook …
Cynthia Marie Hoffman (Sighteer) and Rachel Richardson (Copperhead) talk about writing their first books, and how there work is deeply grounded in place (Europe and Louisiana). Read it here.
“Writing is a partnership with the outside world, and even to write the most personal poems, we have to reach out to claim the things that populate them—light, trees, the …
Cynthia talks about the poem “Labor of Moles,” written “in the midst of a flurry of research and writing on the subject of birth and medicine which culminated in a …
