The Writer’s Block: An Q&A with Clayton Eshleman

Having lived in Mexico, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Peru, France, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, Clayton Eshleman is truly a poet of the world. His work spans genres, decades, and continents, and his accolades include a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry (1978), a National Book Award in Translation (1979), and a Hemingway Translation Grant (2015). His work explores and embraces the world, from rumination on the contemporary to reflections on Ice Age cave-paintings.

Eshleman visited City of Asylum in November of 2016 to share his poetry. Sampsonia Way sat down with him to discuss his process working with his wife Caryl, his work in translation, and why he believes that a young writer would learn more squatting by a river for two years than he would getting an MFA in poetry.